Government Operations Committee on March 21st, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

I call the meeting to order. Welcome to the 79th meeting of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

We're eager today to continue with our study on energy efficiency in government buildings and demand-side management of our energy resources in general.

We're very grateful and very pleased to have representatives from two of our provincial jurisdictions, British Columbia and Manitoba, who are connected by teleconference. I understand everything is working well in terms of our long distance telecommunications.

Can you hear us, gentlemen?

[Rob Abbott, Executive Director, Ministry of Environment, Climate Action Secretariat, Carbon Neutral Government and Climate Action Outreach, Government of British Columbia]

Yes, we certainly can in British Columbia.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Very good.

How about in Manitoba, l'autre belle province?

I see we have B.C. only at this time. I'm going to ask our witnesses from B.C. to go ahead and make their presentation.

Gentlemen, the way we work is that we invite witnesses to make a five- to ten-minute brief introductory presentation, and then we'll open it to questions from committee members.

We'll welcome Mr. Bernie Gaudet, the acting director of corporate sustainability, and Mr. Rob Abbott, executive director of the Ministry of the Environment.

Could you introduce any other guests you have at the table as well, sir? We'll give the floor to you.

[Erik Kaye, Acting Manager, Energy Efficiency Branch, Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas, Government of British Columbia]

Hi. I'm Erik Kaye. I'm the manager of energy efficiency policy with the Government of British Columbia. I'm here to assist my colleagues and to answer any questions you may have on broader energy efficiency policies outside of public sector buildings.

I'll let my colleagues Rob and Bernie do the opening statement at this time.

[Rob Abbott]

I am Rob Abbott, and I have to begin by saying it's a genuine pleasure to have this opportunity to share some insights, some experiences, and perspectives with this committee.

I'm going to speak first and speak briefly on some broader provincial policy that has created a framework or a set of conditions, if you will, that have allowed for a variety of operational and technical activities and achievements related to energy efficiency. So I'll set the table and then my colleague Bernie will fill in some detail in terms of what we're working toward in the province on energy efficiency.

As Erik has indicated, if there are additional questions that are best suited for him, as opposed to Bernie or me, he will chime in as appropriate.

If there is a single powerful message I wish to leave with the committee today it would arguably be this: putting a price on carbon can be a simple and effective way to change capital asset management and, by extension, lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce energy costs, and demonstrate clean energy and technology.

More broadly, a supportive policy framework, including a revenue-neutral carbon tax, carbon-neutral government, community climate charters, and a provincial energy plan, among others, can create the conditions in which many operational and technical changes can be made that facilitate energy efficiency.

In November 2007, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act made British Columbia the first jurisdiction in North America to make a commitment to carbon neutrality across all public sector organizations. This commitment focused the public sector on accurately measuring greenhouse gas emissions and identifying and implementing opportunities to reduce those emissions through energy efficiency upgrades, the use of low-carbon or lower-carbon energy, and behaviour change.

By including core government, school districts, health authorities, post-secondary institutions, and crown corporations, British Columbia has engaged 300,000 public sector employees in a strategic conversation about climate change, energy efficiency, and the need for individual and collective action. Beyond that, two million British Columbians who learn in, use, or visit public sector institutions are included in that conversation as well.

In June 2010, British Columbia became the first jurisdiction to achieve carbon neutrality across its provincial public sector, and since that time, 95% of all local governments across the province have committed to pursue carbon neutrality as well.

A key accomplishment of the carbon-neutral government program in B.C. has been focusing attention on the costs of energy and working with public sector organizations to reduce those costs through investments in energy efficiency.

Since 2008 British Columbia has taken the following actions in this regard. Through the public sector energy conservation agreement, we committed $75 million between 2007 and 2010 to reduce emissions across the public sector through targeted energy efficiency upgrades. We reduced emissions from core government travel by 60%. We introduced a new provincial policy that all new government buildings be built to LEED gold or equivalent standards. We required that all new vehicle purchases first consider hybrid or clean energy options. We established agreements with both BC Hydro and FortisBC to provide financial incentives to energy projects, as well as energy managers, to work with public sector organizations throughout the province to develop plans to reduce emissions and save energy costs. We have recently established a new carbon-neutral capital program that has so far provided $10 million toward energy efficiency projects in school districts to help them further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And crucially, we've used the fixed price of $25 a tonne as a concrete financial incentive to change capital planning and influence behaviour change across the public sector.

In closing, British Columbia has begun a process of taking action on climate change in a systematic and rigorous way. In addition to the public sector milestones I've briefly highlighted, we are seeing signs of positive change in the wider economy. These include twice the Canadian average for hybrid vehicle adoption, 48% growth in our clean technology sector, the most active district energy market in the country, and one-fifth of all LEED gold buildings in Canada are here in B.C. We're the first carbon-neutral government in North America. The program improvements we have made over the last few years underscore our commitment to be the best. Within that context, we will continue to engage our stakeholders in a dialogue, much as we are doing today, about how to strengthen our program and broaden the scope of our energy efficiency efforts.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

[Bernie Gaudet, Acting Director, Corporate Sustainability, Ministry of Citizens' Services and Open Government, Shared Services BC, Government of British Columbia]

Great. Thanks, Rob.

Just to set the context, I'm the director of corporate sustainability within the ministry of government that looks after core government buildings, ministry buildings. We also have clients from the broader public sector, and we consider them voluntary customers. They could access our services, but are not mandated to do so. We have about 15% or so of the square footage of the broader public sector, so the policies that Rob was referring to apply to the broader public sector. Our portfolio is about 15% of that. Because core government has a relatively high profile within the initiatives that are done—house-in-order type activities—we tend to apply a lot of the leading-edge policy and programs to trial them for both the broader public sector and the private sector. So our portfolio is across the province.

My technology is failing me here, so I'm going to be looking at my BlackBerry for my speaking notes.

We have a mature energy management program that was established about 30 years ago, recognizing that energy efficiency was an important part of government building operations. During the time the energy management program has been in place, we've improved the energy efficiency of our building portfolio by more than 50%. We measure performance by our building energy performance index, which is a normalized index that provides an account of energy consumption by square metre. Around 1980 our BEPI, our building energy performance index, was about 2,400. It currently is under 1,200. Just in the last five or so years, we've been successful in reducing our consumption by over 4%.

So our work continues. We look at energy management not as an event; it's ongoing. It's something that we can't let lapse. What we found in the nineties, from an operational perspective, was that when we started to refocus our efforts on general building operations and didn't maintain a focused view of energy performance, our energy performance slipped, resulting over the decade in approximately $2 million in extra energy utility costs. It reminded us that we need to maintain an ongoing focus for energy performance, and that it's not an event that should happen when a project is delivered.

Rob mentioned policy. Policy drives our initiative, and we have policy within government operations that includes an environmental stewardship policy. Within that policy, we have an ISO 14001 registered portfolio. Within that environmental management system, which is ISO 14001 registered, energy is considered a significant aspect. Within that cycle of management, the “plan, do, check, act” cycle, we set objectives and targets and we establish programs that will achieve the objectives and targets. This probably won't be new to you folks who are experienced in the realm of management, but it's a very simple concept that has caused some very successful results for us.

We also have in place technical standards. So above and beyond the building code, which applies to all new development, we have technical standards. They are not prescriptive but outline the performance level of the building components as they're replaced in existing buildings or as they're specified in new construction. Those technical standards help provide guidance to all new development and major upgrades to our facilities.

One of the lenses used to maintain those technical standards is energy performance. As buildings are continually maintained, they are continually improved by the energy performance resulting from the technical standards.

Two years ago we launched something called the Leading Workplace strategy, and I understand PWGSC has a similar initiative, where the way the space is used is revisited. Rather than looking at work as being the space we work in, we look at work as work, and no matter where we are, we need to be outfitted to do our work.

The Leading Workplace strategy supports flexibility and mobility for all government workers. As a result of rolling out the Leading Workplace strategy in the Victoria capital region, as an example, we have reduced the portfolio footprint by over 3,800 square metres. When we shed space, we also shed the associated energy costs and conditioning costs that are required to maintain that space.

Over the next few years, we anticipate that Leading Workplace strategy will be a significant contributor to our energy efficiency interests.

We have an outsource service provider, as does PWGSC, and within that outsource service provision, energy performance is a mandated management and operational service delivery.

We have an energy management conservation strategy that we developed jointly with our outsource service provider, which provides focus to the efforts the outsource service provider does around the building operations in order to support energy efficiency. Areas of work that the outsource service provider contributes include things like operational best practices.

In the industry there is a big push right now to recognize the operational efficiency of our buildings rather than just focusing on high-efficient building infrastructure. We can have a very efficient design of the building, but we also need a very efficient operation of the well-designed building, and that's where we're putting a lot of our effort.

We have designed an HVAC best practices guideline and a self-assessment tool. As part of that contract we have with our outsource service provider, one of the requirements is that they conduct a self-assessment for every facility management zone and identify areas of continual improvement, so they can improve their ongoing ability to operate the buildings in their small portfolio more effectively. It's part of the framework of the environmental management system. Continual improvement is a required attribute of that system, so it complements that very well.

In terms of other efforts, we probably spend about $1.5 million specifically in energy efficiency projects. Those are recognized through routine capital programming, where the building systems are reviewed and opportunities for improvement are identified. We've converted most of our T12s to T8 lamps, and we have replaced a substantial number of the incandescent lamps with LED lamps within our portfolio.

The last thing I will say is that partnerships are very important for us, and one of our most significant partnerships is with the utilities in our province. Approximately 30% of our capital costs for projects are incented through our local utilities. BC Hydro is an example. It provided almost $1 million over the last two years in energy efficiency incentives, as well as human resources to help support the work we do.

That's a glimpse of some of the things we do around supporting energy efficiency in the province.

If you have any questions on the operational side, I'd be happy to answer them, and I'm sure Rob and I can provide some additional input on the policy side as well.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gaudet. Thank you to Mr. Abbott as well. It was a very interesting overview of some of the work you're doing in B.C.

You mentioned BC Hydro's role in cooperation and in partnership. That's a nice segue for us to now introduce our next panel, which has representatives from both the Government of Manitoba and, at the same table, Manitoba Hydro.

Welcome to all of you. I understand our video link is now good with Winnipeg.

Can you hear me well in Winnipeg?

[Voices]

We can.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Good morning. My name is Pat Martin. I'm the chair of the government operations committee.

Welcome to all of you, and thank you for sharing your time and your experience with us today.

Our normal practice is to have brief opening comments from witnesses, perhaps five or ten minutes from the Province of Manitoba and roughly the same from Manitoba Hydro. Then we open it to questions from our all-party Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates here in Ottawa.

Whoever would like to go first, I'll let you introduce your group and the floor is yours.

[Cindy Choy, Director, Green Building Coordination Team, Accomodation Services Division, Department of Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation, Government of Manitoba]

My name is Cindy Choy. I'm from the Government of Manitoba. I'm the director of the green building coordination team, a policy group supporting our green building policies. Perhaps I'll just let everyone around our table here introduce themselves first before I start in.

Colleen.

[Colleen Kuruluk, Manager, Power Smart Programs, Manitoba Hydro]

Good morning. I'm Colleen Kuruluk of Manitoba Hydro, and I look after the Power Smart program for residential and commercial customers in Manitoba Hydro.

[Roberto Montanino, Commercial Programs Supervisor, Commercial Programs, Power Smart Programs, Manitoba Hydro]

Good morning. My name is Roberto Montanino, and I oversee our suite of energy efficiency power smart programs specifically for commercial customers.

[Leonard Lewkowich, Utilities Analyst, Operations Branch, Accomodation Services Division, Department of Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation, Government of Manitoba]

I'm Leonard Lewkowich. I'm the utilities analyst in the operations division of Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation.

[Dave Cushnie, Technical Engineering Officer, Operations Branch, Accommodation Services Division, Department of Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation, Government of Manitoba]

I'm Dave Cushnie, and I'm also with the operations division.

[Susanne Parent, Director of Operations, Operations Branch, Accomodation Services Division, Department of Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation, Government of Manitoba]

Good morning. I'm Susanne Parent, and I'm director of operations for the accommodation services division. We look after about 400 government-owned buildings.

[Cindy Choy]

I'll start. My primary responsibility is relative to what we have in Manitoba, which is the green building policy. This policy was established in 2007. It establishes or identifies green building standards and practices that enhance energy and environmental performance for publicly funded buildings. That includes, of course, publicly owned buildings.

The standards and practices are designed to protect occupant health; improve air quality; reduce waste; use energy, water, and other resources more efficiently; reduce the overall impact of building construction and operation on the environment; and minimize the strain on local infrastructure.

The standards and practices apply to building construction projects funded in whole or in part by the Manitoba government, a crown corporation, or a government agency. Residential, industrial, and farm buildings are exempt at this point.

The standards and practices apply to new construction, major renovation, and addition projects where the occupancy is assembly, care or detection, and business and personal service as defined by the building code. Our area threshold is 600 metres or more. Renovations apply if the renovation cost is more than 50% of the cost of building new.

Building projects outside the scope of the policy are encouraged to apply our standards voluntarily. Our standards do not require strict compliance. There is an option for variance under our program.

The building projects within our policy are required to verify the implementation of key performance deliverables. In particular, because we're talking about energy efficiency, we have established a 33% better performance than the model national energy code for 1997, and this is proven through designation under our Manitoba Hydro Power Smart designation program and/or energy modelling under the LEED Canada program.

The requirements for these projects also require LEED certification, or, as I mentioned, under variance, another equivalent or similar system.

As I said, this policy applies primarily to new building projects, but the intention is to expand the green building policy into other aspects, with a life-cycle process involved. We're currently in the process of starting to approach existing building operation on the other side of new construction. It's our intention to engage in post-occupancy reviews to determine the effects of green building design on occupancy satisfaction and behaviour.

We're also starting to look at utility monitoring reporting practices, primarily under new construction, establishing at the very minimum the ability to track and monitor utility consumption. We intend to follow up on these with projects using post-occupancy briefs conducted by the green building coordination team.

We're currently also engaged with an interdepartmental working group to expand the scope of the policy, or at least explore that for the operation and maintenance of existing buildings. Our partners and colleagues here at the table have been instrumental in the work and exploration of that group. We're currently looking at a pilot over the next couple of years to identify initiatives for existing buildings. We're exploring the feasibility of Portfolio Manager, which NRCan will be launching in June of this year. Again, my colleagues here would probably be better able to speak to that, as they will be our primary pilot partners.

It is the intention of the green building coordination team—my group—to analyze the information provided and prepare reports to government summarizing the effect of green building standards, energy efficiency practices, and water efficiencies, if I may add, and the effects they have on our local economy and industry's capacity to provide design and construction services with regard to energy and environmental performance.

We also have the intent to take these standards and practices, review them, and improve on the performance targets as our industry and our community here improve on their ability to deliver. While there may be some increased capital costs needed to implement the green building standards, we expect they would be offset by lower operating costs, improved productivity, and enhanced asset values, which we hope to be able to quantify in our post-occupancy studies.

At this point, I will pass it over to Susanne Parent and her team to talk about our building portfolio.

[Susanne Parent]

Thank you, Cindy.

Before I begin, I just want to make sure—and I'm hoping—that everyone has a copy of the PowerPoint that we sent through. Please let me know whether or not you do, because I'll frame my comments accordingly.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I think we all have copies of the PowerPoint tablet. It's not on a screen, but we have hard copies with us.

[Susanne Parent]

Perfect. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you.

I'll go ahead. Again, I just want to introduce my colleagues from the operations branch. Like our colleagues in B.C., we look after government-owned infrastructure that does not include hospitals or schools, but it includes pretty much everything else. So we'll just get right into it.

We're going to focus on one initiative today, so it will be a little bit more of a technical discussion, and it's something we're moving forward on. As discussed earlier, there are many initiatives going on across Canada, not just in our jurisdiction. Cindy has highlighted the green building policy. Hydro is going to talk about their suite of programs, which, when and if we can, we participate in. Sub-metering, lighting,...there are so many things we could talk about today, but we want to focus on one with you, and that is digital control in building operations. Our colleagues in B.C. highlighted that too, and how there are huge savings to be had through that.

Just to give you a bit of an overview of the variety of portfolios, which might be a little bit of a surprise, we'll go to slide 2. As are other jurisdictions, we're managing buildings that were built anywhere from the 1800s up to last year, when we just opened a new women's correctional centre here in Manitoba. Also, as many of you are aware, we have to deal with a pretty extreme climate in our province.

The Province of Manitoba owns and operates the Churchill Town Centre Complex, and also the Emerson Tourist Information Centre, right at the U.S. border. We have courthouses and nine correctional facilities. Basically, the next slide shows the variety within the portfolio. If you go to the next one, it will show you the Old Law Courts Building, the Selkirk office building, and Milner Ridge Correctional Centre.

One thing all of them have in common, and what we're working towards installing if they don't have it already, is direct digital controls, or DDC systems. It doesn't matter whether the building was built in the 1800s or it just opened, we want to be consistent across the entire portfolio.

For those folks on the panel who aren't familiar with those, they're basically the same as the thermostat in your house, except imagine being able to control the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system for an entire correctional facility or a complex like a mental health centre or a residence for developmentally delayed adults. We have huge complexes to manage, as do, I'm sure, our colleagues in B.C.

What types of systems can be managed using DDC? We've moved forward from the typical things. Again, there are some examples there for you. There are heat pumps, hot water tanks, and cooling towers. District energy was mentioned by our colleagues in B.C. as well. They have also been implemented in our central power houses for our complexes. The other thing we're looking at is alarming critical systems, for example, water supply in correctional facilities.

I'll give you just a little bit of background on our projects and installations. We started moving towards this just recently, in 2005. We have DDC systems in 146 buildings, and we are moving forward to expand throughout the portfolio. Over 700,000 square metres of building space are being controlled. The advantages, as we say here, go well beyond energy use reduction.

I also want to echo Cindy's comments. We really are focusing on water as well. They are closely related. Water is used to cool as well, and to heat if it's a steam plant. So we have to talk about water at the same time, and we always talk about them together. That can be a bit of a challenge, I know, because in most jurisdictions water conservation is controlled by one department and energy by another. But we really try to talk about them together all the time.

I'll just talk about some of the opportunities that DDC presents. We have improved building equipment efficiencies. We can speak to, if you like, specific examples that we've realized. As you can see, there's huge potential for reduction in our utility costs, since we have $13 million in annual utility costs and use 19 million cubic metres of natural gas annually.

Going on to the next slide, one of the best assets about this is we can track our use. I know it's something we always say, but you can't manage something if you're not measuring it.

One of the things we're looking at is increasing our capability in being able to store and trend data. The other thing you can find out very quickly—this is getting back to all the other initiatives, whether it's implementing portions of the green building policy, changing our lighting, or changing any equipment—is that success or failure can be tracked and measured very quickly.

The other thing, from a business continuity plan—this is a spinoff—is that it's not just about energy efficiency; we know if the equipment is in failure mode, and that is huge for government buildings. As we know, many of our goals are 24/7. We're also very concerned about client comfort.

Going on to the next slide, as I mentioned, we have remote access. All our building operators have 24/7 access to their DDC system and their facilities. They can alarm 24/7, and we have remote monitoring going on. This helps with client comfort and supporting our client programs, particularly in corrections and health care. The programming can be adapted to include multisystem programs and to address the complexity of operating the types of buildings we all operate these days.

I've already touched on business continuity. We consider the DDC a critical service and a critical component, and, accordingly, a challenge or a barrier to having enough IT capacity to support all the data that's coming in. We are increasing our ability to support our DDC system. We also have a backup system in every facility, so if the Internet goes down, we can monitor the systems online, on site.

Working environment: This is the difference when we're talking about energy efficiency today, but I think because they're government-owned buildings, and the folks who are usually in government-owned buildings are colleagues, they expect a lot from us. They expect the buildings to be comfortable, and that's a huge part of this too. Energy efficiency is one piece of it, as is water efficiency, but it also has to be a comfortable building that our colleagues want to work in. The DDC system allows us to be adaptive and responsive to that. Again, we have some examples of buildings we can talk about later, if you would like.

It would have been great to have our colleagues in some of the other government departments here too, because they're doing some pretty amazing things in housing and the RHAs. I know they're going to the DDC systems too, but they have a lot of other initiatives. I wanted to flag that for you.

We wanted to highlight some of the opportunities in different initiatives: automated lighting control, scheduling for specific government programs and specific buildings, adapting to 24/7 programs, and just typical office buildings.

The programming equipment reset can also be of huge assistance. We had a challenge with equipment failure—you can also make adjustments—and, if you like, we can tell you a very sad but interesting story about a 15-storey office building when we get to the question period, when we had to adapt to not having chilling when it was 40 degrees Celsius with the humidity. That was a bit of a challenge, and the DDC was a huge assistance with that.

Our future plans: We're proceeding with portfolio-wide installation. The other thing we want to talk about for just a couple of seconds is sub-metering, which is huge. We have a lot of work to do with that, and to move forward with tracking so we can set the targets we need on energy and water. That will be a big part of the legislation that's going forward.

Another area where we definitely need to do some work is training. That would be for operators across Canada, helping staff to be cognizant of the opportunities for DDC to help them run their buildings more efficiently and get back to the business continuity planning and critical services that some of our buildings provide to the public.

We're also going to be going a little further with DDC than just HVAC equipment. We are going to be monitoring critical systems, particularly in the corrections facilities.

That's it. The last slide is a nice picture of our ledge. The snow is actually about three feet deep here today and it's pretty cold out, but it's a nice spring day.

I'll conclude there. I'm going to turn it over to our colleagues from Manitoba Hydro.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you.

[Roberto Montanino]

Thank you, Susanne.

Thanks for the opportunity...[Technical difficulty—Editor].

As was mentioned, Manitoba Hydro has a very comprehensive suite of energy efficiency programs, which is available, of course, to our residential customers, but also to our commercial and industrial customers. The suite of efficiency programs are branded as Power Smart, so I may refer to the term “Power Smart” in speaking to our efficiency programs.

We work a great deal with the private sector, but also with the public sector, with all levels of government—municipal, provincial, and a lot of work with the federal government as well. I'll highlight some of the results of our work in Manitoba with federal buildings.

I will provide a little history. The Power Smart initiative is designed to assist our customers to use both electricity and natural gas in a more efficient manner. We supply both fuels throughout the province, and one of the mandates of our energy efficiency programs is to promote the adoption of a wide variety of products and also best practices and services. Our electricity programs have been in place for over 20 years. In 2006, natural gas programs were added, which was as a result of us, Manitoba Hydro, purchasing the local gas utility.

I'll quickly speak to some of the components of what is included in the Power Smart suite of programs. In addition to financial incentives, we also offer a service to our commercial customers, where we would be visiting their properties and conducting a walk-through to identify some opportunities to improve energy efficiency. Once that has been established, we can also provide technical support, through a group of professional engineers who we employ at Manitoba Hydro, to help our customers identify the options and analyze what may be the best choice for them. The incremental product cost of many energy efficient products can be a barrier to maximizing their adoption, so we do also offer financial incentives—to help offset the incremental costs and to make the opportunities as economic as possible for our customers.

Something that I don't have listed in the slides you may be following is that we also have a mandate to provide education in the market and to build capacity within the industry in areas where we don't believe it fully exists within the province.

Some of the benefits that we recognize exist and that our customers enjoy when they're taking advantage of our energy efficiency programs are as follows.

Naturally, one is lower energy costs.

Something our customers deem very important is reduced emissions, and that's because of natural gas and electricity savings.

An increase in property values is also something of great benefit to our customers.

Susanne talked about this one: improved occupant comfort through more consistent heating and cooling, and better lighting levels. That's something of great value as well.

Another benefit of energy efficiency projects, of course, is extended equipment life. More efficient equipment tends to not need to work as hard, therefore extending the life of the equipment. In addition to that, there are reduced maintenance costs, typically because systems last longer; they are more efficient and require less servicing.

I'd like to identify some of the common opportunities that we see with our commercial building stock in Manitoba. I'll start by speaking to some whole building strategies. We offer a program that promotes a number of key pillars for the construction of energy efficient buildings. Integrated design is a practice in which all vested groups and all trades are involved from the start, to ensure that the building is planned and constructed in the most efficient manner possible.

Building simulation and energy modelling are tools to ensure that the planned construction comes to fruition and those savings are realized. With respect to building commissioning, once the building is constructed we need to ensure that the systems are set and operating according to their design. The commissioning process ensures that ongoing energy management systems and practices are in place so that those savings persist into the future.

For buildings that have been constructed and may not be performing to the level available to them, we also offer a program that promotes the optimization of existing buildings. This program promotes both retro-commissioning and recommissioning. Recommissioning is for a building that has been constructed with systems set up to operate based on a number of assumptions, like off-business occupancy levels and patterns of behaviour in the occupants. Over time, these things can change. The building settings can be manually overridden because of occupant complaints, changes in patterns of behaviour, and hours of operation. Those system settings need to be revisited over time. We offer a program that works with our customers and encourages that process to be undertaken. Retro-commissioning addresses buildings that were constructed and never commissioned or not commissioned properly.

Another area of significant opportunity is heating and cooling. We have a number of programs that offer incentives for heating boilers. We promote both condensing and near-condensing technologies. These are natural gas boilers that utilize the exhaust heat as a means of pre-heating incoming air. Those technologies can provide significant savings. As for cooling, larger buildings typically are cooled with chillers. We offer support and incentives for customers who are implementing energy efficient chillers. The installation of CO₂ sensors is another ventilation strategy. Many buildings are set to exchange the indoor air according to an assumed level of occupancy. The air is exchanged and outside air is brought in, which requires heating or cooling. This involves a lot of energy use. This technology allows buildings to avoid over-ventilating and introducing air from the outside that needs to be heated or cooled.

Geothermal is also a very energy efficient opportunity in Manitoba, and we offer support and incentives for the installation of geothermal ground source systems.

In Manitoba, with the climate we have, building envelope is a key area in making sure that buildings are operating efficiently. We promote both insulation and energy efficient windows. We provide incentives for insulation upgrades for various types of commercial roof structures as well as wall systems. We're trying to avoid the loss of conditioned air from the building space.

Another important program in Manitoba promotes energy efficient windows. With our climate, advanced window systems and curtain wall systems are important for commercial buildings. Through our program, we promote windows that have a U-value of 1.7 or less. Typically, that window would be a triple-paned window that would be treated with a low-e coating. It would be constructed with argon gas between the panes. It's a very efficient window that helps promote the airtightness of the building envelope.

Lighting is another area in which we have a very advanced program to address. B.C. had talked about converting most of their T12 linear fluorescent lights to T8s. This is something that has been done extensively in the Manitoba marketplace, with incentives in place for a number of years. We've been promoting T5 linear fluorescent lighting systems as well, typically used in settings where there might be higher ceilings and open spaces. Compact fluorescents are also—

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Mr. Montanino, could I interrupt you there? We do try to keep some time for the committee members to ask questions. We're not as interested in the specific technical things that we're doing in energy retrofitting so much as what are some of the benefits, costs, financing opportunities, etc., on a broader policy level, which I know you have touched on.

If you don't mind, we'll ask you to conclude in a minute or two and open the floor to questions from committee members.

[Roberto Montanino]

Of course.

The last thing I'll touch on is a synopsis of some of the participation we've seen from federal buildings.

The last slide of the PowerPoint presentation quickly highlights some of the participation we've seen from federal buildings within Manitoba. We've had over 250 different energy efficiency projects from federal buildings that we've collaborated on, with significant energy savings. Speaking specifically from a utility bill perspective, we've had over a million dollars in annual energy savings because of these projects.

I'll turn it over with that. Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Montanino, and thank you to all of the panellists for the interesting presentation. We're particularly cognizant that it's very early in B.C., so thank you for getting up early to be with us today, panellists from B.C.

We go around the table in five-minute rounds for questions and answers. We try to keep our questions concise and the answers as brief as possible to allow as many committee members as possible to question witnesses.

We'll begin with the official opposition, the NDP, with Ms. Linda Duncan for five minutes.