Evidence of meeting #26 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was electricity.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Board Member and Past President, Renewable Industries Canada
I have done that. I'm very unclear as to why it is not working.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Unfortunately, because it's required for the interpreters in order not to harm their hearing, we may have to invite you back on another occasion. Please stay on the line. If you have any comments to make, you can send them in writing to the clerk. They will be useful for our report.
Ms. Vignola, you have the floor for six minutes.
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My first questions are for you, Mr. Bradley.
I doubt that you, as CEO of Electricity Canada, and your members focus on green electricity production, that is, renewable energy that is as carbon-neutral as possible. On a Bloc Québécois initiative, this committee conducted a study and drafted a report about potential federal legislation on carbon neutrality that would require car manufacturers to offer a minimum number of electric vehicles. If we want people to buy them, there has to be some availability, but that is often not the case.
In the last budget, the government undertook to set up charging stations for electric vehicles along major highways, and in short order. One of the deterrents for people interested in buying an electric vehicle is precisely access to charging stations, which can still be problematic.
Firstly, are your organization and partners familiar with the federal government's plan to set up charging stations?
Secondly, were you consulted on the implementation of this plan?
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electricity Canada
Thank you for your questions.
The membership of the association has been engaged in those conversations about the mandates since the very beginning. We continue to engage. The process has certainly not come to a landing. There are a great many challenges as we move forward to the future.
Many of our members are now getting involved, as well, in electric vehicle charging infrastructure because of that lack of infrastructure. We are seeing that across the country, from coast to coast. We have been in conversation, as the EV mandate and EV discussions have been moving forward, with the Government of Canada on its strategy.
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
You say you are engaged. Can you tell what that involvement entails, not only in discussions, as you said, but concretely, in setting up stations?
I would also like to hear more about the challenges you mentioned and how they can be addressed, if you have any solutions.
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electricity Canada
Most of the challenges I'm talking about are not specific to the mandates themselves. The challenges we're attempting to address are more technical challenges that we have with the timing of upgrades to the distribution system, so from a system's standpoint, and increasingly working with customers to ensure that the kind of service the individual customers have is appropriate for what they will require.
For many customers, the current electricity service they receive at their home is insufficient for the kind of charge that will be required if they're going to have home charging. A number of approaches are being looked at. Up until now, most of this has been done by the individual customers themselves, but increasingly the industry is getting involved in these discussions. The timing of the deployment of charging infrastructure has an impact on distribution systems. We want to make sure we have greater visibility in this space.
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Given our climate in Canada, would it be possible to have charging stations along our highways, or perhaps even electric highways?
How can your expertise be utilized so customers can have quick and easy access to charging stations on major highways, without having to go completely out of their way?
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electricity Canada
That is the challenge of everybody in the electric vehicle space right now: ensuring that we have that infrastructure. So far it's been a combination of private players, commercial operators, the utilities themselves, and governments and municipalities that are building out infrastructure.
That's so far, but this is an infrastructure that's being built out for a relatively low level of penetration. At the same time, we're trying to understand what's happening in other jurisdictions where we're seeing significantly higher penetration. We're trying to see what lessons we can learn from their rollouts, but most of those countries do not have the same geographic challenges we have in terms of the long distances that are driven.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Hoicka, I understand that according to the OECD, around 38 clean energy technologies are considered market-ready and could be scaled immediately. You gave some examples of those technologies that the government could be better supporting and that would make a real difference. Can you expand on why it's so important to focus on rapidly scaling up these technologies that are currently available in the near term, before 2030?
5:10 p.m.
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Absolutely. Basically, these are technologies that are ready to go and are implementable on fairly short time scales, as long as we have really good policy and program design, which means administrative, regulatory and economic instruments and that type of thing. These are technologies that are proven, so they can be implemented on a short time scale.
Some other technologies that are not proven on a short time scale—for example, nuclear small modular reactors—might be able to get to market after the 2030 time frame, but from all the evidence I've seen, including from the nuclear sector itself, they are not likely to be ready immediately.
The time frames are really important. If we don't meet the 2030 and then the 2050 time frame, the impacts of climate change become far more disastrous to current and future generations. We're already feeling that presently.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
You mentioned nuclear, but what about carbon capture, utilization and storage? Does it fall into one of these 38 categories? Does it currently show the ability to bring down emissions that we would need by 2030 to keep warming below 1.5°C?
5:10 p.m.
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Not currently, no.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
Thank you.
Based on your research and experience, what is the biggest barrier facing renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies in Canada?
5:10 p.m.
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
In terms of their utilization, one of the biggest barriers is lack of policy for their uptake. We've had really successful policies in Canada, such as feed-in tariff laws that allowed for a lot of different types of communities and organizations to develop these. Europe is continuing this with the new energy communities and renewable energy communities laws.
That's one piece. A future issue will be around materials, because the materials that go into them are finite. Again, we can adjust that by putting resources, through Canada's tri-council, into research and development of materials for these types of technologies.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
[Technical difficulty—Editor] Would you say the federal government has given clear, consistent policy direction that would enable investment in new infrastructure to meet the electricity needs?
5:10 p.m.
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
I've looked at—
5:10 p.m.
NDP
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electricity Canada
We have clarity in some areas. We have clarity, for example, with respect to the price of carbon. That's one piece of the plank.
What we are lacking, really, is clarity in some other specific areas. One area where we would like to see some clarity is.... We would very much like to see an articulated national strategy for electrification.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
I'm thinking about the Atlantic loop and the needed transmission lines between B.C. and Alberta. You wrote in an article this year:
Unfortunately, though the federal government has been good at crafting and announcing aspirational targets and commitments, the electricity industry has been left wanting for details. In fact, during one week last spring, Canada had three different emission targets for 2030.
Can you describe the impact that this kind of policy incoherence has when we need to start building and we're running out of time?
5:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electricity Canada
The requirement to make investments in the order of—as was said earlier—somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion requires a level of certainty that we don't have at this stage. That is what we're looking for. We need certainty in the ability to move projects through to completion. It simply takes too long to bring projects forward and get them adopted.
In that vein, if there are specific projects, one of the things we should be thinking about is some way to fast-track the best projects, as opposed to having them all in the same queue.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
Thank you so much.
Ms. Hoicka, can you speak a bit about the challenges facing our electricity grids, in terms of both increasing electricity demand and the threats posed by increasing extreme weather events due to the climate crisis? Are there any solutions that you see to those challenges?
5:15 p.m.
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Yes, absolutely.
I'll start with the climate crisis. What we're seeing around the globe and here in Canada—I've experienced it both in Toronto and in British Columbia—is around extreme events and weather hazards due to climate change. This could be extreme heat events requiring a lot of air conditioning. This could be events in which the grid infrastructure is overheated, which means, basically, that people are not getting the electricity they need when they need it.
In order to address this, what we really need to be thinking about is having more resilient grids, allowing and encouraging people to be prosumers and having behind the meter every type of resilient option possible with microgrids.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Perfect. Thanks very much.
We'll now go to the second round with Mr. Mazier, for five minutes.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Bradley, the energy needs of rural and northern Canada are very different from those of urban Canada. Canadians who live in rural and northern regions use and pay for more energy. As someone who represents rural Canadians, I know that they are being unfairly burdened because of the government's energy and environment policies.
In the 2022 net-zero report that was prepared for your association, section 5.2 focused solely on the importance of not having a one-size-fits-all approach to energy policy in Canada. It says, “Approaches to energy system policy, planning and regulatory reform need to be anchored in the principle of respecting difference.”
Can you expand on this and provide recommendations on how we can better address the unique needs of rural and remote regions when it comes to energy?