Natural Resources Committee on April 2nd, 2009

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Mr. Oliver wanted to respond to that, Mr. Anderson.

[Bob Oliver]

I can't think of the names of any projects right now, but I have seen it done before, and yes, it works. You get down to a certain depth, you're past the frost line, you're into a fairly stable temperature regime, and it would be good. I think geothermal is the second-best option, though. What you're trying to do is recreate the ability to be underground. You're above ground, which is where a lot of people want to be. You're just drawing the heat that's underground up, and you're circulating that through the building system and through the district energy systems, and then putting it back down.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you. I have another question. I want to focus on solar for a minute.

I'm at the end of a grid in a rural area in Saskatchewan. If I would like to set up a system for my farm, just to have a reserve system--I have a farm, a shop, a couple of other buildings--in terms of solar, what type or size of system would a person need? Is that economical compared to a system that would be big enough to go on-grid with something from a farm-type situation?

My next question is, how do you handle a situation where you have monopoly utilities and you can't get access to the grid? We've heard that's an issue across this country. I'd like to hear from Ottawa Hydro on that as well.

[Elizabeth McDonald]

First of all, I'm going to let Wes answer most of this. But I want to assure you that the best solar resource in the country is in Saskatchewan--I just thought I'd state that. I think we're going to see the utilities start to move. In some places they're being strongly encouraged by the provinces, etc. I think there are groups in the U.S. where actually the utilities and the industry work together, and I think we have to start mimicking that here in Canada, because we're behind them--not because I'm fixated on the U.S. I think we have to do that more with the groups as such. To a large degree, a lot of the renewable energy groups have been small. We're starting to get more resources enabled to do some of those things, to allow those things to happen.

Wes, why don't you answer the question about the farm?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We also heard that some of the projects are working together with the utilities, but there's a lot of frustration from others that aren't able to.

[Wes Johnston, Director, Policy and Research, Canadian Solar Industries Association]

To expand on that a little, it is a learning process at this point. For example, in Ontario, programs are in place or coming into place whereby you can actually hook your solar system up to the electrical grid. Even though we have had a program in place for about a year and a half, it's being relaunched, but there is that learning curve. That has to be understood as well. It's on both sides--not only on the installation side, but on the utility side as well. There has to be that acknowledgment up front and that cooperation between everybody to try to get past that barrier.

In terms of putting a solar system up on your home, that's a great initiative. I highly recommend that. Saskatchewan, as Elizabeth mentioned, has the greatest solar resource in Canada.

In terms of what size of system you would require, I'm not going to answer that today. I'm not an engineer or an installer. However, there is a process that you would go through. You would want to speak to a qualified installer and designer, and they would go through a couple of steps with you to find out what your objectives are. They would take a look at your site and do an assessment on it to determine how much solar resource there is, the layout of the land, the pitch of your roof, and things of that nature. Also, they would do an energy consumption assessment to find out how much energy you are consuming and how large a system you would require. On top of that, they would do a fiscal assessment to find out how much you would be looking to spend.

Generally, right now a standard home would use about a three kilowatt system. At present prices you'd be looking at about $30,000. In terms of the payback for that system, it does depend on where you live in Canada. For example, in Ontario there is what is called the feed-in tariff, and that provides a greater incentive than you may find in Saskatchewan at this point in time.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you.

I think you're out of time, Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Can I get an answer to the issue of the monopoly of Ottawa Hydro?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Yes, the committee is fine with that.

[Bruce Bibby, Representative, Manager, Energy Conservation, Hydro Ottawa Limited, Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition]

I can tell you that I'm responsible not only for conservation, but also for the renewable generations coming on our grid.

First of all, we're a municipal organization, and we're responsible for only the Ottawa region. So I can only speak to that.

Let me first address the issue of being, as you suggested, at the end of a feeder. This is an issue of engineering and physics. There's so much capacity you can put on any given line. If somebody is going to put a large generation on your line, then you look at the capacity that you have in your equipment, for all intents and purposes, and determine whether the equipment can handle that extra capacity. If it can't, then you have to reinforce the environment--the equipment that you have serving that area. That's the hesitation most often for people, especially in the last year or two. Generally it's a large installation that somebody wants to put up, whether it's solar or whatever, in a renewable generation. More often than not, when they're coming onto the grid, the hydro companies have had, over the past several years, a lot of capacity, but they haven't built out as much as they probably should have I think, if we look back over ten years of planning. They've used that excess capacity in their system and used it and used it. Now they're to the point where they're quite full, and as the generation starts to come on, they have a bit of a dilemma because now they have to reinforce and build excess capacity again. That's what's going on in the hydro industry.

For the residential solar rooftop, we expect in Ottawa about 5,000 customers to come online over the next three years. We're looking forward to them. They're not a big problem because they come on sporadically and in different areas. If one street comes along and everybody on the street wants to come on to the same point, then as we bulk those people up we look to make sure we can get them on the network. I think we're okay in our territory, and we expect that we're probably going to have some great success with it in Ottawa.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you, Mr. Bibby. That was very helpful.

We'll now go to the five-minute rounds.

Mr. Bains, would you like to lead off?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to pick up on the point that Ms. McDonald raised with respect to government procurement as a policy to deal with reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and implementing some of these programs.

Can you explain further what you mean by the procurement practices in greening them? Is it the request for proposals? Is it the bid process? Is it the criteria?

How better can the process be changed to accommodate and be more competitive for some of these proposals that would ultimately help the government in pursuing its green procurement policies?

[Elizabeth McDonald]

The United States government under President Bush--not under the present government--actually committed to a percentage of adoption of renewable energy by government buildings, and not just new government buildings. I think it was 15%, 20%. I'm sorry, I should have the exact number, but I forgot to pick it.

So the first step is to have that commitment, because then it makes it clear. Otherwise, you're just stuck in the traditional procurement issues of the Government of Canada, which is the bid that comes in at the lowest price and the fastest, etc. I was a consultant for a while. It just all kind of lined up tick, tick, and your name comes up and that's excellent.

Actually, if over that there were a commitment that 15%, 20% of Canadian government buildings had to get their energy from renewable sources, then I think you would see a major change, and it would show leadership. You are seeing it in some new builds, but not consistently, so I absolutely agree with you. You see it here, you see it there. And you see various departments doing it, depending on how they plan.

For example, Correctional Service of Canada has either already adopted or is in the process of adopting solar thermal technology in the penitentiaries in Saskatchewan, which is an excellent way for them to use hot water because they have lots of people who need to have showers. So you go from that kind of thing, where within a department a certain person decided to drive this agenda because they thought it was forward-looking. They had found the way to fund it, but it was not an overall commitment.

Every time the discussion comes out, it's “Well, we rent instead of own some of our buildings.” Well, I would say the Government of Canada is a fairly large tenant and people would welcome those buildings. So if part of it is to have some of the energy supplied by renewable resources, I think that would inspire the building owners to do that. When we build buildings we shouldn't just have the occasional building, as you said, but we should actually have a clear commitment that there should be a percentage, and that should be clear right across the board.

For example, it's very hard to penetrate the Department of National Defence, yet it has large installations across the country. In the United States the military installations are adopting renewable energy, and in fact a number of them use solar air technology that was developed in Canada for air heating. So there are real opportunities. That would build an industry, it would build jobs, it would build technology. It would deliver a whole lot. It would also give Canadians something they could point to--other than the 5,000 homes we're going to see in Ottawa, which I'm very happy to hear about.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

With respect to the 15% to 20% target that you outlined, is that a target you'd use in the U.S. as a benchmark? How do you determine that 15% would be deemed reasonable as a commitment to renewable energy?

[Elizabeth McDonald]

I'm a policy person, so I can't.... That's part of the reason why I would think this should be an integral part of any commitment this government makes. You have to sit down and bring all of the engineers and everyone together. But what the U.S. government did was I think first embrace 15%. It may be higher now. They basically decided that at a certain point you lead by example. So at a certain point it's going to be a tough decision to do, but again, given that the federal government is a significant tenant as well as an owner of buildings, I think that would be an excellent way for the government to lead.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

We're out of time.

Thank you, Mr. Bains.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

I thought you were going to let me have some time.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

I appreciate that.

We're going to Mr. Trost for five minutes.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's sort of interesting for me, as a member, to watch the various panels go through, and they all talk about greenhouse gases, energy efficiency, and so forth. But I just want to say, at the end of the day, as much as we're all in favour of energy efficiency and so forth, ultimately for me as a member the goal is to improve the quality of life for my constituents. It's not energy efficiency for energy efficiency's sake; it's energy efficiency because it does improve the quality of life for my constituents, and if they have to make trade-offs and sacrifices, knowing the average voter, they're not going to do it.

So it brings me to sort of a point where I was talking about how economies of scale can drive down the costs for these various technologies. How far, in your various opinions, are we from those economies of scale? How much do we have to put into it? What sorts of timelines are we looking at where we can go to a point where the pilot projects are finished and the average Canadian will start to grasp this on their own?

I was at a homebuilding show the other week, because two of us here on the committee are in the process of building houses and we're looking at energy efficiencies, etc. Geothermal seems to be sort of at that tipping point on its own, but for most of the rest of the technologies, it's like hmm.... Better insulation tends to be what most people are talking about.

How far away are we from that tipping point? Is it more technology growth that we need? You mentioned economies of scale. What's the timeline we're looking at? How much more effort to get there do we need before people get the payback without a priming from the government?

I guess we'll start there, and I'm willing to take at least two or three different people responding.

[Bob Oliver]

I wanted to say that the integrated urban energy systems approach could be cost-effective immediately. We're not trying to push any one technology, but it's an approach to planning that provides for all of this distributed power generation and consumption to be happening.

We just heard about how, in the city of Ottawa, there's a local distribution agent. The grid can only accept so much distributed power. If you're building the grid from a starting point, it doesn't necessarily cost more than a classic grid, but it does enable people to participate in the consumption and generation of power to achieve a net-zero objective utilizing solar and agricultural waste and all that. It's an approach that, given the circumstances, might be cost-effective immediately.

The other thing is that, when you're doing that, what you're trying to do is not so much improve efficiency for the sake of efficiency; you're trying to eliminate waste, so hard-earned dollars are not going up in smoke.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

And that improves the quality of life of my voter, so....

[Bob Oliver]

I think the more the money goes into value-added work, which enables economic activity, more jobs, better quality of life.... That's how I'd answer that.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Okay.

We'll go one, two, I guess.

[Gordon Shields]

Sure.

Mr. Trost, I would say to you regarding the quality of life that it goes into lower operating costs for the homeowners and how they can manage those costs more effectively if they have lower operating costs from energy use and the utility side. It's also healthier living.

We're not just talking about slapping photovoltaics on the rooftops and saying you have a zero-energy home or net-zero-energy home. It's about producing a better envelope first.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

But how far away are we from doing that?