Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 28th, 2013

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

I'll pass the rest of my time to Mr. Mai.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Gravelle.

I am from Brossard—La Prairie. We are dealing with the Champlain Bridge situation and, especially, as you no doubt know, the matter of the light rail transit system. We are very supportive of that project, one reason being that we understand the importance of investing in public transit.

It is sometimes said that it would be impossible to build such a system in Quebec because of the snow and other reasons of that nature. Of course, the provincial government is the decision maker in that case, but we support the project and we want to see funding flowing that way.

Could you talk about what the project would mean for Bombardier or other companies?

[Marc Laforge, Director , Communications, Bombardier Transportation and Public Affairs, Bombardier Inc.]

Thank you.

We have everything we need to address the Champlain Bridge shortcomings. In fact, if you're interested, I encourage you to come see us in Kingston on June 20. We will be giving a demonstration of a product that could address all the issues associated with the Champlain Bridge. The product, Innovia 300, was even designed here in Canada.

There is considerable talk of light rail transit or LRT, to use shop talk. In this case, it's a system of surface rail vehicles that can be fully automated and electrified—producing no emissions—with the capability to more than solve the current traffic problems. It could replace the so-called temporary fix that has lasted for 22 years now, in other words, diesel buses and the orange-coloured cones.

I will make a point to invite you to come on June 20.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Mai.

We go now to Mr. Anderson for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Truckenbrodt, Mr. Gravelle asked you for some figures. Could we ask you for a few more? He wanted the figures for R and D assistance. Could you also provide figures for the amount of government subsidization your company and your predecessor company have received? If you want to go back to 1983, that would be good. I think you said that you could provide the R and D figures. Perhaps you could provide that full figure for us.

Mr. Petsinis, I'd like to talk to you a bit about electrical storage. We've had a few discussions here about innovation and technology and battery storage. One of the previous witnesses said that's the next frontier.

Do you have anything you'd like to contribute on the next generation of innovation in terms of electrical storage? That seems to be the limiting factor in so many areas, whether it's integrated energy systems, remote communities, or electrical vehicles.

[Philip Petsinis]

From an electric vehicle standpoint, there's no question that the evolution of the battery systems has now enabled us to sell commercially viable vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt. The energy density of batteries has been a limiting factor—how much energy you can put into a certain mass of battery or size. That has been improving and we expect that to continue.

The other relevant factor to the broader commercialization of that technology is the need for the cost to come down as well. The interesting aspect about battery electric vehicles and having the battery onboard is that there's a commercial value to the battery after it's no longer feasible to use in a vehicle. Once a battery gets about 70% charge-holding capacity, it's no longer viable for a vehicle but has much commercial value in things like remote storage, backup power, peak shaving, etc.

We're doing a number of projects with ABB Automation, to look at how to use these batteries in a secondary life—to support levelling charge loads in the infrastructure in the grid and other applications—to help fully utilize that battery and reduce the cost that applies to the vehicle. In fact, we're researching that in our engineering centre in Oshawa.

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

I have a question on emissions. I think the majority of provinces still get most of their power from coal-fired power plants. Do you advertise that your electrical vehicles have zero emissions, or do you acknowledge that equation?

[Philip Petsinis]

There’s no question. Someone earlier mentioned that you have to look at it from “well to wheel”, that is, what was the carbon created when you generated that electricity, as well as when you used it? From a Canadian context, when I look abroad to other jurisdictions, 70% of the electric energy in Canada has very low greenhouse gas emissions. The reality is that when we look at the highly populated regions of Canada—B.C., Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba as a secondary market—those regions have an extremely high, if not almost exclusive, production of electricity by hydroelectric and other means, which have virtually zero emissions. In those provinces, a Chevrolet Volt running on electricity emits 1/15th the greenhouse gas emissions on average in Ontario today, even with the coal-fired plants that are still being wound down, than the most efficient gasoline vehicle on the market. The potential for greenhouse gas reduction from electric vehicles in the Canadian context, given our very green electricity electrons, is quite staggering.

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

Actually, that's the point: it's the green system already in place that gives you that benefit, not specifically electric.

[Philip Petsinis]

With the electric vehicle, the other thing that's not very well understood is that gasoline engines, even the very best advanced technology engines, convert only about 40% of the potential energy in gasoline to motion. Electric vehicles can do it at about an almost 90% conversion factor, so you're getting twice the efficiency. That's where this other unknown factor is. When consumers understand it, we think that they'll gravitate towards electric vehicles, particularly in city areas. If I have a comparatively sized, very efficient gasoline vehicle and compare it to a Chevrolet Volt powered on electricity at today's prices, it's one-fifth the cost to travel in the Volt versus the gasoline vehicle, per kilometre.

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

Some of us need you to do a lot more work on the storage before they will be practical for us, I can tell you that.

Mr. Smillie, you talked to Mr. Calkins about the partnerships you've been working on in encouraging aboriginal involvement in the employment force. Can you talk about some of the other partnerships, the innovative partnerships you have put in place outside of the labour circles? What are you doing to encourage the labour innovations that we need?

[Christopher Smillie]

I would say that our top innovation—and I took a ton of heat for it internally—is that we partnered with CAP to talk about workforce delivery issues and about where we need to be to make sure that we have the workforce ready to build their projects in the future. So there's that one.

We're also working with an organization called Journeyman Inc., which promotes women's participation in the trades. We are going across the country getting more females involved in construction. Right now, they are less than 1% of our membership, and it's a real opportunity.

So we have CAP, we have Journeyman Inc., and we've also been talking with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities on infrastructure renewal and what needs to be done. Those are probably the top three.

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

Thanks.

Mr. Pyun, I'd like you to talk a little bit about your camelina project and where that's at. I know that a couple of different types of plants are being developed for jet fuel. I'm just wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about that project and where you're at with it.

[Pierre Seïn Pyun]

That project was essentially completed last year. There was a demonstration flight with biofuel based on that feedstock. There was then a second flight, a commercial revenue flight that Porter operated, again using the same biofuel.

The objective of the project was to be able to demonstrate that this mix of fuel, which was 50% biofuel and 50% regular diesel fuel—

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

Where's that going in the future?

[Pierre Seïn Pyun]

I think there are still some issues in terms of cost—the cost of the feedstock, the cost of the process—which needs to be brought down for there to be any hope that we will see it used widely in the industry in the future. I think it's at least four times more costly than just regular aviation fuel, at this point in time.

Of course, we need to continue to innovate, and the company stands ready to support that kind of project going forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much, Mr. Anderson.

I would really like to thank all of the witnesses for great presentations and very good answers to the questions.

I'd also like to thank all the members of the committee for good questions. That was another good meeting. Have a good weekend in your constituencies.

Thank you, all.

The meeting is adjourned.