Evidence of meeting #137 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forest.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:40 p.m.
Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
I know that's one of the issues.
Do you think there is anything that the federal government can do to help your industry, or is it mostly provincial?
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada
I think the federal government could help us on the regulatory side.
One of the issues is that.... Within CETA, there is the agreement on technical barriers to trade. There's the comprehensive economic trade agreement between Canada and Europe, and there's a provision within the section on technical barriers to trade for mutual recognition of standards.
We want to see the European boiler pressure standards. I won't get into all the numbers and everything like that, but we want those to be recognized in Canada. We've started working with the manufacturers in Austria and Germany to try to coach them to put an application in through CETA, to see if we can get those standards recognized. We're still trying to figure out what the route is and how to do that.
On a separate track, we're working with the Canadian Standards Association in trying to amend the boiler standards there, which refer to the standards by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Canadian boiler standards are based on American standards, and we would like the European standards to be added to that. If we can accomplish that, then we have to go to each of the 13 different provincial jurisdictions and get all the boiler inspectors within each of those jurisdictions to then amend their codes to accept that.
It's going to be a long process.
4:40 p.m.
Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
If there were federal oversight, that would potentially resolve it.
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada
It would certainly help, yes.
4:40 p.m.
Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
Thank you.
To all of you, we're here to talk about what the federal government can do to make things better in your industries and in your lives. If your presentation didn't have all of it today, feel free to submit something separately to us.
Mr. Ménard, just quickly, I am part of the all-party renewable fuels caucus. Earlier in the week, we met with Renewable Industries Canada, and there was a fair bit of talk out of Quebec. Basically, they thought that the role of government in helping to encourage renewable industries was fairly significant. They talked about, first of all, the standards around e-fuel and increasing the minimum standard in fuel—which is currently around 5% at the gas pump—to a higher amount of ethanol, for example, or other kinds of biofuel in your fuels.
They talked about price on pollution, not in the sense of a tax, but in the sense of the government putting a price on pollution that encourages innovation in the industry to help reduce carbon and GHGs, which I thought was interesting.
Of course, there's the zero green waste policy in Quebec, which says that you're not allowed anymore to put anything that's compostable into a landfill. That is generating new fuel industries in Quebec as well.
Do you have a comment in general on the federal government's role in encouraging renewable fuels?
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Front commun québécois pour une gestion écologique des déchets
Managing waste material is indeed in provincial jurisdiction. All provinces do it. However, the federal government can and must set an example. Even though Quebec is often held up as an example, when you work in the field, you realize that our green paint can wear quite thin.
There are very good initiatives, such as banning organic matter from disposal sites in 2020, now scheduled for 2022. It was environmental groups like ours that demanded that the government ban organic matter.
I will talk in broader terms about producing ethanol. I have always talked about energy conversion. In Quebec, there is still no legislation about energy conversion, so it has not been regulated. They have been talking about doing so since 2011, but it has not yet been done. Some processes are admittedly interesting, such as gasification or pyrolysis, using certain materials under certain conditions. However, when we talk about energy conversion, about incineration in order to produce energy, we have considerable reservations because that destroys resources.
I always say that I would rather avoid problems than try and solve them.
4:45 p.m.
Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)
Okay, great.
Mr. Fisher, you're next.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, folks, for being here. I appreciate this.
I'll go to Gordon first, just to talk a little about wood pellets. I'm fascinated, first of all, that you have less than 1% of the market in Canada but you're growing and growing and growing. Clearly it's mostly export. What is possible for your industry within Canada using waste alone?
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada
I looked at the potential based on Statistics Canada's data. I have it in my presentation, which I think will eventually get to you. I've looked at the number of gigajoules—a unit of energy—consumed in the 50% of Canada that is not covered by the natural gas grid. If we took 100% of that, which I realize is unrealistic, it accounts for about one trillion gigajoules of energy used each year. If we convert that into wood pellets at an average energy efficiency, that would consume 71 million tonnes of wood pellets.
To put that into perspective, our total production in all of Canada right now is a little under three million tonnes. We could go from three million to 71 million if we could convert all that to wood pellets.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada
We'd be happy with 2% or 3%.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Is anybody growing wood to make pellets with, in any other countries? You're using specifically waste.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada
At the moment, wood pellets are not made from roundwood. We're strictly a by-product industry. That's true universally. The little bits of roundwood we do use are insect-damaged or rotten or twisted trees that couldn't otherwise be used to make lumber. Otherwise we're using a by-product: sawdust and shavings.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
I had a meeting one time in Nova Scotia with a guy who was growing a wood that grows faster than alders and poplar, but it's not like bamboo. He said you could make pellets with it, and four-by-eight sheets of plywood.
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada
We looked at some of those things. Maybe they'll come to pass. Typically with those fast-growing crops, you end up with high amounts of carbon and nitrogen, so you end up with corrosive types of fuels. The faster-growing and the more deciduous, the higher the amount of chlorine. When you combust it, it creates hydrochloric acid and rots the boiler systems.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Stéphane, you were talking about the use of wood to reduce GHGs as an alternative to concrete. We had a very fiery meeting here a couple of years ago when we had wood and concrete at the same table. Some of the members who have been around for several years will remember that.
Are you aware of CarbonCure, and can you compare the use of wood in reducing GHGs with CarbonCure's product, which traps the emissions in the concrete with their process?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, FPInnovations
I'm not aware of CarbonCure, but I will say this. It amazes me, actually, that people from concrete and wood would get into a fiery dialogue about trying to get ahead of each other. The real solution is to just put the best material at the right place.
The thing is that there is segmentation of the market that exists currently. I'm just an engineer; I'm not a policy-maker. I can see this building in the future where you have the concrete in the right place, the steel in the right place, and more wood where it needs to be. As we develop the technology to put more wood, the portion of wood does increase.
Wood is never going to replace all concrete, nor all steel, but we're actually limited in wood usage because we're fighting each other instead of finding a solution that fits all.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you.
Mr. Chair, the other day, through various multiple points of order, Mr. Stetski lost his last three-minute slot. I'd love to offer him my last two minutes.
4:50 p.m.
Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
All right, thank you.
I'll go to Mr. Thurlow for a minute.
I have to tell you that throwing plastic bags away just bugs the heck out of me. I think every Canadian should take all of their plastic bags and continue to put them in recycling bins until municipalities and recycling people get so frustrated they actually decide to do something with it.
4:50 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Government Affairs, Dow Chemical Canada Inc.
Disobedience....
4:50 p.m.
Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
What's your idea for using plastic bags and getting them recycled? What is Dow's idea around doing that?
4:50 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Government Affairs, Dow Chemical Canada Inc.
That would be a perfect example of something that should go into the EnergyBag. The EnergyBag could be converted into a diesel substitute. It could be converted into a methanol, which could then be turned into any form of plastic. Again, it's going to be up to both policy-makers and consumers to do that very thing.
Now, I would not engage in civil disobedience. That would actually create quite a bit of a problem at the local recycler and have all of the plastic end up in the garbage. The recycling would be cross-contaminated and it would make it more difficult to sort.
That being said, if we were to implement a program like EnergyBag, you'd be able to educate consumers to do the very thing you're trying to do, which is avoid those plastic bags going to waste.
4:50 p.m.
Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
Last night, my colleague Gord Johns had his motion, M-151, unanimously passed in the House of Commons. Thank you very much to everybody around the table here.
So we will be hearing a fair bit more from you. I'm not quite sure.... Are these orange bags, the Hefty EnergyBag, just storage for now, or are you actually using what's in them?
4:50 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Government Affairs, Dow Chemical Canada Inc.
In the jurisdictions where they are in place—I mentioned Idaho, Nebraska and parts of Atlanta—they are converting them into other feedstocks. In Idaho, they are replacing diesel in the municipal fleets with the product that goes through the EnergyBag.
Again, there is no perfect environmental solution. Obviously, we'd like to get back to the pyrolysis technology so that we can recycle or recover 100% of the molecules used to make plastic, but anything is better than to waste.