Government Operations Committee on April 2nd, 2019

[Hannele Pokka]

If I continue from Finland's perspective, and if I consider this in terms of the “effort sharing sector,” as we say in the EU, in Finland 40% of CO2 emissions in this sector come from housing. We are a northern country and must warm our houses. That's the reason the percentage is so high. Another 40% comes from traffic. We are a very sparsely populated country, and we have long distances. Twenty percent comes from agriculture.

To your question about the impact of real estate, it's actually a very current topic in Finland because we are partly talking about how much our forests are places of cold storage, but we are also doing quite a lot of jobs in the institutes and universities and with real, ordinary farmers on how real estate that's used for agriculture can also be used for cold storage. We see enormous possibilities for reforestation in the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

This time,

I want to go back to you, please.

I understand that the U.S. has been lowering its GHG emissions over the last several years. Besides moving away from coal, what do you think has been the most effective or productive way it has gotten to these reductions?

[Nancy Sutley]

Certainly the electricity sector in the U.S. at large is getting cleaner, so we see not just the retirement of coal plants and their replacement with natural gas plants all over the U.S. and in very coal-dependent areas—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

When you're moving away from coal, is it mostly moving over to natural gas?

[Nancy Sutley]

It's both to natural gas and renewable energy projects. Solar and wind projects in the U.S. have been growing very quickly. For example, in California we get between probably 30% and 35% of our energy from renewables, such as solar, wind, geothermal and some other things like biomass and others, and, of course, in some parts of the U.S., large hydro projects are very common. We're also seeing, with regard to transportation-related emissions that cars are getting more efficient, although a lot depends on the price of gasoline. We're seeing more and more electric and diesel hybrid vehicles on the road.

I think those are the primary reasons.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. I just want to go back to something. Given your experience in California, where do you think we should be going? We're talking about greening the government—so I mean things that the government can physically control. You mentioned the military. Unfortunately, our government has decided not to study that portion of greening in government even though it's our largest emitter.

Outside, say, of the military, what are the best things you're doing in California or that you are seeing across the States to reduce greenhouse gases? Is it retrofits of buildings? Is it focusing on other things?

Could you give us your ideas, please, or your thoughts?

[Nancy Sutley]

Certainly I think there's a lot of opportunity for both retrofitting of buildings and having standards for new construction. The federal government is always building new buildings, so there's an opportunity there as well. I also think energy savings are good for the agency budgets, so it is relatively easy to convince agencies to take those on.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Have there been many changes to building codes? Again, this might be out of your area of expertise, but do you see that building codes have been changed for residential and commercial buildings as well over the last couple of years thereby producing a strong return not only on the finances but also on lower emissions?

[Nancy Sutley]

Building codes in the U.S. tend to be at the local level, although California has a statewide energy building code that's been very effective in reducing energy use in buildings in California. I think for the federal government it has really been around both standards for new construction and opportunities to use programs that save energy.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

I think I am done here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, I notice that the bells have just started ringing. It's a 30-minute bell for votes, so we'll have to terminate our conversation now.

I want to say to all of the witnesses, thank you very much for your participation. I wish we had more time, but should any of you have any additional information you think would be of benefit to our committee as we continue our study, I would encourage you to submit those comments in writing to the clerk of our committee and we can include those in our continuing study of the greening of government.

Thank you once again.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Could you ask the Paris guys to give us something about the waste-management strategy they have? She talked about biodiversity—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

One of our colleagues, Madam Ratansi, would like to ask our colleagues from France to please submit, if they can, notes on their waste-management strategy. Those would be extremely helpful to us as we continue our deliberations.

With that then, thank you all for your appearance here.

We will suspend this portion of the meeting and dismiss our witnesses. Thank you very much.