Environment Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

[Alain Fournier]

Yes, they've also come to change these, again because of their constraints—because of the cost of power. Building doors and windows is an extremely homegrown kind of industry, and there's no reason we shouldn't be able to continue building doors and making windows, but we just haven't gone beyond that step to make—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Maybe we should increase the standards in the building code so they have to put in these doors and windows at this level of efficiency, or there has to be this flexibility as far as new innovation is concerned, and there have to be furnaces or, wherever available, ground-source heaters, or whatever. Do you know what I'm saying? Do we need to drive that change because it's not happening on a voluntary basis?

[Thomas Hewitt]

I believe that in Europe, there was a niche community, just like we have, mostly of custom homes. People were voluntarily looking for these products. The companies developed the technology to produce these products. The government then mandated a progressive increase in energy efficiency standards, which pushed those niche products into the mainstream.

As an example, six years ago was the first time we imported the windows we import from Europe. The window pricing was approximately $90 or something like that per square foot, and that's dropped to about $42 now for the exact same window. We haven't done anything. I'm not driving that business. It's the European standards, I believe, that have gone from one step to another.

Another example is solar panels. I worked for a large company, and we did a plant in east Hawkesbury: we built 144,000 panels and 300 acres of solar farm out there. That was in 2008, and we purchased those panels for $2.35 per watt peak. As an individual company, I might buy 100 panels a year, maybe 200. I'm now buying them at 72¢.

That goes to show what has happened to the industry, basically just from mass adoption. It wasn't mass adoption here in Canada; it was mass adoption in European countries.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

The question I'm getting at is this. Do we need to increase the standards and frame that within the building code itself to get to where we need to go to reduce the GHG emissions and increase energy efficiency?

[Thomas Hewitt]

I absolutely believe that's the case, although it needs to be done in steps and to be phased in. We just won't have the production of those components if we choose to do it....

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'd like to pass the rest of my time over to my good colleague.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have two minutes.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Mr. Hewitt, I was really interested when you talked, in particular, about the roofs. What's coming across is that the roofs aren't ready for the solar load, if I heard you correctly.

[Thomas Hewitt]

That's correct.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

In one of the municipalities that I represent, I've been told that in order to get a building permit, they require the roofs to be built for that standard.

It's a chicken and egg sort of thing. Do we actually make that part of the building code and say that that's the standard you have to have? Is there a huge resistance, a huge cost that would prevent people from doing that?

[Thomas Hewitt]

There's almost no cost. In Canada, we have extremely high snow loads. For example, a roof is typically built to hold up 50 pounds per square foot, or something like that. That's the amount of weight that is required. Solar panels are three to five PSF, so you're talking about, at most, a 10% increase, which would increase the cost very negligibly, especially when you're talking about truss roofs.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I'm from the Lower Mainland, and so maybe it's simply a case of their taking the snow off or pretending that the snow load doesn't exist and re-substituting solar panels.

The interesting thing in my community is that there are also no solar panels. I've talked to solar installers, and they've indicated that although the infrastructure can sustain it, it's actually the permitting costs per solar—

[Thomas Hewitt]

Absolutely.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

It's up to $3,500 to get permits to put solar on. Apparently there are huge import duties on solar panels, at least from China. There's a cost equation. I just hadn't realized that there was maybe a barrier on the building code piece.

How difficult is it to reinforce the buildings that are being built now that aren't up to that standard? Do you have to strip the roof off? Is there a cost? It gets into the question of retrofitting. Can you reinforce a roof and then do solar, or do we need to be building for that in the future?

[Thomas Hewitt]

Some can and some can't. It's very dependent on the building. The cost of renovation might be 10:1 versus the cost of doing it right to begin with. If we could just add that in, it's a very simple item, and boom, we would an entire fleet of houses ready for solar.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I assume I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I'm giving you two more minutes, so if you just want to carry on with that, you can, and then you'll be done.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

This is my last question. I'll say that I was a bit distressed, more than disturbed. Part of my theme has been about retaining existing building stock as opposed to knocking down and land-filling; and then you came out and said that if we want to get where we want to go, the only way to get there is to knock down, land-fill, and start over.

I find that really disheartening. We've learned that 75% of the building stock will be in place when a lot of the targets we've committed to kick in by 2030. It's not realistic to knock down 75% of the building stock.

How are we going to get there? I get the point that it's not cost-effective to do it now, but, again, is it a regulatory issue? What's the lead point to get us there? If we impose new standards, and we went to the kind of work we're doing on all new buildings between now and 2030, that's only going to give us 25% of the stock. How do we get to this retention of our existing stock? Is there any hope there?

Anybody is free to comment on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Good question.

[Thomas Hewitt]

It's interesting. It all comes down to.... A lot of the renovations I'm talking about are buildings where the homeowner actually wants to tear the place down. Then they go to the municipality, and the municipality says, “Oh, no. You can't tear that old building down. You have to leave the foundation. You have to leave a wall.”

There's just no way to get that building to the point it needs to be with the foundation dug without any insulation. We're putting foundations in the ground with absolutely no insulation on the outside, little to no insulation on the slab. Those are things that can't be replaced.

I know it's not a popular opinion, but it just depends on the standard that you're trying to get to. If you're trying to get to this net zero standard, no, we can't get there by renovating those places. If you're just trying to reduce the standard, then, yes, there are things that can be done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Mr. Fournier.

[Alain Fournier]

That's right: you improve. You can't achieve net zero: it is prohibitive. The reality is that you can't tear them all down, but there's a lot that can be done to improve. Roof retrofits, for instance—simply increasing the quantity of insulation in a roof—make a big difference in energy conservation and comfort.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you.

Mr. Cannings, you have five minutes.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'm going to turn to Mr. Fournier to talk about wood, as Mr. Sopuck started to.

I have a private member's bill coming to the natural resources committee in a short while about the use of wood in government infrastructure. The reason I brought it forward was to promote the use of wood as something that sequesters carbon and would lower the carbon footprint of buildings.

Apparently I missed a lively debate on this on Tuesday, but I only found out about it later.