The biggest challenge, as I was saying, is capital-intensive. We have to have vision in order to be able to spend the capital. Those companies, if they cannot sell that technology to the end user, have a hard time committing to developing it in Canada.
The problem Canada is facing is that we're blessed with all kinds of energy, and all in all, the price of electricity is fairly low. I'm talking here about Quebec and B.C., our two main markets. Electricity in Quebec is selling at around 7¢ per kilowatt hour, and in B.C. it's roughly the same price.
It's a challenge to bring new technology that needs a little bit more incentive, I guess, in order to get a little bit more scale, hence reducing their costs. We've seen it in solar in the last couple of years. Three years ago we would have been able to buy solar panels based on about $1.80 per one kilowatt hour; now we can buy them at roughly 75¢ per kilowatt hour. It's a great improvement in less than three years.
This is actually what renewable energy needs—a little bit of a break in order to get the size, and also to get recognized for the end product that we're giving. These products are not producing any carbon. Other sources of non-renewable energy produce carbon that eventually creates greenhouse gas effects for the planet. How do we get some credit for this offset over time? That is critical, in our view.
Either we get to have some kind of long-term contract, which is maybe a little bit higher than what is perceived to be the market price on a short-term basis...but in the long run, those costs are fixed. In 20 years from now, as an example, a solar project in Ontario gets to have about 42¢ per kilowatt hour in the last FIT program. At year 20, theoretically the panels are paid off, and that solar energy is then put into the grid at competitive prices, but it took a first contract in order to help the technology be built and installed.