Environment Committee on June 5th, 2014

[Peter Hargreave]

They are certainly well aware of this, but there just haven't been the resources or the intention to deal with those issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Toet.

We'll move now to Monsieur Morin.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I'll share my time with Ms. Leslie.

Mr. Hargreave, you talked about cultural shifts.

This thing is....

I've lost my thought. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Ms. Leslie.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks.

I'm going to ask a question to all four witnesses. I think it was Mr. Hargreave who talked about other jurisdictions taking action and us being left behind. I'd love to know where we should be looking. Which jurisdictions should we be turning to? What are some good examples you can share with us of how things are working in other jurisdictions for promotion of technology or for support for these kinds of initiatives? I'd actually love for all the witnesses to answer that.

[Peter Hargreave]

Maybe I'll start off. Certainly if you look across Europe, you will see that there are obviously other motivators happening there. But if you look at a number of different jurisdictions in Europe—the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands—you will see that there are lots of things being done in those jurisdictions to better capture the value of waste. They've actually put together strategies around increasing the amount of materials that are diverted. They are using different tools, like many of the things we have talked about today—disposal bans, disposal levies, extended producer responsibility programs—in order to capture more of the resources within the waste.

There are lots of different jurisdictions but again they are very, very different. This is always the thing. We can take lots of advice from those jurisdictions, but we have a bit of a different situation. Primarily for waste, our biggest issue, at least from an Ontario context, is that we've got a large open border with the U.S. and the materials that can flow easily to the U.S. are really what dictate what happens in Ontario.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Okay. If I have time, I'll come back to that.

Ms. Leung, would you like to answer that question about other jurisdictions that you know about?

[Emmie K.H. Leung]

Yes. What I would like to do is piggy-back onto what Peter said. Definitely Europe is far in advance, but mind you, we are the ones that did the curbside program first. They came here to learn from us. But just because they have the economic means.... Why do I say they have the economic means we don't have, or we don't use? It is because their disposal fee is £200 per tonne. We echo what Peter says. If our disposal fee in Canada is between $10 and $50, nobody is going to recycle. It is cheaper just to put it in the dump. So what I need to put forward is this: as a regulator, the government can do lots of good to make sure that the disposal takes into consideration the external costs, like our water, the air, and the leachate. If you don't, it means that people will find a cheaper place, a hole in the ground, and you cannot have recycling happen.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Super. Thanks.

[Doug Starr]

I guess just to support what's been said already, I think what we have learned and what we have seen through Entech in some of the other jurisdictions around the world is a far more integrated and collaborative approach to waste, and I'm not too sure that we have that obviously in North America, or Canada specifically. I think the companies involved in the waste management strategy all bring a certain solution to the table. So it's a more integrated approach. It's not a sort of one-stop or silver-bullet approach. So I think there are some opportunities in the Canadian marketplace to start looking at more integrated, multi-pronged approaches.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Your time is up, Ms. Leslie.

We are moving now to Mr. Trottier.

Welcome, Mr. Trottier. It's good to have you with us at our committee today.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you for having me, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests for being here today.

I want to ask some questions to Mr. Staats and Mr. Starr about energy from waste. By the way, I am a member of Parliament from Toronto, so I know the context you are talking about, mainly Ontario.

One of the challenges of the mix of energy sources we've got in Ontario is that our supply is always trying to meet the demand. So we have nuclear, which is pretty good for baseload. There's ramp-up and ramp-down of demand during the day and by day of week and so on. I know that one of the nice things about hydro is that you can actually ramp up and ramp down to meet the demand, and similarly, with natural gas you can do that reasonably easily. Coal is not so good for ramping up and ramping down.

How does energy from waste compare to, say, natural gas or other sources of power generation when it comes to being able to ramp up very quickly to meet the increase in power demand?

[Lewis Staats]

I think Doug alluded to this in a previous answer. Our proposed facility is looking at providing a continuous 15 megawatts to 18 megawatts to the baseload in terms of what we're doing. So our facility is going to be a constant 24-7 production of power.

I say that in the context that REM and Entech-REM are looking at providing an innovative solution to the waste issues that are facing southern Ontario, etc. The by-product is the green power, the 15 megawatts to 18 megawatts of power that we will produce from waste that would have been put in landfill if not for a business like ours.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Okay.

I think you touched on this in your presentation, but compared with just disposing the types of waste that you're dealing with versus converting them to usable energy, what kinds of emissions come out of the energy-from-waste projects that you're involved in? I'm talking about carbon dioxide emissions, but also, I suppose, perhaps you could comment on other toxic substances that might come from the waste stream.

[Doug Starr]

Basically what comes out of our stack is carbon dioxide, water vapours; really no different from what you're doing when you're combusting natural gas. We'll have a process where the majority of any compounds in the waste or in the syngas will be dealt with through oxidation and combustion when it's in the syngas burner. If there is anything that has to be dealt with, then obviously, with the Ministry of the Environment's air quality control standards, we'll have the best available technologies on the back end.

So with regard to meeting or significantly exceeding the requirements that are in place, that will not be a problem with this process.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

To follow on from that, though, what inhibits more EFW projects from going on in Ontario? Is it local resistance, or concerns about air quality? Is it the economics, or is it the lack of a supply for feedstock? What's the biggest inhibitor?

[Doug Starr]

That's a good question.

I would say that local resistance is really such a small percentage when you look at these particular projects. Really, at the end of the day, as Lewis alluded to in the presentation, just look at the investment that is required by a private company like ours to get through the approval process. We launched a project in late 2009, and this was all investment money to get us through another 6 to 12 months before the project was approved.

So it's coming up with the financial resources to get through the approval process system.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Obviously for Toronto, which is a pretty big municipality, to ship waste to Michigan is pretty expensive. There's a lot of energy consumed in shipping it to distant places for disposal. There seems to be some real economic payback in looking at more local EFW types of projects for a big city like Toronto.

[Doug Starr]

Absolutely. I think Peter would have a very good handle on that. There are a number of EFW initiatives in Ontario right now, or at least municipalities looking at this. So yes, you're correct.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Before I wrap this up—I have only a little bit of time left—I'm just trying to understand the federal role in all of this. We get involved in research and in the dissemination of best practices. How can the federal government play a bigger role in expanding or looking at improving EFW?

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Was that for Peter or was that a rhetorical question?

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

It was more for Mr. Starr and Mr. Staats, who are very engaged in EFW, but if Peter has some comments, I'd like to hear them also.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Go ahead, Peter, and then Mr. Starr.

[Peter Hargreave]

There's probably some assistance with research....

I'd probably need to think about this a little bit more. Typically this is largely a provincial issue. I'd need to think through what additionally the federal government could provide.

I don't know, Doug, if you have something you want to add.

[Doug Starr]

Yes.

If I were giving feedback on behalf of Lewis and I in terms of our particular business and project, it would be continuity between the federal government and the provincial governments so that the left hand and the right hand were kind of working in concert. There are different responsibilities, but as Peter alluded, I think anything to do with technology, anything to do with support, anything to do with moving this very new sector along and having it acknowledged at the federal level would be probably very helpful when we got down to the provincial level.