Natural Resources committee  By the way, in Ontario there are some very aggressive targets for conservation. Conceptually, it's hard to grasp, but fundamentally, Toronto has to be taken off the grid by 2025. It's a big city. It's a lot of demand, but conceptually, that's a big, big challenge. That's being met by an integrated supply plan for Ontario that includes renewable energy, that includes nuclear redevelopment, that includes very aggressive conservation.

Natural Resources committee  To respond in part to your initial question about why this isn't happening as quickly as everyone might want, I think many people believe when they're buying a new home that of course it's energy efficient; why wouldn't it be? It's new; of course it should be good. It should be built to a standard that will stand the test of time.

Natural Resources committee  Potentially there are a couple of other ways to look at financing. Many businesses can depreciate capital assets in a certain way. It's never been considered that the house is an asset to a net production to the grid. Again, this idea of a new paradigm is that we've never considered to accelerate the depreciation on the extra capital cost to build in solar panels, to build in a wind turbine, to build in micro hydro, to upgrade the insulation, but ostensibly that could be an avenue to provide a mechanism for people to get a better return on investment.

Natural Resources committee  There is a project with the City of Ottawa to look at using local improvement charges to finance energy efficiency improvements or, potentially, generation sources. I believe there was a pilot in Whitehorse. In fact I'm not sure if it's operating currently, but they did do some work and proved that people would look at adding the financing onto their homes, putting a lien against their home that could be transferred to the next owner, because then it wouldn't affect their particular credit rating or credit position but would be tied to the building as a building improvement.

Natural Resources committee  You're absolutely right that traditional electricity can't be stored. You can charge batteries with direct current electricity, but that's more for off-the-grid homes. That way they can be self-contained. The idea of enhancing the grid by diversifying your source of generation is that you actually have a stronger grid by having generation throughout different parts of the grid.