Government Operations Committee on March 19th, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Last question.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

—when you lease a building would that be done by the company that leases or by the government?

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Please be brief in your answer.

[Stephen Carpenter]

As David said earlier, I think the best thing you can do is go right across your portfolio of buildings, get the energy numbers for all of them, and compare them. The key person to share it with is the operator of the building. They are the ones who are directly involved, so it's very important that they have that information. In the lobby of our building, we display the ongoing energy performance of our buildings. That's one way you can engage the people there. You may want to consider one for your house as well, for your children.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I'm afraid, Dan, you're way over time. Thank you very much.

Linda Duncan.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I want to thank you again for your incredible testimony. It's been fantastic.

You gave a number of responses to a number of questions about why the federal government would get into this in a bigger way, so as to reduce the energy use in the buildings they own or lease. We talked about protection of the health of workers and simply setting a good example. I'm surprised that I haven't heard one of you say that the top reason will be saving taxpayer dollars. I looked at the examples that a number of you provided us, which are phenomenal in the short-term and the long-term.

I wonder if you could tell us, over time, whether there is or is not an advantage to the federal government in making this investment sooner rather than later to reduce costs to the taxpayer.

[Thomas Mueller]

For the three of us, it is probably obvious that we didn't really think about it. But it's a huge opportunity to save taxpayers money over time. Don't forget, it goes over the life of the building as long as they operate, but it does require some investment. But over the life cycle of the building, the paybacks are manyfold from what you originally invested.

The National Round Table did a study with STDC, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, about two or three years ago on the commercial office sector. The commercial office sector spends $17.6 billion a year on energy. If you shave 10% to 20% off that, which is relatively easy to do, that's a huge saving that could be reinvested in something else.

[Stephen Carpenter]

I guess I would just add to that. Perhaps the reason we didn't focus on that side of it is, I think we all feel the economics are there; it's a slam dunk. The problem is one of motivation. Everyone is busy and there are many things to do, but somehow we have to move this energy efficiency higher up on that motivation list.

[Dave Seymour]

I'll add to that just the agency problem. The individual or the group that saves the operating cost is not necessarily the group spending the capital or watching the capital. They don't get together, and that's a problem. Follow the money, and the savings may not get over to pay back that capital that had to be spent to make the savings happen.

[Thomas Mueller]

Do not underestimate what I call the human element, people having to change their habits. I think that is probably one of the biggest challenges as well.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much.

We have time, then, for a brief round for the Conservatives. Peter Braid and Ron Cannan are sharing their time, I believe.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our representatives for being here today.

Mr. Carpenter, thank you very much for being here from the great community of Kitchener—Waterloo. I'm pleased that you made it through the weather.

I have just a couple of questions. You mentioned in your presentation that the Energy Star benchmarking tool or system is established in the States. It's in the process of being introduced here in Canada. Could you just elaborate a little bit on that in terms of time frames, what that program will look like, and what opportunities it may provide us?

[Thomas Mueller]

I'm a little bit familiar with the time frames. It's the Office of Energy Efficiency and Natural Resources Canada that started working on a Canadian version of the program. The program is supposed to be officially launched this June in Canada and initially they will accept, I think, K-to-12 schools and commercial buildings. You will be able to go online, enter your data, and then achieve your Energy Star score, but there is no intention, for example, to label buildings, as Mr. Carpenter has suggested. It's a pure benchmarking tool. Then, over time, other building types will be added to the database.

We work with them directly because Energy Star is also referenced in some of our standards, our lead standards, so we need to make sure that it's consistent with what the federal government is doing, and obviously we prefer to deal with a Canadian agency than with a U.S. agency where we have less access, and we also prefer having Canadian data rather than U.S. data.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much.

Back to you, Mr. Carpenter, for this one, on a slightly different angle. I'm very familiar with your headquarters, your building in Kitchener. I haven't had the opportunity to actually visit the building, but I'm curious to know about this aspect. Could you elaborate on the impact on the working environment and on employee morale with energy-efficient, leading-edge buildings like yours?

[Stephen Carpenter]

That's a very good question. As we indicated, we were obviously trying to make a very energy-efficient building, but it was also a green building, and green incorporates many more things. Thomas alluded to those in terms of good day lighting, good indoor air quality, and so on. Obviously, we designed those into the building, but, then, of course, the question is, how successful were we?

There's a group out of the U.S. that's called the Center for the Built Environment, part of the University of California, Berkeley, and they have developed an occupant survey. It's a set of standardized questions. They have hundreds of buildings across North America that have taken that same survey. It's an online survey. The occupants of the building take the survey, and all the results go to this group at the Center for the Built Environment. Then they analyze them. It's the usual type of question such as, “How happy are you with the lighting in your building?” The answers range from very dissatisfied all the way up to very satisfied.

We did that for our building, and then they give you, on a scale of zero to 100 percentile, where you fit relative to all the other buildings. In our case, out of, I think it was, eight different categories, we were in the 95th or higher percentile for all of those categories. In fact, the only one we were low on was acoustics, and that's a separate discussion we can have, but overall, when they took our building and compared it to all of the buildings that had gone through that survey in all of North America, our building came first in North America in terms of those occupant comfort and satisfaction issues.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You're not leaving much time for your colleague there, Mr. Braid.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Cannan, if you have a question, please go ahead.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

I have several questions, but time is limited.

One has to do with the challenge as far as your return on investments goes. You have built in the past, and it's great to have the pro forma there and that you're going to have that projection in 8 or 10 years. You said every five years you'd come back and evaluate. Would you come back as a consulting firm and would there be another fee to re-evaluate? And if they're not meeting projections, would they have to invest more? In your experience, how accurate, as a percentage so far, have you been with those projections for return-on-investment timelines?

[Stephen Carpenter]

I'm not sure where you get the five years from. That may have been from the LEED EBOM program, under which you must recertify every year, because EBOM is about ongoing operations and maintenance.

I agree with Thomas' comments about the rigour of LEED. That's its hallmark. That's what it stands for. So we have to be careful that you don't get people who go and implement either energy-efficient measures or green measures, get the plaque, and then let those measures just disappear. That's why there's this recertification every five years, to make sure they're doing it. In terms of costs, the greatest cost is for doing it the first time. The recertification costs are much less, and frankly we don't have a lot of buildings yet that have hit that five-year milestone.

[Thomas Mueller]

They're coming.

[Stephen Carpenter]

They're coming, yes.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

I have a quick question for Mr. Seymour.

On your website—and I commend you for sponsoring Kids Up Front and for your corporate social responsibility in giving back through all of your companies—you mention that you have “assisted our clients in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 4.5 million tonnes—the equivalent of taking 850,000 cars off the road and planting approximately 350 million trees”.

Do you have any idea what proportion of that was from federal projects?

[Dave Seymour]

No, because one of our large sectors is social housing, and another very large sector is school boards, so I would say that those two would be very large portions of our portfolio. The federal projects would probably be in the order of magnitude of 10% of our portfolio for NRC and some of the federal buildings that I showed. So it's probably in that order of magnitude—some 5% to 10% out of that.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I'm afraid we're out of time.

Thank you, Mr. Seymour.

John, do you have a brief question you'd like to ask before...?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

No, thanks.