Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to provide some information on the efforts Natural Resources Canada, or NRCan, is making to advance clean energies.
Given that I'm coming to you from NRCan, you won't be surprised to hear that my remarks centre on the role of clean tech as it relates to energy and natural resources.
As you have heard from the examples my colleagues just gave, energy supply and use make up the single largest component of the clean-tech sector. For this reason, NRCan is the co-lead of the Clean Growth Hub that was just described.
Similarly, we work closely with the net-zero accelerator, with SDTC and with other agencies, such as BDC and EDC, on getting clean energy technologies into the world.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about how NRCan supports other parts of the clean tech value chain.
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are now the cheapest and fastest-growing sources of new electricity in Canada. Batteries are getting cheaper too. To take advantage of this, the government is investing $964 million in the smart renewables and electrification pathways program to support projects that provide essential grid services. Budget 2022 announced another $600 million to further accelerate action on these projects.
Canada has a massive clean-power advantage, making it easier for Canadians to electrify their homes, their businesses and their vehicles. In fact, since 2015, the federal government has invested more than $1 billion to make EVs more affordable and chargers more accessible.
We're also making major strides in cleaner fuels, such as hydrogen. The hydrogen strategy for Canada was launched in 2020 as a call to action, and now we're focused on delivery, including through the $1.5-billion clean fuels fund. This fund will support at least 10 new hydrogen production facilities, along with facilities for other clean fuels, like renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel and renewable natural gas.
If we're going to be successful, this needs to be the most important decade ever, not just for the mass deployment of existing clean energy technologies but also for clean energy research, development and demonstration.
As my colleague noted, the IEA thinks that about half of the emissions reductions needed to hit net zero by 2050 come from emerging technologies. In Canada this figure could be even higher. That's why we're managing a portfolio of energy RD and D, like NRCan's energy innovation program. It supports federal research as well as first-of-a-kind projects like the Borden mine, which is Canada's first all-electric mine.
Most recently, budget 2021 provided $390 million to advance carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies.
We're also investing billions of dollars in areas like critical minerals and bioenergy, which will provide many of the building blocks for the energy economy of the future.
Finally, I'll just mention that to better understand the scale of these opportunities, the clean-tech data strategy was launched in 2016. Led by NRCan, ISED and Statistics Canada, it measures the contribution of the clean-tech sector to Canada's economy in order to provide evidence-based policy advice.
NRCan believes these measures, in conjunction with the others you'll hear about today, provide an important platform to ensure that Canada continues to punch above its weight in the clean-tech space.
Thanks very much for your time.