Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.
My name is Tim Sanford. I'm with the Compression Technology Corporation. We're based in the Toronto area. We're the exclusive distributor of the BRC FuelMaker compressor line across Canada. We are the home refueling people that you would see for compressed natural gas.
If I could direct you to the screen, I have a presentation I'd like to walk you through. It's a little more visual and I can explain as we go through the presentation itself.
To give you a bit of an update and overview of the different markets and the compression around those markets, you can see the large public and private stations that are available. They tend to service very large fleets, whether it's trucks, buses, waste haulers, or many cars on natural gas that are available. Then we look at the small to medium-sized private stations, which would incorporate fleets and hockey arenas. We have about 250 hockey arenas. Ice resurfacers are powered by natural gas and we refuel them right in the ice resurfacer room at the hockey arenas. The forklift market is a large market here in Ontario. We have about 150 plants that operate their forklifts on natural gas. Then, obviously, we have the home refueler, which is aimed to supply fuel to passenger vehicles in your garage, right at home.
The Phill product will be launched here in Canada in the fall of this year. The Phill you can see on the garage is the size of a payphone. It tees into the existing natural gas line at your home, compresses the natural gas, and fills the vehicle. It was formulated and designed around vehicles such as the Honda Civic, to be able to fill that up overnight while you're sleeping. It has a gas detector as well as a small exhaust fan built into it for safety purposes, and it allows you to fill your vehicle right in your garage at your residence.
The next item you can see is the VRA, the vehicle refueling appliance. This has been available since the late 1980s and is used primarily industrially, but it has been used worldwide for residential refueling. You can see it sits on a patio stone, so it's roughly two feet by two feet. It tees into your natural-gas line. This compresses natural gas, fills a vehicle, and produces about the equivalent of three litres of gasoline per hour. The Phill unit is around one litre of gasoline per hour.
What are some of the home refueling obstacles we've seen in the past that are being overcome and have been overcome? As mentioned by my two colleagues, it is the availability of OEM vehicles. We're starting to see more vehicles worldwide—about 20 in Europe, Honda Civic in the U.S., and we'll be starting to see pickups available here in Canada over the next little while. The availability of OEM vehicles is crucial to the growth of home refueling.
The cost of after-market conversions referred to earlier by Ms. Milner.... Regarding costing, you were looking in the past at $7,500 to $12,000. It's starting to be reduced a bit and we're starting to see some costing around the $5,000 mark. What we have been working on is to roll in the cost of the conversion as well as the cost of the home refueler into a financing package to make it a little easier and affordable for the homeowner.
Enbridge Gas in Ontario has a rental program in place under which you can rent a home refueler--the VRA that was shown in the second picture you saw earlier--for around $100 a month. The important point about that is that the price differential between natural gas and gasoline is now significant enough to warrant the conversions and to take a look at some form of rental program. In the past, when gasoline was selling at around 90 cents per litre and natural gas at your home was 50 cents, the delta itself was very tight. Now we're looking at a spread of approximately a dollar. It's $1.30 per litre for gasoline, and natural gas is around 30 cents a cubic metre delivered to your home, so we're starting to see the economics coming into play. The availability of OEMs is going to be crucial in the launch of this product and the success of the home refueler.
How can the Government of Canada assist the growth of home refuelling? Home refuelling needs more visibility. We need to encourage and mandate the use of alternative fuel vehicles in federal fleets. Leading by example would help the homeowner take a look at a product that is viable and extremely convenient.
We need to encourage the provinces to recognize alternative fuel vehicles through the use of HOV lanes, for example. I've driven in Phoenix in the past, where HOV-lane access, because of alternative fuel vehicles, was permitted. This is just a perk that you receive by having an alternative fuel vehicle; it's not a financial gain, but at the same time, it is a convenience.
Reduced vehicle registration fees and exemptions from emission testing are other items that might help encourage people to convert to natural gas.
Also we're finding that interprovincial harmonization of vehicle conversion and station infrastructure standards would be of tremendous benefit. For example, across Canada right now, if we were to look at converting a vehicle over, the cylinder that goes into that vehicle may only be certified for Ontario. You might have to have that tested for other provinces. That becomes a cost and a hindrance to the whole industry. So recognizing testing done in other provinces, through harmonization, would help in lowering some of the costs.
As well, if Transport Canada could look at accepting the potential of foreign vehicle testing to help promote vehicles to be imported into Canada, that also would be of tremendous benefit.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Thank you.