Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on Feb. 27th, 2007

[Dr. David Keith]

There are two answers, similar to what I said before. One is that we have knowledge from natural systems that CO₂ is stored underground for time scales of, say, 100 million years, and there are many such deposits. Both that and the finding of oil and gas indicates that there are caprocks—formations that prevent the upward movement of CO₂—that are widely found around sedimentary basins around the world, and they're capable of being secure enough for 100-million-year time scales.

That doesn't tell you anything about the engineered risks from the wells. The reason I told you about natural gas storage is that it bears on the engineered risk.

There's one more really important thing to say, which is that if you put CO₂ in a deep saline formation underground, the CO₂ dissolves in that “pore water”. At that point, instead of trying to work its way up, it's actually negatively buoyant, trying to go down. At that point, most people would say the risk is effectively zero. So after you put CO₂ underground it actually gets safer with time, because the original pressure you put it under gradually dissipates and the CO₂ gradually dissolves in the water, which means it's trying to go down and not up.

An important thing to say about this technology, unlike some of the other underground storage technologies, is that in general nature works for you, so that as time goes on beyond the initial period, it gets safer, not less safe. That's not to say that if we do this all over the world we're not going to have accidents; we will.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to Mr. Watson for five minutes, please.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses here today.

I think most of my questions have been answered through the course of both the presentations and the discussion. There are a couple of things, though, that came up in the presentation that I'd like to probe a little bit more.

I believe, Mr. Lewin, it was you who said that much of our country's power-generating infrastructure is retiring between now and 2020. What percentage of our facilities would you say that would be? Just give me a bit of a sense of the magnitude or how much has to be replaced and the potential cost to replace it. What are we talking about in terms of capital investment?

[Dr. David Lewin]

First, as to the retirement of an older plant, I'm really referring to thermal generating plants as well, particularly coal-fired plants. Probably around 20% of that stock would be available for retirement around the 2020 period. It does vary across Canada. It depends on the vintage of the stock. But it's something of that order. We're looking at substantial billions of dollars of reinvestment as an industry to replace that capital stock.

Of course, the idea is to replace that capital stock with the best available technology of the time. That's one reason that we as an industry and as a company are working on IGCC as being that next technology, including carbon capture, not carbon-capture-ready but including carbon capture. I'd be happy to come back in 2009 and tell you the results of our feed work for that project and the likelihood of that project then being constructed. That's why we're very interested in participating with ICON in the carbon capture and storage piece, because without that carbon capture and storage piece, the IGCC is just not as effective.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I want to come to the short-term window here.

I know, Mr. Keith, you said Kyoto is a bit of a stumbling block or kind of gets in the way of thinking about long-term change. There is a political dialogue going on in terms of us needing to make the Kyoto target and the timeline. That is a very real discussion and one that could potentially end up legislated within Bill C-30 here, at the amendment stage. We can't entirely ignore that reality.

So I want to come to the short-term window for a moment. Mr. Lazar, I believe it was you who said what we really need is that transformative change in the way we do business. But it requires lots of capital to retool, and that is scarce in the manufacturing sector currently. I'd like some discussion about that short-term window of the next three, four, or five years. If we go, for example, to the purchase of credits, is there not some concern about the outflow of capital at a time when we should be investing it here domestically for transformative change? That may not necessarily include early actors, because you might be in a position of selling credit, but I want to talk about manufacturing in the broader sense.

[Avrim Lazar]

As concerns manufacturing, let me start.

The advantage to respecting Kyoto as an international agreement is that it sends a signal of earnestness and good faith to the rest of the world. If the rest of the world doesn't reduce their emissions, there's no point in reducing ours. Whether we can meet the Kyoto targets as we negotiated them, I think there's broad consensus to that. The only way we can do it is to buy offsets offshore. The advantages of buying offsets offshore is that you would get some reductions in the emissions going into the environment, and of course it's a global thing. It would speed up the adoption of environmentally preferable technology in developing countries.

The disadvantage is that you don't get any co-benefits for Canada. When you reduce emissions in Canada, you also reduce air pollution and you increase efficiency. In our industry, we reduce what goes to landfill. So maximizing our efforts in Canada makes sense not just because of its climate change impact, but it makes sense because Canadians get the benefits of everything that comes with addressing greenhouse gas emissions, cleaner air, less stuffed landfill, more efficiency, less water pollution. It's an overall package.

If you think in terms of the longer-term sustainability of the political will to deal with it, we have to accept that Canada has less than 2% of the emissions and is a major recipient of the impacts of climate change. So giving Canadians the immediate benefit of the co-benefits while we are making our contribution to the global thing makes sense.

[Dr. David Keith]

The crucial thing is that we act and be seen to be acting and be seen to be part of the framework convention process, and that will make other countries listen to us and hopefully incent other countries to do things.

I'm happy to see some international credits go, but I think if we actually did the full Kyoto compliance, that would probably be more credits than really make sense in terms of the actual benefits, for the reasons you just heard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

We'll have to make that the final word, Professor Keith.

Thank you very much. It was a good final word.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming today and sharing your expertise and knowledge. It was educational and very helpful.

We have a little bit more committee business to attend to, so we'll carry on with that for a few minutes. But again, thank you very much, we appreciate it, and I'm sure we'll see you all again or hear from you.

We have a little bit of committee business to move on to. First, one announcement I know you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats for: our budget for the committee was approved, so that's fine.

Now, we have one motion to deal with. If committee members could re-take their seats, I'd appreciate it.

Mr. Cullen, would you please read your motion?

Mr. Jean and Mr. McGuinty, please, would you pay attention?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

We have to allow them time for socialization, Chair, after such a long absence from handshaking.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

It's been gruelling, I know.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Yes, it's been gruelling. I know Mr. Jean is keen for this.

Taking off from Mr. Keith's last word before us in testimony today, and much of the testimony we've been hearing, the call for action has to be now.

I'll ask if we could have witnesses move their conversations outside.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

I can think of better places than this.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I thought the reception circuit was for this, but that's all right.

The motion you see before you, I'll read it out, with some brief explanation.

That the C-30 Committee meet as necessary during the Parliamentary recess between March 3 and March 18, 2007 to review the bill clause-by-clause and report it back to the House no later than March 19, 2007.

The reason—if I can speak to the motion, Chair—is that this is meeting number 16. We have two more, I believe, to go. If members of the committee are not preparing amendments that witnesses have been asking us for over the last number of weeks, there's nothing that focuses one's attention like a hanging, they used to say.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Long term.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

No, not a bit.

I don't think that on the issue of the environment I'm the one headed to the gallows.

But on the issue of urgency, in actually coming forward with amendments that are required to make the changes that witnesses have been telling us about, it has to be now.

As everybody on the committee knows, the current process timeline that was agreed to by the majority of the committee was unacceptable to us and was too delayed and wrapped into the budget. We thought that was an unfortunate congruence of stars and will dilute the efforts of this committee to get our work done.

So I put this motion forward. I know we all have schedules. I'm prepared to move my schedule around to be here. I'm furthest away, I believe, than anybody here, but I'm willing to do it and get the work done, get the substantive work done, which is around the amendments and making this flawed bill better.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Okay. Does anybody else want to speak to the motion?

Then we will go straight to the question.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

A recorded vote, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Sure.

(Motion negatived: nays 10; yeas 1)

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

See you this afternoon.

This meeting is adjourned.