Canada's domestic story is one that's only improving. We produced and consumed record volumes of our product in 2022. We produced record volumes of renewable product, which is known as renewable natural gas, and hydrogen in 2022. In 2025, we'll enter the global market for natural gas with the first exports of liquefied natural gas off the coast of British Columbia.
The question is, how can Canada position itself to take advantage of this opportunity? I bring to you today two recommendations. The first is around Canada's proposed investment tax credit regime, and the second is around pending federal interest deductibility legislation.
On the first, the committee is aware that the U.S. has taken the clean-tech world by storm with the Inflation Reduction Act. Canada has in turn responded through proposed investment tax credits, which we believe are both economically feasible and a productive way of tackling the clean-tech challenge. The issue is that, for industry, traditional funding programs are lengthy. Investment tax credits, which we highly support, leave the decision to industry. They are more efficient. They take bureaucracy out of the system, and they allow business to do what business does best, which is to pick economic projects that meet the needs of their shareholders.
However, we believe the ITCs as outlined have some deficiencies. The clean hydrogen investment tax credit excludes a central technology solution called “methane pyrolysis”, which allows you to take natural gas and create hydrogen and something called “carbon black”. The benefit of pyrolysis is that it requires no underground geological storage, so in parts of the country such as where we are today, without the liberty that Alberta has to put carbon underground, you can monetize methane pyrolysis.
Second, we need a biofuels investment tax credit. Biofuels were noticeably absent from the ITC regime. We're recommending that they be brought in and that, specifically for our industry, there be a renewable natural gas investment tax credit. Renewable natural gas is being produced all across Canada from landfills and waste-water treatment plants. There's a facility here in Toronto in which they take that gas and put it into garbage trucks as a renewable fuel. The garbage trucks do their deliveries, and they go and refill again at the landfill where there's a collection site for that methane that is produced organically from the landfill.
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act has fairly rich incentives for renewal natural gas. Should we not bring in a comparable ITC in Canada, capital will continue flowing to the U.S. versus staying in Canada.
Third, we have to get them done. These have been proposed. We know that the enabling legislation and regulation is coming, but every week that we're not at the table with an investment tax credit regime that is real and signed into law is a week in which, frankly, the United States eats our lunch. We recommend that Canada introduce both the methane pyrolysis addition and a biofuel investment tax credit in or before budget 2024.
The second is about the interest deductibility legislation. I don't know how much this committee has worked with that. It's known as EIFEL. EIFEL proposes to limit the amount of interest on debt that can be deducted from a corporate tax sheet. Our issue is that, as a utility industry, we are told by our regulators how much debt we can have. We don't get to pick it. We're heavily debt structured: 50% to 75% of all the business we do is debt. By law, all of the interest on our debt is passed on directly to end-use energy consumers in Canada, not from a dividend and not from share buybacks. It's simply a pass-through cost to consumers.
We and Electricity Canada, who serve every single voter in this country with electricity and/or natural gas, are recommending an exemption from the proposed interest deductibility legislation, which we believe will be coming in its final form in near weeks or months.
Thank you.