Natural Resources committee  Thank you. We're subject to a little bit of unfair competition with incumbent utilities as well, and sometimes as a result we're asked unfair questions about whether or not our payback is within time. If you look at the payback on a hydro dam or a centralized power plant, that can take quite a long time also.

Natural Resources committee  That's right, nor are our investors if we aren't able to make the project work. But there is a spectrum from the centralized conventional energy plant to.... Okotoks may be on the far end of the spectrum. Dockside pulled back a little bit more. Southeast False Creek is in there somewhere.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, they have to be smart projects.

Natural Resources committee  In response to the very first part, we came up with our plan for the district energy system and then we basically tendered it. We knew that we were going to be part investors in the third party energy company that was going to own and operate the system, but we wanted to bring in a knowledgeable third party that could operate it.

Natural Resources committee  British Columbia actually has the advantage, although not necessarily from our perspective, of it being under a regulated commission, the BCUC. This is also ensuring that the algorithms we use to determine what the price should be are fair and competitive.

Natural Resources committee  That's right.

Natural Resources committee  For Dockside, the Nexterra plant can be serviced very effectively on-site. We're not looking at as long a payback as for a solar technology or one of the more expensive renewables. The initial modelling, when we made our decision, was that we'd probably be somewhere close to just under 10 years, and the equipment should last at least 20 or 25 years, and then it can have major service overhauls without necessarily being replaced

Natural Resources committee  I think to the extent that carbon today is an unpriced externality, if we could assign a value to it, that would give the private sector another tool to add incremental financing to projects like this and would have, I think, quite a significant impact. Jonathan also has some thoughts on that, which he perhaps would want to share.

Natural Resources committee  I think you're referring to the prêt vert. We have something we call the green loan, which we developed first for our single-building projects in Calgary and in Ottawa. For this we assign a debt to the condominium or strata corporation of the buildings, and they pay a certain amount of money back to the lender over time.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to present a brief overview of Dockside Green, a sustainable urban redevelopment project that we initiated four years ago in Victoria, British Columbia. I'm joined by our company's founder and managing partner, Jonathan Westeinde. I provided a couple of handouts to give you an overview of the company and some of our other projects in addition to Dockside Green.