Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I apologize to all committee members for not being able to join you here at the meeting on Tuesday, but as the chair noted, a family matter intervened. I do very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with you here today.
The Canadian Wind Energy Association is the national association for companies with an interest in the wind energy industry in Canada. Our 450 members include Canadian, American, and European leaders in wind energy product development, wind turbine manufacture and component supply, as well as key service providers to the industry. The Canadian members of our association are a diverse group, active in wind energy, but many are also conventional energy companies whose primary interests are electricity generation, oil and gas production, or pipelining. We also have a number of companies that are focused exclusively in the renewable energy sector.
We believe that climate change is a serious issue and that the federal government must adopt legally binding targets and put in place supportive actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the establishment of such targets and supportive actions is critical to providing the policy certainty required to allow the wind energy industry to make well-informed and effective investment decisions that are consistent with the government's policy objectives. It's important that such targets and actions are transparent and that progress against them is measured on a regular basis. We note that many of these elements or themes are part of Bill C-311. Policy uncertainty reduces the incentive to invest.
We believe that wind energy will have an important role to play in meeting Canada's greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives, as well as the federal government's objective to have 90% of electricity produced from non-emitting sources by 2020. It's broadly accepted that significant progress on emissions reduction is required by 2020. In the electricity sector, the actions that have the most potential to reduce emissions in that timeframe are energy efficiency and conservation, increased deployment of renewable energy sources like wind, and fuel switching from coal to natural gas.
This is already being recognized in many parts of the world. In Europe wind energy has been the single biggest new source of electricity capacity for the last two years. It's been the second largest source of new generation in the United States over the last four years. In addition to providing these benefits, of course, wind energy also represents an important economic opportunity for rural communities across Canada and a manufacturing sector looking for ways to diversify production into products and technologies that are poised for significant growth in the 21st century.
For wind energy to fulfill its potential in meeting Canada's policy objectives and for any climate change strategy to be a success, it will be imperative to put a price on carbon. In this regard, CanWEA is supportive of the efforts currently under way at the federal level to put in place an emissions trading system that provides flexibility to emitters through the use of greenhouse gas offsets from non-emitting activities like wind energy production. It's critical for wind energy projects to have an opportunity to capture economic value for their environmental benefits.
It's also true, however, that it's likely to be some time yet until a carbon price is in place, and even longer until that price is not influenced by public policy safety valves that are designed to mitigate the economic impact of greenhouse gas emissions reduction but, at the same time, prevent the market from fully representing the real price of carbon. In this transitional period, it will be important for the federal government to continue to provide policy support and incentives that recognize and allow project developers to capture the full value of the environmental and carbon reduction benefits of clean renewable energy sources beyond that which will be initially provided by greenhouse gas offsets.
As the federal government's ecoENERGY for renewable power program will have fully allocated all of its funding this fall, such incentives will no longer be in place. A failure to expand or extend this mechanism or replace it with an alternative will result in delays and possible cancellations of several wind energy projects, and it will result in investors shifting funds for such projects from Canada to the United States. This is inconsistent with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. We remain committed to working with the government and all parliamentarians to obtain a renewed commitment to support the deployment of renewable energy projects during this transitional period.
While a carbon price is necessary, it will not on its own be sufficient to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives. Numerous barriers exist that prevent actors from responding to price signals in the marketplace. For that reason, many jurisdictions are putting in place both carbon pricing and long-term renewable energy strategies and policies in an effort to meet their climate change objectives.
While the European Union has a functioning carbon market in place, it has also established aggressive and legally binding renewable energy targets for the year 2020. And the United States Congress is currently considering the implementation of a legally binding national renewable electricity standard as part of its climate change package. We believe Canada also should consider, within its climate change strategy, the implementation of complementary initiatives that will remove barriers and stimulate investment in renewable energy technologies in addition to the establishment of a price on carbon.
When examining what policy support should be provided to renewable energy or other greenhouse gas emission reduction options as part of a climate change strategy, it's also important to remember that Canada is competing for investment in new renewable energy projects and new renewable energy technology supply chains, and that competition is on a global basis. Our policy choices must consider what other countries are doing to encourage investment in these sectors and must strive to ensure that our investment opportunities are competitive.
An effective federal climate change strategy will also need to improve the efficiency, without diminishing the effectiveness, of federal permitting and approval processes for clean energy projects like wind energy and the transmission infrastructure required to support its development. And it will also have to focus on building public support about the urgency and importance of the actions needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Finally, provincial governments also have an extremely important role to play in putting forward policies to support both renewable energy deployment and greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and federal policies should seek to complement and support major provincial initiatives like Ontario's new Green Energy and Green Economy Act and other leading initiatives across the country.
Thank you very much.