Thanks, Mr. Chair.
We often talk about natural resources being the backbone of Canada's economy, but rarely discussed is the central role that electricity plays in our daily lives. Every day CEA members generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to industrial, commercial, residential, and institutional customers across Canada. The energy we make, move, and sell is essential to our homes, hospitals, airports, and businesses, including needed power for resource development.
Founded in 1891, CEA's membership includes publicly- and investor-owned major electric utilities across the country, provincial system operators, power marketers who trade and sell electricity, and more than 40 companies representing various aspects of the electricity value chain. This includes technology providers; manufacturers of electricity meters, cables, and transformers; and representatives from the legal, financial, construction, and consulting fields.
While the integral role of electricity in our society seems fairly obvious, most Canadians take the convenience and reliability of our product for granted. That is likely a result of our industry's excellent record on reliability, of which we are very proud. You flip the switch and there it is.
Even lesser known are the attributes of our actual electricity grid in Canada. If you can just pretend for a moment that I'm Alex Trebek and it's time for final Jeopardy!, today's topic is electricity. Your clue: this percentage of Canada's electricity is generated from non-emitting sources. The answer is that over 80% of Canada's electricity today is generated from non-emitting sources such as hydro, nuclear, and increasingly from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and tidal.
As we move toward the future the demands placed upon our sector will result in innovation and cleaner use of fossil fuels, and extensive construction of other generation including natural gas, wind, solar, tidal, and other distributed generation—of course, all matched with enabling transmission and distribution infrastructure. Additionally, electricity will play an assisting role for other sectors that are also reducing emissions. I'm talking, of course, of electric vehicles and the transportation sector being a great example.
In addition to all of that, our reliable but aging electricity system, the grid itself, requires replacement and renewal. The Conference Board recently released a report projecting that $347 billion in investment will be necessary between 2011 and 2030. It's somewhat fitting that the significant investment in and transformation of our electricity system and its infrastructure is paralleled by the modernization of federal environmental legislation taking place today and through Bill C-38.
Individual CEA members are focused and committed to a vision of sustainability that includes environmental, societal, and economic considerations as part of a holistic approach to managing impacts. CEA's sustainable electricity program is the embodiment of this approach. It's a mandatory sector-wide sustainability initiative that measures performance in all three areas of sustainability. It is externally verified and guided by a public advisory panel comprised of several distinguished Canadians and chaired by the Honourable Mike Harcourt. The program is just one reflection of the commitment by CEA members to provide electricity to Canadians in a sustainable manner.
Our appearance today at the subcommittee is a suitable bookend to our presentation to the finance committee back in September. As part of pre-budget consultations we outlined some recommendations to the Environmental Assessment Act, the Species at Risk Act, and the Fisheries Act to help enable investment in the renewal of our system. That brings us to the changes we're discussing today in part 3 of Bill C-38.
I'm joined by Terry Toner. Terry is the director of environmental services for Nova Scotia Power, which is an Emera company. He chairs our CEA stewardship task group and is the vice-chair of several working groups we have with our friends at the Canadian Hydropower Association that focus on the Environmental Assessment Act and the Species at Risk Act.
I will call on Terry to join me to go into a little more detail.