Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I represent the Canadian Gas Association, which is the downstream end of the natural gas industry in Canada--in other words, the part of it that deals directly with customers. However, we also work very closely with our upstream partners along the natural gas value chain, the pipelines and the producers.
There are a couple of things I want to start with, just to underpin the discussion. Canada has an abundant supply of natural gas; North America has an abundant supply of natural gas, looking out many years into the future. And we have a delivery and distribution system that combined with that supply has the potential to underpin an increasingly efficient, environmentally responsible, and reliable energy system if we put the right sorts of investments in place.
Our proposal before you is for three specific ideas, and I'll come back to them in a minute. The way we've framed them is to inform, enable, and integrate, and all of that in aid of creating a stronger, more sustainable energy system in Canada.
Our focus as the downstream end of the system is in what we call the other 50%. About half of the energy we use in the economy...about half of our greenhouse gas emissions come from large industrial sources, oil and gas production and upstream power generation. We're looking at the other side of it, the place where 80% of Canadians live in our communities and where about half of the energy is used and about half of the greenhouse gas emissions are emitted. The trick here is how do we improve the environmental performance of that other 50% while sustaining the quality of the communities that we value as highly as we do. Our emphasis--and I will underscore this several times--is efficiency. Through a direct focus on efficiency of the whole energy system, we can make gains that will be beneficial economically and environmentally that outstrip anything from any other strategy.
How does natural gas fit into this? There are several aspects that I would underscore. One I mentioned earlier: natural gas is in abundant supply looking out many, many years into the future, from a number of domestic as well as other sources, including, potentially, sources offshore and including some renewable sources as we start to tap those in perhaps a somewhat different price environment in the future.
Natural gas is part of the pathway for adopting low carbon alternative energies because it is an ideal partner to make those work.
Natural gas is the most efficient energy choice in a large number of applications. About 40% of the energy we use in the economy is heat--space heat, process heat, domestic heat for hot water. The most efficient way to get heat is through the direct combustion of gaseous fuels, and right now natural gas is the one we have available.
Gas has an important role in the power generation system, complementary to the sorts of things that one of your previous witnesses was talking about; there are a number of roles there.
Finally, natural gas has important roles in the transportation system, particularly in the heavy duty part of the transportation fleet, where there are economically available Canadian-based technologies that can improve air quality and improve greenhouse gas performance, again based on natural gas technology.
We were one of the founding partners in a group called QUEST, which is Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow. You'll be hearing from them later on, I believe. One of the things that QUEST has done is develop a set of six principles that are the foundation of the program. It starts with efficiency, and again I'll underscore that. It then talks about using energy where it should be used--in other words, high-quality energy like electricity being used in high-quality applications, not being wasted in low-quality applications like space heat. Speaking of heat, about half of the energy that comes into the economy is actually lost as waste. If we can manage more of that heat, we can keep it as a resource. Reducing waste extends then to using local renewable resources. Finally, it is using the grids strategically as a resource to optimize the energy system.
With that in mind, I will quickly go over the three proposals.
One, better inform Canadians about energy efficiency on a full-cycle basis. By that I mean looking at what it means to make an energy choice right up the system, all the way through transportation, transmission, and production, which is something the U.K. and the U.S. are moving towards and it is something that Canada needs to move towards, and we have several specific proposals.
Secondly, better enable alternative energy solutions. We're proposing the use of an investment tax credit in support of that, something that will move quickly and something that will create the kind of incentive that will allow us to bring in a variety of technologies quickly and efficiently.
Finally, promote an integrated energy systems approach, and again, my colleagues from QUEST will talk to you about that in a couple of days. Building on the Clean Energy Fund to promote those sorts of approaches is the big prize in terms of the kinds of changes to our communities that we're looking for in the future.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll wrap it up and turn it back to you. Thank you.