Finance Committee on Oct. 12th, 2023

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The legislation in Bill C-49, which is before the House, is important. Is this something you were involved in the consultation on? I presume that, as energy stakeholders, you at least had some feedback mechanism into the work that was happening there.

[Paul MacLean]

You're absolutely correct. We, as a company, participated directly in the consultation process, but we're also active in the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association and in the Marine Renewables Canada organization. We also provided feedback in that regard.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Trent, I'm going to go to you. You mentioned that we're in a global race; every day matters. I take notice that, of course, your first plan is similar to Paul's: It is on land with wind shore development. Then I think it is potentially phase three of your project that is offshore.

[Trent Vichie]

Absolutely.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

How important is it to get that regulatory certainty in place so that you can actually start scoping the ocean plots or even looking at areas in which you can build out there?

[Trent Vichie]

It's incredibly important. One of the things we made a statement about in June—that we made a real point about—was having three first nations who actually own clear water be actively in support. That was important.

I just want to send a message around. Sitting here today, I will say that that's absolutely important for the long term. There are only so many hours in a day, and we are absolutely, psychotically focused on delivering the first phase. A lot of this talk around hydrogen and all of the rest of this could be theoretical very quickly if we don't act now. The world is looking at the U.S. and Canada. I can't stress enough how important it is to execute now.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I have a quick question for both of you. Please answer as quickly as you can, because I don't have much time.

Yesterday, the province talked about increasing wind capacity by 30% to help decarbonize, to help get off coal. Do you have any concerns about where you're going to find the space in the province in terms of the land?

I see a no from you, Trent.

Is there anything from you, Paul?

You guys are good.

Trent, I want to get to the point that you're making about acting quickly. I think it's very clear that the ITCs will be something that this committee takes back in order to push the government to clarify exactly what those look like. How is it working with BDC or EDC in terms of...? You mentioned that you have $180 million of private capital. There are supports out there that are coming, but what about other agencies to help support your future development?

[Trent Vichie]

At the end of the day, I just want to see some skin in the game from Canada. We put our skin in the game, so over time we'll bring in private capital to support what we're doing...and my own money. I've been doing private equity investing for 20-odd years. I know how to raise capital and all of the rest of it, but getting to the conditions where you have an FID—that is, the ITC is defined—is important. Getting to the conditions where you have customers, where they have the rules in place, is important. We want to ask only for the help that we need, so support for pre-FID capital is critically important.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

That's perfect.

I want to go to Rose very quickly because, unbeknownst to me.... You mentioned the 30% ITC for Canadian incorporated companies. However, as I understand it, you were saying that it's only 15% for indigenous-owned businesses that may not be falling under Canadian registered businesses. Is that correct?

[Rose Paul]

That's correct.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Hopefully that's something this committee can take back.

[Rose Paul]

I certainly hope so.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I would encourage all of you, as stakeholders—I'm going to go to you, Rob, and I have about 45 seconds—is to think about things that don't cost money. We're in a context now in which I think the government has to be very judicious about how it spends money moving forward. There's a lot on regulatory reform and non-cost measures.

Rob, just so I can understand it—and you can clarify at the end—what you were saying, from a university perspective, was around this: “Let us be eligible under the new framework of what infrastructure.... If the provinces want to access and pull down, we just want to be an eligible participant. Let us be eligible under the Canadian housing strategy. Let us be eligible under the CMHC, such that we are important stakeholders in the community. It's not as though we want to have preference over municipalities, but we want to be an eligible partner where, right now, we're not.”

Is that what you were saying, Dr. Summerby-Murray?

[Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray]

I could not have said that better. Thank you.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Okay. I think I'm out of time, Mr. Chair, so I'll leave it at that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You are at time, MP Blois. Thank you very much. There will be more opportunities in subsequent rounds.

Before we move to the Bloc, members and witnesses, you'll see that we have interpretation devices. Channel one is for English and channel two is for French.

Go ahead, please, MP Ste-Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Paul, gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for your presence.

Once again, we have some very interesting witnesses, presenting a variety of elements. As we often say, not every MP will be able to ask every witness all the questions they want to ask. That said, we are taking notes and will take the witnesses' demands to the minister.

My first questions are for the representatives of EverWind Fuels and Bear Head Energy. I'm trying to get a clear understanding of their project. If I've understood correctly, these are wind farms used to produce green hydrogen. Is this the case for both companies? If so, are these wind farms used to supply the power grid? When wind farm production exceeds demand, is the surplus energy converted into green hydrogen? I can see Mr. Vichie nodding his head.

Is that the case, Mr. MacLean?

[Paul MacLean]

That's certainly our goal. I think your question raises a great point. We are a completely green hydrogen project, so we'll be relying on 100% renewable sources of electricity for the hydrogen production. It is our goal, yes, to reach a point where in periods in which we have access to a supply of wind energy, we could spill that back into the grid and help Nova Scotia further decarbonize their system.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Vichie, we're listening to you.

[Trent Vichie]

There's one point I want to make that I don't think is well understood. When you put wind onto our system initially, it's very easy for that to be fully utilized. As you go deeper into the decarbonization and wind becomes 50%, because it's intermittent you end up in a situation in which wind energy is curtailed or not used. What you actually need is a flexible power user, such as hydrogen, that can match. You add wind so that it's new and green, and it's flexible. It actually has massive grid benefits for both the stability of rates and decarbonizing the grid. Without those flexible users, you'll hit a limit. If you have 30% of your wind being curtailed, a $50 per megawatt hour wind becomes $70. That makes everyone's job harder.

This is a perfect complement. Whether there's a loop or no loop, for example, it's really, really important. It then allows for domestic supply. Everyone is talking about our project being.... I don't care where it goes, but we will be supplying into the domestic market. Without domestic supply, you don't have domestic users. It's absolutely critical, what we're doing.

The learnings on the technical side have been astronomical as well. We've found ourselves getting a lot of inbound interest from the largest oil majors in the world, saying, “Hey,” and trying to figure out what we've learned through optimization and all these other processes.

There are massive advantages to being first and early, no question.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you. That's very interesting.

I think you've answered another question I wanted to ask you. The green hydrogen generated by wind turbines is used to produce electricity when there is no wind. Basically, green hydrogen is not used to power other industries, such as transport. It's a complement in order to have clean electricity at all times.

Is that right?

[Trent Vichie]

It's going to be used for a variety. It will be used for that. It will be used for transport. You really want it to be used for everything.

The other thing I would say is that by having the investment, we're seeing new longer-duration batteries. All of a sudden, there's an economic use for them. They're dragging in investment.

One of the things we've been working on is getting production early and offering it up as a working laboratory. We can have 50 or 100 times the impact. Forget about the region here. If you learn it and you're smarter, you can spread those learnings across the world. CO2 doesn't have borders. It just doesn't. One of the things we are working on is a working laboratory.

The hardest thing in clean tech is proving commercialization. I'd say it's across the board, and that includes green steel. Canada is blessed with some of the highest-grade iron and ore on the planet, and I can tell you now that people are figuring that out and saying, “Gee, we'd like to bring that industry here.”

Anything we can do to show that Canada is supportive, moving quickly and making things happen will bring money that will help universities, health care and the whole economy, as well as helping decarbonize. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity here. We should grab it.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Would you like to add anything to that, Mr. MacLean?

[Paul MacLean]

Trent covered the question well. While, initially, we were very much export-focused for our project, we're also working with companies in Nova Scotia to help develop a hydrogen economy here at home. It's not only an environmental benefit for us as a company; there's also an economic benefit.

The more hydrogen we don't have to convert to ammonia and ship abroad, the greater the economics for us.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

You said so in your presentation, but I thank you very much.