Government Operations Committee on March 21st, 2013

[Cindy Choy]

Our region's Portfolio Manager is a pilot project at this point. We're exploring the ease of implementation of that program through NRCan. Portfolio Manager is an energy benchmarking and energy labelling tool that we have migrated up from the States. NRCan has adapted it to Canada, and we're investigating through a pilot its application in Manitoba. The idea would be, once we have piloted and have the lessons learned, to look at expanding it to other sectors that we will be influencing. We could speculate on its application—

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Ms. Choy. Thank you, Ms. Parent.

We just have time for one more round. We will go to Mr. Bernard Trottier for the Conservatives.

You have five minutes please, Bernard.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, guests, for being available this morning. Appearing before us by video conference is an energy saving measure, as you can imagine, with the cost of commuting.

What I want to talk about is related to what Linda Duncan and Denis Blanchette were talking about: smart building and smart measures, versus the traditional renovations for insulation and better windows and so on. Denis was asking about the relationship between making those smart building investments and traditional renovations.

Could you describe at a high level the types of returns on investment? We know there's a certain return on investment when you make improvements in insulation, window glazing, and so on. When it comes to smarter building operations—for example, reducing the lighting when you're not using it, reducing heating when you don't need it at night. I'll give you one example and let you comment.

I worked with retail customers for a number of years, and like governments, they have very large real estate footprints. There's a magnitude of energy consumption within which you can look at certain savings.

One of the big impediments to making investments, especially in renovations, is that you hate to shut down a store to put in new insulation and new windows because you lose millions of dollars in sales when you do that—the return-on-investment hurdle is quite high because of it—whereas making smart investments using computer technology would not require shutting down a store, and you could immediately get some benefits.

Could you describe the return on investment in some of those smart kinds of technologies versus traditional renovations?

Perhaps I'll ask Manitoba to start, because you alluded to this in your presentation.

[Roberto Montanino]

I would consider retro-commissioning and recommissioning of buildings to be what you're describing, as not being technically capital investments but rather investments in improving the operational efficiencies.

Our experiences suggest that typically the opportunities that are identified through retro-commissioning or a recommissioning process would be paid back within one or two years. The investment made would be recouped through lower energy bills in one to two years.

[Susanne Parent]

We can give you a really quick example. A three-storey provincial office building in rural Manitoba with about 250 civil servants on four levels implemented a digital control project there in 2006 and had savings of $30,000 in electricity. Obviously the building wasn't being operated properly.

The other big lesson is that a lot of buildings aren't commissioned when they're built. That building is of 1970s vintage, and a lot of our portfolios are.

[Bernie Gaudet]

I'd like to echo that. In B.C. there is the continuous optimization program delivered by our BC Hydro utility. That one-year to two-year return on investment is reinforced through this example, and the result in energy savings is typically 7% electrical improvement and 12% natural gas improvement.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you very much.

[A voice]

In Manitoba it's 7%.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks.

The other smart work practice that you mentioned was the concept of hotelling, which many private sector companies have adopted.

For several years, by the way, when I worked as a business consultant, my office was basically a briefcase and a pair of shoes. You moved around and you occupied and got your work done in whatever space was appropriate, whether it was at a client's site or at home or in an office building somewhere. There are ways you can do things in government that are similar in concept. If you reduce the space requirements, you obviously reduce your energy requirements.

Can you describe from a government point of view whether there has been much adoption of hotelling in B.C. and in Manitoba, and some of the impediments?

There has been some pushback in the private sector, by the way. You have probably read about Yahoo's new CEO basically telling people to stop telecommuting and come in to the office. Energy costs are not borne by the employer in that case—the energy costs of commuting for an hour behind the windshield of a car every day, or more.

Could you describe your experience with hotelling and telecommuting in your jurisdictions?

Maybe we can start with B.C.

[Bernie Gaudet]

Under the Leading Workplace strategy, the business case to advance it is “triple bottom line”; it's not just energy savings.

The demographic emerging into the workspace is interested in flexible mobile working. There's not an interest in the corner office anymore as being the sign of success. Recognizing that, the way the Leading Workplace strategy works is primarily through collaborative tools. Working at home or working at a different office or even a different space in the same building still requires interaction.

To maximize and maintain the quality of that experience, part of the rollout.... There's the building part that I've spoken about, but as you mentioned, the IT side is equally important, and there is as much focus on that part as there is on what the space looks like if it is to accommodate people. We use Live Meeting regularly and routinely. We have opportunities, such as what we're doing here, to video conference each other in whenever we need to. We have smartphones that have a high capacity to access our files, which are centrally located on a centralized system. Those IT tools are critical.

It's been said that the most energy efficient space is the space that's not needed. That's essentially where we're going: doing demand-side management efforts, starting from asking whether we actually need the space, and if we need the space, how we can design it or maximize its efficiency to reduce the energy load requirement, and then once we know what the load requirement is, what system we should be putting in to provide that energy.

It starts from questioning whether the space is needed and how we should use it to maximize its utilization.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I'm afraid that's about all the time we have, Mr. Trottier. Thank you.

That wraps up the time we have set aside for this today.

I want to thank the panellists, the witnesses from both B.C. and Manitoba, for very helpful input. You are very knowledgeable and committed people doing very important work in both of those provinces, and we will definitely benefit from your testimony today.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for being with us today.

I'm going to suspend the meeting for a minute or so while we disconnect the teleconferencing. We will reconvene in camera for 10 minutes or so.

Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen.

[Proceedings continue in camera]