Environment Committee on Nov. 21st, 2006

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

That is a real shame, I think.

Mr. Burton, my next question is to you. You say there are two possibilities, mitigation and adaptation. I would like to maybe add a third in between the two, which is adapting to the mitigation measures of larger countries. In other words, I think what's going to happen in the next while—and this process has been accelerated by the shift of power that has taken place in Congress in the United States—is that the United States will start to move quickly on climate change, and then their industries will become more competitive because they will invest in energy efficiency in a more aggressive way than we are, and then we'll be playing catch-up with them in the competitive North American economy.

What do you think of that idea, that there's this third category, adapting to the mitigation measures of larger countries like the United States?

[Dr. Ian Burton]

Yes. When I said there are only two, I am speaking actually in terms of the language of the climate framework convention, and that's what they use. I agree there are many different horses to ride, and I think you may be right, and I hope you are right about the accelerating or new interest in energy efficiency and diversified energy sources in the United States. I think it's something we should be doing as well.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Scarpaleggia.

Mr. Vellacott.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think it has been fairly plain again, in our testimony today, that the Kyoto targets as originally set by the previous government were just not realistic and were very misleading, in terms of getting up false hopes and so on. That's been plain to me from the testimony.

I am intrigued in terms of the issue of adaptation...the mitigation, of course, is the reactive mode that it is necessary to deal with, and then the adaptation required in Canada. I go to the old saying that necessity is the mother of invention, and how the change does provide new opportunities. Change is a constant of life, and in this area it may be not as much, but there certainly would be opportunities that appear now. I'm a little curious, and in exploring that frontier a little, Mr. Sauchyn mentioned growing grapes in southern Alberta. I guess he sees an edge or a possibility there.

I'd like each of you to respond to that whole issue of change providing new opportunities. I agree that the reactive mode, dealing with the emissions and so on, has to happen. Is enough time and energy in Canada being put into exploring some of the very positive possibilities? Are there positive possibilities? What are some of the things we need to do to look at that side of the equation, where it seems that less time and energy is being given, because we're into the reactive mode more?

I'd like a response from everybody, actually.

[Dr. David Sauchyn]

I responded previously that yes, there are opportunities afforded by a warmer climate, in particular in the agricultural sector, if there is sufficient water, and that's crucial. All the indications are that at least in western Canada, in the prairie provinces there are declining water resources.

I also want to make the point that adaptation does not have to be expensive. Dr. Burton pointed out that humans have been adapting throughout history, and there are probably no more adaptable people than prairie farmers in terms of what they've had to withstand to sustain farming. This adaptation process just has to be facilitated and enabled by governments, because there are lots of mechanisms, there are lots of existing programs by which individuals, corporations, and communities can adapt if some of the constraints are lifted by governments.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Again in this whole issue where, for every problem there's a solution, or somebody who has a good economic head will see a solution, there seems to be an economic opportunity too.

[Dr. Ian Burton]

We tend to assume that there is a lot of room for spontaneous adaptation. Hopefully the private sector and communities habituated to looking for their own self-interest will see the opportunities, as well as the dangers, and respond accordingly.

A role for government in this is to provide the best scientific information about climate change—its variability, trends, and future scenarios—and then engage the Canadian stakeholders, public and private, in an informed debate about what they can best do to respond to the risks and opportunities, and adapt accordingly.

Knowledge about the best way to adapt is not just scientific; it's the knowledge by the people in those sectors—those who are at risk or have the opportunity. As your question suggests, we need to generate a whole debate and a sense of the development of public policy as to how to encourage and facilitate people to go about this, which means removing the barriers and creating the opportunities.

[Kory Teneycke]

I'll give you one really quick example. The mountain pine beetle is often pointed to as a wholly negative force in terms of what it's going to do to the forestry industry. It's also creating an opportunity to make ethanol out of wood waste, which wasn't there before.

So even in the darkest rain clouds, there are some silver linings. That's one I would point to, and there are many others. But it's a fact of life, and trying to find the opportunities within those changes is going to happen.

[Michael Cleland]

I'm not sure that I can speak to opportunities in the area of adaptation, but in the area of mitigation, for example, from my industry's perspective, as we look forward at a kind of medium-term horizon, we see our business as basically delivering energy solutions to people.

People don't buy natural gas, electricity, gasoline, or ethanol. They buy mobility, they buy heat—they buy all of those things. We need to make sure we are providing these services, and in the cleanest, most efficient way possible. I think there are all sorts of opportunities for business, including my members' businesses, to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Vellacott.

Monsieur Lussier.

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

My question is for Mr. Teneycke.

You mentioned that you were uncertain about biodiesel or renewable fuel production. I have two concerns about renewable fuel. First, how much energy does it take to produce one litre of biodiesel or renewable fuel? Scientific data on this issue are somewhat contradictory. How much energy does it in fact take to produce one litre?

My second concern is about production capacity. People are talking about introducing 5% biofuel content in all gasoline. I think that industry cannot produce this 5%. But my main concern is that there will also be demand from vehicles that run on 85% biofuel. How do you respond to these concerns? Do you have a great deal of data on the efficiency of biodiesel or ethanol? Secondly, will you be able to meet the demand for vehicles that run on 5% or more biofuel over the next few years?

[Kory Teneycke]

The energy balance question is the easiest one to answer in the sense that if you use data and farming methodologies from the late 1970s and ethanol technology from the late 1970s you would get a negative energy balance. If you're using today's technology and today's agricultural practices, you'd get a positive energy balance on a life cycle basis. What that number is varies a bit depending on where you're located and what your agricultural industry looks like there. Agriculture Canada's numbers for corn and wheat are about two to one--so positive. If you were using a coal-fired ethanol plant and you were irrigating the corn, it would be something less than that, probably about one and a half. It depends, like any other life cycle analysis, but for the Canadian context the numbers are about two to one.

In terms of having enough feedstock, absolutely.... Just using today's technology, using grains and oilseeds, the amount of wheat we export from Canada alone is enough to almost meet double the 5% requirement. We have a lot of feedstock.

If you add in cellulose technology, where you're making it from wood...and I would compliment the Quebec government, which has made investments in this area for a number of years. Their feedstocks are almost limitless. So I think that issue is an easy one to address.

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

That doesn’t quite answer my question. You say that the wheat, corn and wood are there, but the industry is not.

[Kory Teneycke]

Industry will be there if there's clarity in terms of how it's going to be taxed, how it's going to be regulated. Right now we're operating in a vacuum and we're being told that everything is going to change, but we don't know what it's going to change to. It will come where there is clarity.

In terms of going beyond 5%, any vehicle on the road today can use 10% ethanol without any modification. The technology exists to use up to 85% ethanol in a vehicle. We're the tail on the dog in the sense that we will move in whatever trajectory the U.S. auto market goes, and certainly the trend lines are towards more flexible fuel vehicles today. There are major increases in flexible fuel production from the big three auto makers, and I anticipate that trend will continue. In Brazil it's between 30% and 40% for ethanol used in their vehicles.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Cleland, Quebec has chosen to reduce its dependence on oil.

What is your position on the Rabaska project in Quebec to import natural gas from abroad? Are you in favour of this project? Do you believe that we should reduce our dependence on oil?

[Michael Cleland]

I must make a distinction between oil and natural gas here, which I think is important. In point of fact, the Quebec energy policy has an interesting look at natural gas and an interesting look at the possibility of using natural gas instead of electricity for heating applications where it makes a lot of sense, where it makes more sense for the electricity to be exported to the benefit of Quebeckers.

With respect to Rabaska or any liquefied natural gas project, my association takes the view that we need more and more diverse supplies of natural gas in North America. We are going to increasingly need to rely on foreign sources, and Canada should approve a number of LNG projects to make sure we get it into our marketplace. Quebec would benefit enormously from having an LNG project on the St. Lawrence River.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Calkins

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank the members for being here today.

I want to go back and talk a bit about something Mr. Sauchyn said. One of your comments was that if we don't set goals it'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would also put a comment back to you to see what you think about it.

If you have an unachievable goal, that too becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in the fact that nobody will make the effort to try to achieve it. I think we're seeing the results of that right now. We set the minus 6% target rate, and everybody knew at the time it was a pie in the sky target. It wasn't a highly consultative process, and it became its own self-fulfilling prophecy. We knew we weren't going to be able to live up to it back in 1997 or 1998, and that's why we're at the position we're at today, talking about this.

I'd like to leave that with you, and perhaps you have further comments on that. You have to set a realistic goal in order to be able to achieve anything. If we don't set goals we're not going to achieve them, but if we set unrealistic goals we're not going to achieve them. Either one is a self-fulfilling prophecy for failure, is it not?

[Dr. David Sauchyn]

That's a good point. One of the members mentioned earlier that even though we have seriously failed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the fact that we have been engaged in the Kyoto process has resulted in other programs and activities. So there are lots of other reasons for remaining a party to Kyoto.

I also want to mention that there are a lot of parallels drawn between the smoking issue and the resistance to the evidence that smoking was harmful, and the climate change campaign. There have been recent documentaries.

I want to suggest that there are other lessons we can learn from this on how quickly smoking became socially unacceptable. Why can't we make producing greenhouse gases by individuals socially unacceptable, so that somebody like me who drives an SUV would be considered a social deviant, just like somebody lighting up a cigarette in this room?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Okay, I'm going to move on here. I didn't really want to talk about smoking, but the point is taken. There are lots of analogies.

Basically every one of you has said categorically that a 50-year benchmark or a long-term goal of achieving something might be the right way to go. Along the way, there are going to have to be some milestones. You don't get to the end without achieving milestones and having a step-by-step plan.

From a philosophical or theoretical perspective, going back into each of your personal areas of expertise, my question is, what would be a realistic greenhouse gas emissions target? What would be reasonably achievable by 2020?

[Dr. Ian Burton]

I don't think we know the answer to that question. Earlier on, Mr. Godfrey asked something about recalibrating. Let me put a hypothesis on the table. Suppose we say that by some date hopefully in the near future, we would simply stabilize our emissions—not reduce them, but stabilize them. So that year by year, they didn't continue to increase and would stop at a given level. That would be a fairly clear target. We would say that we are not going to grow them anymore.

I don't know how feasible that is or how much it would cost. I don't know if it would be reasonable to say we can do that in five years, or that we can do it by 2012. Could we go to the climate convention and say, we can't reduce our emissions, but by 2012 we will not increase them anymore, we will be on a track to stabilize them? That would be a clear target; it would give a message to the Canadian economy. It may help us in our international negotiations and with our international image.

I don't think we can answer that question, but it is a good question to ask.

[Dr. David Sauchyn]

I agree that this morning we simply can't cook up a target for the 2020s, or any target. We will need to do much more research to determine what is achievable. But in setting those targets, we also have to analyze the cost of delaying emissions until a certain date, because as I said in my presentation, the increase in temperature lags decades behind the emission of greenhouse gases. Today we are determining the climate of the 2040s and 2050s, and we have to take into account the damage that is being caused as we delay efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We will move on to Mr. Cullen, please.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I have a question for Mr. Burton. It seems adaptation has become the poor cousin of this debate, receiving little attention. Is that not partially because it's so much more expensive for a country, and it's unpredictable? It's difficult for a government to take cost accounting for adaptation seriously when there are so many unknowns in the future, compounded with how much more expensive it is to do something rather than prevent the thing from happening in the first place. Is that not why this conversation gets left to the end and receives so much less attention?

Mr. Burton.