Great. Thank you for having me here and for kicking off this process.
My name is Tim Weis. I'm the director of renewable energy and energy efficiency policy at the Pembina Institute. We're a national sustainable energy think tank. We work on issues from conventional energy to the development of sustainable energy all across the country.
I'm a professional engineer. I've been working in renewable energy for the past 10 years. I've really seen, in those 10 years, renewable energy go from a marginal technology, sort of on the fringes, to really a mainstream technology, not only around the world but in Canada. In fact, right now Canada already generates close to 1% of its electricity from wind power.
As I outlined in my submission, 2008, last year, was the first year that more money was invested in renewable power than coal or natural gas globally. Renewable power actually is the largest-growing sector of electricity on the planet. When I started getting involved in renewable power about 10 years ago, about a hundred people were at the Canadian Wind Energy Association conference. This year, in Toronto, they are expecting somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000 people. The American Wind Energy Association had about 20,000 to 25,000 people attend their last conference. So this is an enormous industry. It's growing very rapidly and has a huge number of people involved in it.
It's not surprising that there are so many people involved in the United States. The United States has become the largest developer of wind power on the planet. Just last year it overtook Germany. This is important for Canada. This is a huge market that's happening right south of the border. They're our largest trading partner. Watching the investment that's going on in the United States, the way that Canada positions itself to take part in that growth will be very important.
To date, the federal government has been instrumental in growing the renewable energy industry in Canada through a production incentive called ecoENERGY for Renewable Power. This program was first implemented in 2002, and 90% of the wind power in Canada has been installed receiving this support.
In spite of its success, ecoENERGY for Renewable Power is expected to run out of money this year, within a few months, over a year from when it was originally expected to. This jeopardizes a huge amount of investment in Canada and many projects that are already on the books. Not only does it jeopardize projects that are already being developed; it also slows down future projects. It takes two, three, sometimes five years to plan one of these projects. If you don't have market stability or know whether the market is going to be available in the future, it really slows down future development and future decisions.
The list that I circulated this morning is a list of all the projects that are currently subscribed to or registered for ecoENERGY for Renewable Power. All the projects in yellow are the projects that are unlikely to be funded by this program. There are about 7,000 or 8,000 megawatts of projects already on the books right now that are in jeopardy of not being funded. It's important to take advantage of this opportunity.
I have a couple of other points that I want to quickly make.
It's going to be important to unlock the geothermal potential in Canada. Environment Canada mapped the wind resources across the country. That was really instrumental in helping to develop the wind energy resource. Geothermal is one of those technologies that are on the cusp of being developed. We don't really understand what the resource is in Canada. It would only be a few million dollars to get a detailed map of the geothermal potential for the country.
Those are the three things that we've put in our submission this year, but I'd like to stress that there are many things that can be done to support renewable power across the country. Particularly if you look at the amount of investments and the diversity of investments that are going on in the United States, it really is an important time and a strategic time for the government to act on renewable power.
Thank you.