Natural Resources committee  We really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today and would welcome the opportunity to come back if you have some further questions. And we'd like to actually, once we have our larger proposal together, come back and run that by you guys and see what you think about whether it meets the kinds of needs the government has in the future.

Natural Resources committee  I have one thing. When we come to these things, it's always a question of what the federal government can do, and I think what we need to have is more of a conversation about how the federal government, provincial governments, and municipal governments can work together to move these things forward, rather than just one level of government and one ask.

Natural Resources committee  As has been pointed out, in Europe there's huge-scale deployment of this type of initiative. Their grids are stable; they have a system that works. There's nothing there currently that we couldn't be doing here for quite a number of years before we had to answer the question, “What do we need to do about the grid?”

Natural Resources committee  I agree with you that we need both the right price signals and political will, not just at the federal level but at the provincial and municipal levels. We also need consumers to begin to understand that they are the source of the problem and the solution to the problem. Those kinds of behavioural changes take a long time.

Natural Resources committee  Let me take a shot at it.

Natural Resources committee  Pricing has always been a problem. When you talk to Europeans, they tell you about all the things they're doing in their countries. We've actually had some Europeans come across and say, “Just be careful about the context, because in Europe the price for power and energy is very high.”

Natural Resources committee  There are four in Alberta that are being built as part of the EQuilibrium project--one in Edmonton, two in Red Deer, and one in Calgary. I'd like to point out, though, that when we originally approached CMHC with the proposal for net-zero energy homes, it was actually to talk about a three-phased approach.