Evidence of meeting #80 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was building.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you, Mr. Staszenski.
Mr. Cane, can you comment on that? Is that your experience or are those your observations with respect to energy performance contracts?
12:30 p.m.
Principal, Caneta Research Inc.
The only experience we've had is on 3P projects. There, it's an owner system. There's a 30-year lease. The energy is guaranteed over 30 years. At the end of that time, the building is turned back over to probably a public sector entity. I haven't had the same lease experience that these gentlemen have had and are talking about.
But that's one thing: if you're going to own the building, that's certainly one approach you could take, a 3P approach, to achieving this objective. On the lease side, it's certainly going to be more complex.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
The vast majority of the federal government's stock is leased buildings. The challenge is that if it's a 30-year lease you don't just wait until the end of the 30-year lease to maybe shop around for a new building that has a more favourable energy performance. How can you take on that challenge when you're right in the middle of a lease?
Mr. Karakasis.
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Building Owners and Managers Association of Ottawa
No one would ever turn down an opportunity to work with them, at least if there's at least one major tenant. It becomes complex when you have 10 or 15 tenants in a building, but if you have a building.... There are many like this that have one major federal government tenant, have approached the landlord, have said that they'd like to find a way to collectively reduce energy, and have asked if the landlord is open to these kinds of investments.
The first thing is to do an energy audit and figure out where the opportunities are in any building, in any major building. There are 1,500 buildings in the BOMA BESt program. They all must have an energy audit; that's a requirement. That will always identify opportunities. Then it becomes a cost-benefit analysis. That's where the opportunity comes in: when you have a major tenant that's willing to be a participant in making those changes. Like I say, no major landlord would ever turn it down.
On the suggestion of getting tenants into some sort of competitive situation, I think profit sharing was more or less the recommendation made. I've also seen a lot of buildings that will do it on a contest basis and say “if we do this we will make a contribution to...”. That works too. That goes back to my original suggestion of tenant engagement, of having your tenants incented and motivated to want to be a part of the savings, as opposed to, “This is my workspace, and I don't pay for it, so I don't care.”
12:30 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
Thank you, Bernard. You're out of time.
We now go to Mr. Blanchette, who has five minutes.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC
My question is simple, and each of you will have one minute to answer it.
Let's pretend that you are writing our report. When federal buildings are being renovated and their performance is being enhanced, what should be the primary focus and what should be set aside for later, regardless of the reason?
We will begin with Mr. Karakasis.
12:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Building Owners and Managers Association of Ottawa
Measure every one of your buildings in your portfolio and understand how they're performing and what they're doing, because you can't take steps to reduce if you don't know what you're using.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Staszenski, what do you have to say about that?
12:35 p.m.
General Manager, North American Office, Global Resource Efficiency Services
For the buildings you own, of course you need to take a strategic approach, but you start with an assessment: what is the building energy intensity of each of the facilities you own? You start with the worst. Say you have 100 buildings. The worst are the ones you attack first, but you have to create the support to make those changes, such as a building revolving fund and shared savings programs.
The key is that throughout the government buildings you own, you have very understandable standards of performance that you want to see happen. That's your power as parliamentarians. You can set those standards and then let the bureaucracy implement them. That's what I would say.
12:35 p.m.
Principal, Caneta Research Inc.
I would add that I know that Public Works used to have an energy use database for their buildings; they had all the records for their buildings. I'm not sure about the lease versus owned category, but that certainly is, as he said, a place to start. You could even create your own benchmarking using the buildings against each other, the same vintage, the same size, and by location. It would identify the outliers and you'd be able to improve those to meet the more efficient buildings in that same grouping.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Mr. Staszenski, you raised an interesting idea about revolving fund. I know that you've been involved in the energy area for a long time and also in the generation side. One of the aspects that nobody has talked about yet in our review is the indirect benefit to ratepayers if the federal government reduces, majorly, its energy use because it's a big user of energy. That means less need for new generation which means lower rates for consumers.
I wonder if you could speak to those kinds of innovative ideas like PG&E in California, and whether or not you've had experience with other jurisdictions that use revolving funds or ideas like that.
12:35 p.m.
General Manager, North American Office, Global Resource Efficiency Services
The city of Edmonton has one; the city of Toronto has one. I think the city of Toronto has $22 million; Edmonton's is small, $5 million. These kinds of revolving funds exist in New York. There are lots of examples of where they exist.
The beauty of it is that you create, say, half a billion dollar fund for federal buildings. It sits there and it's always regenerated and repaid from the departments doing the upgrades, so that fund will always sit there. That's a nice way to make things happen. The savings that are created from the upgrades are used to pay back that loan.
The cities of Edmonton and Toronto, and so forth.... It's interest free so those entities can go and get that money, and make the changes, pay it back, and then the next building owner comes along and accesses it as well. You've got to create some money to make those changes. We have a 4% fund that we use out here and you wouldn't believe the lineup from private sector that's coming forward to use that because we have the highest electricity rates in Canada.
So, yes, create a fund; make it happen. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has half a billion dollars and it's sitting there to help municipalities do upgrades. The problem is that they created so much bureaucracy to get at that money, it sits there dormant, so get that money back from them and use that half a billion dollars.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
April 16th, 2013 / 12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our witnesses.
To our friends from Edmonton, I was born and raised there. I was actually there a couple of weeks ago and my in-laws are still there. My father-in-law just turned 79 and his concern was that his roof was going to cave in because there's still too much snow. I said, “Well, I'm from Kelowna and I just cut my grass”. We have a choice of where we live and just in two provinces there's a difference in the climatic conditions we face in the second largest country in the world. It's one of the issues we deal with regarding energy efficiency as some of my colleagues had commented earlier.
Considering the diversity of our country, there was a concern about changing the building codes, which are generally provincial. Were there some comments about changing the building codes from your perspective, from Alberta, or a national building code change?
12:40 p.m.
General Manager, North American Office, Global Resource Efficiency Services
Let's start with the national effort first and that's where you create the leadership. Provinces have a lot of say in building codes, for sure, but I think the national standard should be there and the provinces should coordinate it, so you create some synergy across the country.
Right now, for example, in Alberta, geothermal for homes doesn't make sense because our electricity rates are so high and geothermal needs electricity. How do you deal with those kinds of issues as well?
The national government should create the leadership and say to the provinces, “We're coming into a new era here; let's get coordinated”.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Geothermal in my community has been very popular. In one subdivision it's been a great success and one of the assets for residents in the area. Do you have any specific examples of where building codes could be changed from a national perspective without impeding provincial jurisdiction?
12:40 p.m.
General Manager, North American Office, Global Resource Efficiency Services
Well, just use fluorescent lighting. The federal government passed legislation to say no more T12s. You can't import. You can't manufacture. You have to move to T8s. That permeated across the country, and all kinds of lighting retrofits occurred because of it. There's one example right there. When you change out T12s to T8s or T5s, you're getting an incredible 40% or 50% reduction in consumption. That's federal leadership.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Why have the provinces been reluctant to move in that direction?
12:40 p.m.
General Manager, North American Office, Global Resource Efficiency Services
On that topic, they have. That's part of our business. I'm still changing out T12s. I can't believe I still find them in the system. We're doing two towers in Calgary right now. They're all T12s. They're not going to live with them, because they have to move to the new technology that was legislated by the federal government. There's a good example.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
That is an example that's in place. I'm just wondering if you have any other ones that are not. What would you recommend this committee include in our report that might help provide some national energy efficiency models without conflict between provinces and territories?
12:40 p.m.
General Manager, North American Office, Global Resource Efficiency Services
Staying on lighting, there has been this whole debate about getting rid of incandescent lights and going to CFLs or LEDs. There could be leadership in those areas. In our business, for instance, with homes, we don't talk about furnaces any more. Forget furnaces; their life is long gone. Boilers that create not just your heat but your domestic hot water and that heat hot tubs—those kinds of technologies are out there. The federal government knows about them. Start picking them and creating some legislation to say, “This is the minimum standard for Canada. Let's go”. There are tons of opportunity there.
12:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Building Owners and Managers Association of Ottawa
Just for the committee, when you lease a space from the private sector, it's the national code that will apply in your lease, not the provincial code, or the provincial code if it's higher in terms of standards. For the scope of the discussion here, it is the national code essentially that applies unless the provincial code happens to be higher.
