Evidence of meeting #161 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was steam.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Alternate Regional Executive Vice-President, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
My colleague, Mr. Paquette, will answer this.
Paul Paquette First Vice-president, Local 20023, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
For our plant in particular, one very small issue that could save a lot of money and greenhouse gas is that we work right beside the river. Our plant doesn't have any free cooling. It's something that could be fixed so easily. Instead of running a chiller at 4160 volts during the winter months, we could be just drawing the water from the river. It's such a simple thing. It's something that has to be done.
There are other little issues like that, which could be fixed and make our plant much more efficient than it was originally designed to be. There has to be interest to do it.
Liberal
February 4th, 2019 / 4:15 p.m.
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
I would say, conduct an energy audit of the building. Get an understanding of how it is performing to begin with, and then those low-cost and higher-cost opportunities will reveal themselves there.
Conservative
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thanks, everyone, for your testimony and various views.
Mr. Wayland, I'd like to start with you, if you don't mind. Can you give us an idea of what you think would be the biggest bang for the buck? You talked about building renovation. Can you expand on that a bit? Where can we get the most bang for the buck?
Executive Assistant to the International Vice-President and Canadian Director of Government Relations, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Absolutely. I was about to get to this. Unfortunately, I was a little long in my remarks, so I'll keep this short.
As Ms. Sutton mentioned, you can look at a review of the building and where you can find efficiencies. A building automation system is like the brains; it's like a smart home. You can control and set the temperature—your HVAC. That's your heating, your cooling, your lighting and your blinds, even, allowing sunlight in and out.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
What's involved with the automation system, in terms of rewiring and so on? How much work goes into that?
Executive Assistant to the International Vice-President and Canadian Director of Government Relations, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Depending on the size of the building—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
It's not just a matter of picking up a thermostat and a piece.
Executive Assistant to the International Vice-President and Canadian Director of Government Relations, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Yes, it's changing out thermostats, making them smart so they connect back to basically the central computer, if you want to call it that. That can be done fairly easily, depending on the age of the system and the size of the building. Typically, there will be chaseways up in the attic or above the ceiling spaces.
Again, it will depend on the age of the building, the construction of the building, those types of things.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I know that IBEW in Edmonton does phenomenal work. They work on pipelines, which, of course, as Albertans we love.
I understand, though, that it is a difficult time through much of Alberta. I have visited NAIT, which used to have incredible apprenticeship programs, but they're not getting the companies on board. If we focused this program that the government has on Alberta buildings, do you think we could get a lot of the apprentices—the electricians—to work? Could you ballpark how many you think we could get going?
I looked at your website, and you're looking for only one apprentice right now, for one week. That's it.
Executive Assistant to the International Vice-President and Canadian Director of Government Relations, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
That's it.
There would be a huge impact on apprentices. You mentioned it there—hours of work. An apprentice needs to complete a certain number of hours of on-the-job training in order to advance to the next level of apprenticeship and become a licensed journeyperson. In provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, where there's a lot of unemployment in the oil and gas industries, those areas would certainly help drive the economy and keep people in the skilled trades. We're talking about a skilled trades shortage outside of this. You want to keep people who are already in their apprenticeships in them, as well as bring new apprentices on. That would create a large amount of work.
There were probably close to 300 electricians at the peak at West Block. If you picture 300 electricians there, and apprentices, you can scale that up and down, depending, again, on the size of the building.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Outside of electrical apprentices, what else is there?
Executive Assistant to the International Vice-President and Canadian Director of Government Relations, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
You need plumbers and pipefitters to make sure your water systems are functional, clean and efficient. For insulating the pipes—the insulating trade—again, there are apprentices and skilled tradespeople there. With heating and cooling systems, HVAC, again, there are journeypersons and apprentices in employment. There are also glaziers—the people who install windows and seal them properly. Those would be considered in a lot of the buildings, as well as carpenters and labourers.
There would be a lot of building trades construction, not just electrical. I put that hat on, but I was hoping to touch on different trades and occupations and apprentices later on in my remarks, which would be impacted by a project like that.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Right. It sounds very worthwhile. Thanks for the information.
The BOMA ladies, if I could just switch over to you, what is the best way to measure a return on investment, in BOMA's view?
The reason I ask is that the government has done target buildings on a plan to test out the program. We've gone back a couple of years after a building has been upgraded, and we've looked at the cost and the energy usage. There's no direct correlation between past energy use and post-upgrade energy use for any of the buildings that have been upgraded.
Before the government rolls out this plan to upgrade all the buildings, what is the best way to measure the return?
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
There's an energy audit before and after. We have a best practice that requires that an energy audit be performed every five years to assess this kind of difference that might occur over time. Typically, during those five years, improvements are made to a building. Renovations are made to the building that should lead to an improvement in energy consumption, which would then lead to a reduction in costs.
I could see a few reasons why that wouldn't be so obvious. One is that maybe money was reinvested in some other initiatives. For example, we often see—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Sorry, I'll interrupt you quickly. There were five buildings that were upgraded, and there's no correlation at all between one year and the next. I even went back to check temperatures. There's no correlation between the actual usage before and after. Is that common, or is that perhaps because we did upgrades on five very old buildings?
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
Did you say there were retrofits made on these five buildings?
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
Typically, what happens with buildings is that you actually see.... The older the building, the more significant the improvement is going to be, because it's easier to improve a really poorly performing building.
That is a bit surprising. I'm wondering if maybe.... We have heard of situations where, in performing the energy audit, the building manager realized that they were actually paying for another.... They have a different feed that's been confused with them, but I'm wonder why that—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Before we do any more, should we do a complete energy audit before and then after? I'm not sure we did that.
Manager, Environmental Standards, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
The first step would be to benchmark it before doing the renovations to understand how it is performing and then be able to compare it with the follow-up energy audit once the renovations have been done, to see what the difference is. Typically, there should definitely be some improvements.
We would like to talk more about this, to explore that with you, because that is out of the ordinary.
