Evidence of meeting #167 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 finland.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I can start, perhaps, with my colleague from Finland.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of the Environment, Government of the Republic of Finland
I can continue that we have quite new legislation related to public procurement. In Finland, public procurement is a question about what the government and state authorities are doing, but also what local municipalities are doing. As to what my French colleagues told you about social security and health care systems, in Finland those are taken care of by local municipalities. The same legislation is for all public authorities. There are quite strict criteria on what to do. In Finland, we are not talking about creating policy with regard to public procurement. Mainly, ordinary Finnish people are talking about how sustainable the mining business is in the private sector. This is much more our topic at the moment.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thanks.
Now I'll go to my colleagues from the United States.
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
The U.S. federal government has had a number of efforts around sustainable procurement, and it's a feature of all the directives to federal agencies around sustainability. There's sort of a general code, the federal acquisition regulation out of the General Services Administration, in which things like bio-based preferential products, recycled content and a number of other things are reflected.
The second is around electronics stewardship. The federal government, as you can imagine, buys many computers and other things, so it works with the electronics suppliers to ensure that there's take-back and other things.
Finally, a more recent requirement is around disclosure in the supply chain of carbon emissions. For example, the General Services Administration requires a number of its large suppliers to report their greenhouse gas emissions through the Carbon Disclosure Project supply chain initiative, so there are some opportunities there to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the supply chain.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
In terms of that particular disclosure, are you aware of whether or not the major suppliers were in favour of this, or was there a bit of push-back? Do you know how the United States did that to work with the companies?
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
It did a lot of outreach with its large suppliers. It did a number of workshops and other things, and I think many large companies are now starting to get these requests, not just from the U.S. federal government, but from other large entities that they do business with.
The other thing I'd note is that for many companies that do business with the U.S. government, the U.S. government is their largest buyer, their largest customer, so when the U.S. government asks them to do something, they'll generally try to do it. However, it was a process to work with many of the suppliers to get them to understand what the requirements were, but also why. We went through that process of working with companies, selected companies, to try to encourage them to participate in this.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
That's great. Thank you.
I think I'm just about out of time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
You are out of time. Thank you very much for noticing.
We'll now go to a five-minute round of questions, and we'll start with our colleague, Mr. McCauley, please.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thank you, everyone, for your time.
Ms. Sutley, I just want to concentrate on you for the five minutes that I have. In your experience, what have been the most effective programs that you've seen, both in your time in the federal government and now in state government, in government practices? When we talk about our study here as greening government, we look a lot at energy efficiency and other practices. What have been pragmatically the most effective programs that you've seen?
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
I think the most effective programs have really been, as I said in my opening statement, where there is a business case to undertake them. For many agencies, energy use is a big budget component. For example, the Department of Defense spends literally billions of dollars every year on energy—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Do you mind if I interrupt for one second?
When you talk about the Department of Defense and the billions spent, are you talking about at bases or are you including fuel on board ships, etc? We have the same issue here. Our DND is the largest emitter, purely on a base and building-wise. Is it the same with you, and are you breaking it out that way?
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
Yes, it's both. The bases are like little cities, and in some cases big cities, depending on where you are. In the operations of those bases, energy use is a big cost component and potentially a vulnerability, so those bases have been very focused on energy management both for the cost savings and for protecting critical infrastructure. The same is true for operations. Certainly in overseas operations, fuel costs are extremely high, but they also are and have been a vulnerability as U.S. military forces are operating in dangerous places.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
You don't have much choice about fuel. Are they retrofitting bases? Can you give me some examples of what they're doing on their bases for improvement?
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
A number of bases have entered into third party contracts to do renewable energy projects. For example, in California, there's a large marine base called Fort Irwin that has done a number of solar projects and has worked with third party developers to do a solar project. We visited a navy facility near Seattle that was doing micro-grid on the base itself, a big energy management system and a micro-grid both for cost savings but also for resiliency and protection of critical infrastructure in the case of an interruption in the power supply.
One thing that Congress did in the early 2000s was to create, through statute at the Department of Defense level, an assistant secretary for operational energy to oversee the energy used by the Department of Defense.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thanks.
I'm going to interrupt because I just have one minute.
With regard to sustainable procurement, you talked about large suppliers having to provide GHG information to you. What is the cut-off? What do you term large suppliers? Is it by volume or is it by the number of FTEs? How do you decide who has to report, or what's the cut-off line?
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
The General Services Administration, which is kind of the buyer—
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
—for most federal agencies has worked with these large suppliers. I don't know offhand. I could probably get you that information.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you to all the witnesses for being with us this morning, this afternoon and this evening, whatever the case may be where you are.
It's great to have this discussion. This greening of government has a relatively new initiative from our part, and we're sort of just getting into the meat of it now, but it's clear from the initiative and its goals that real property is something that we need to attack, as well as emissions from our vehicle fleet. I think 89% of our total GHGs come from real property, either real estate owned by the government or leased by the government.
I just want to ask everybody a question first. Maybe we'll start with California, then to France and Finland, working from west to east. Is that ratio the same there, with most of the GHGs coming from real property?
Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, As an Individual
At least in the United States, it sort of depends on where you are. In California, most of the greenhouse gas emissions right now come from the transportation sector, and certainly most of the air pollution comes from the transportation sector. However, in other parts of the country, where heating heating loads are higher or air conditioning use is higher, the buildings tend to account for more of the energy used. Given the large number of buildings the U.S. government owns or leases, reducing building energy use has certainly been a big emphasis in its greening efforts.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Okay. Thank you.
I will now turn the floor over to our friends from the French Republic.
Deputy Director, Ministry for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, General Commission for Sustainable Development, Department for the Economy, Evaluation and Integration of Sustainable Development Policies, Division of Environmental Responsibility of Economic Actors, Government of the French Rep
Thank you, Mr. Peterson.
I'll give you some approximate figures off the top of my head for France. Roughly 40% of our greenhouse gases are attributable to habitat, 30% to transportation and 30% to agriculture. Please keep in mind that I'm not totally certain of those figures.
As far as habitat goes, France has a range of measures to improve the energy efficiency of public and private buildings. Public buildings can qualify for investment and grant programs, as per the 2018-22 major investment plan released at the end of 2017. If memory serves me correctly, the plan allocates €3 billion to improving the energy efficiency of public buildings.
Private buildings are broken down into those owned by individuals and those belonging to the service sector. Currently, few incentives are available for business-owned buildings. Conversely, individuals have access to tax credits for door, window, heating, insulation and other such upgrades. Those tax credits totalled a maximum of €2 billion in tax breaks in 2018. The number will drop, however, in 2019 because the program was too expensive and Parliament revised some of the criteria. The amount will likely be closer to €1 billion.