Environment Committee on Nov. 9th, 2006

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We're talking about investing, but you also have to consider the impact of a lack of investment, which would be considerable. It's being said; there's the Stern study; you had your own studies. I was listening to some of the remarks made here. For example, the pine beetle in the west, forest fires, the melting polar ice cap, the impact on agriculture and health. There's an obligation to act. When you observe this, you can't just say that it will cost so much money to act. If I understand correctly, we don't have a choice whether to act in the short, medium and long term. More than a moral obligation, this is a political obligation, for us, to shoulder our responsibilities as parliamentarians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

You're at five minutes, Mr. Rodriguez. Get to your question.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Bruce, could you simply tell us about the costs as regards the health sector?

[James Bruce]

One estimate is that there are 5,900 premature deaths across Canada due to heat waves and smog episodes. It's the combination of smog-producing chemicals and climate change that makes them much more effective in causing health problems. That's getting gradually worse. I'm reluctant to put the value of a human life into dollar terms, but I think the health issue is very serious.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Harvey.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Everyone agrees that global warming will have consequences. Do we have the means, with respect to the objectives you're giving us, to reduce CO2 emissions? That's an important question, if we don't have the technology to do it. I've met with people from the hydrogen battery industry. For the moment, we use more energy to produce them than we ultimately produce. That doesn't mean we should stop conducting research on the subject.

Today do we have the necessary technology to move forward, Mr. Page?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Page.

[Dr. Bob Page]

We are very close to having the clean coal and sequestration technology available.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

“Close” means what?

[Dr. Bob Page]

That means 18 months.

Now, understand that there would be the regulatory and other things. So I don't meant that in 18 months we would be producing power. I mean that in 18 months we would have a project to go forward for regulatory approval, which would be another two years probably.

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

May I add something?

At the international level, based on the technological changes already made by other governments, we can say — and virtually everyone agrees — that we have the technology. We wonder whether we'll be using nuclear energy, renewable energy or fossil fuels to capture emissions. I wrote a book in which I looked at the opinions of the experts from World Energy Assessment, the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All those organizations and their experts agreed that, yes, we could do a lot with nuclear energy and with renewable energies, as well as with fossil fuels, to clean up emissions. The most interesting question is who will make more money than everyone else during the transition to a clean energy system. When you talk about greenhouse gas emissions capture, about the clean use of fossil fuels, as Mr. Page has just said, we don't yet have a power station that can use those technologies. All those technologies,

gasification of fossil fuels, the burying of CO_2, the transport of CO₂ by pipeline--all of these technologies

were used for decades in other activities, chemicals, etc. We have a lot of trust in those technologies; the point is simply to bring them together in a different way.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

How much time would that take?

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

As Mr. Page said, it would take two years. We're currently making the investments.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Bruce.

[James Bruce]

I would add to Mark's comments that energy efficiency measures are readily available, and they can do a great deal.

Ken Ogilvie chaired a group that looked at energy efficiency in the motor vehicle industry, and maybe he should say something about that, because there's some place where we could make some real progress gradually over the next ten to fifteen years.

[Ken Ogilvie]

It's really about choices we want to make. If you look at the auto sector between 1975 and 1985, after the oil shocks and with the fuel economy standards, the vehicle fuel efficiency doubled in ten years' time. We could have doubled it again by today with the technology improvements, but we chose to put those into heavier vehicles, more powerful vehicles, faster vehicles, more luxurious vehicles, and so on.

So these are choices we can make. These are illustrations, and we can go much further than that with technology. It's really a question of what choices we want to make, where we deploy these technologies, and what the business case is for industry to put these in motion.

I'm on the board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada. There are some marvellous technologies coming through there, but the question always is what it takes to get somebody to deploy these. If you're in business, you need a high level of certainty that you're going to get a return on your investment.

There are waves and waves of technology. It's not a total solution to everything. There are some areas like carbon sequestration with uncertainties that need to be resolved. We do have many pathways--not just one--to get to the kinds of deep reductions we're talking about by 2050. Doing that by 2008 would be a problem, but we can be on the pathway.

The technologies are not really the issue at the end of the day, and there will be new technologies coming out in the future. There are some great developments that will happen, I'm sure, twenty years out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Lussier.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm no doubt going to suggest to the clerk that, in future, he send us the witness list together with their biographies and a list of their publications and, with that, perhaps as well a list of awards...

Let's get serious. I think Quebec currently has a plan called the oil dependence reduction plan. Quebec is often cited as an example with its greenhouse gas emissions control plan.

Among the people invited to this committee, we've seen people from the industrial sector, chemicals, the automotive sector and energy tell us they've considerably reduced greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. However, the total, overall result is 28 percent. A 28 percent reduction, plus a six percent reduction objective relative to 1990 brings us to 34 percent.

My question for our guests is as follows: if we have oil dependence reduction plans and we invest considerable amounts to develop the oil industry in western Canada, isn't that contradictory, in terms of Canadian policies?

Mr. Bruce, you seem to want to answer me.

[James Bruce]

Yes, as I understand it, the tar sands in particular are the single biggest source of increased emissions in Canada.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

By how much?

[James Bruce]

I think there are ways of producing energy that would be much more efficient in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But without government policies in place, there is very little chance that those more efficient techniques will be put in place.

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

Once again, it's linked to the growth curve.

When we look back, 20 or 40 years ago, we see that, since energy has a cost, businesses and even household appliances should become increasingly efficient. That's a natural phenomenon. But at the same time, with economic growth and growth in new energy services, we have an increase in energy demand.

So we're starting to ask industrial interests what actions they can take to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. It's normal for them to be able to produce a list of all the actions they've taken, in any case. This is somewhat the problem when you implement a voluntary policy, a grants and information policy. It doesn't stop the introduction of new technologies that use the atmosphere like a garbage can. And it's continuing.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

It's not consistent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Malo, do you have a brief question?

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You won't be surprised by my question.

Mr. Jaccard, in your introduction, you mentioned that you had worked jointly with Chinese partners some time ago.

Mr. Bruce, you had already started to answer the question I'm going to ask.

What action should our committee take to lead China and other developing countries to adopt more favourable attitudes toward greenhouse gas reductions?