Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 11th, 2010

[Bill Eggertson]

I'll make two very quick responses.

Energy from waste is very much an energy source. The City of Ottawa has a major plant in which they are trying to divert as much of their garbage as they can to the generation of electricity. It is receiving a renewable energy subsidy from the Ontario government. It does work.

Again, I go back to saying that as long as you have a supply of wood to run your wood stove, then it works extremely well, but if you're, like many city dwellers, paying a lot of money to bring in wood from 50 or 60 kilometres away, the carbon and energy to get that to your wood stove overcomes the benefit of having that generation or that heat, no matter what it is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Lévesque and Mr. Eggertson.

I've been informed that we'll have sufficient time to get to the other instructions that we need to this afternoon before bells go, as we're expecting, at 5:15.

Let's go to Mr. Duncan for five minutes. Go ahead, Mr. Duncan.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witness.

I think there have been some questions here that are not within the focus of our study, which is supposed to be on economic development north of 60. I'm going to try to bring it back there, in one sense; in another sense, maybe I'm not.

This government has decided to focus on the north a lot. We've had some very significant expenditures north of 60, including hydro, the Mayo B project, and the linking of the two grids in the Yukon. We've put a major expenditure into northern British Columbia, extending hydro transmission from Terrace up to Bob Quinn Lake, a distance of about 335 kilometres. All of this means that we're getting to a point at which it would be not that great a challenge to hook up British Columbia to the Yukon grid and the Yukon grid, potentially, to Alaska, which would accomplish a pretty significant thing.

I think it's important to recognize that we are also investing in some very significant infrastructure needs--perhaps not transmission, but highway infrastructure and work that will lead to highway infrastructure in NWT. We have invested a lot in energy-efficient housing in the north, particularly in Nunavut.

All of this is on the wavelength, I think, that energy conservation is important. Canada is a young country, and we're a large country. We have a lot of geography and not necessarily the infrastructure and transmission facilities in place that we need. From what I gathered from the early part of your presentation, you often have to have a grid in place to maximize efficiency from renewables.

With those comments in mind, do you see that this is going to be a major long-term benefit to achieving that goal?

[Bill Eggertson]

Your point about a grid being necessary is very important, which is why district heating works extremely well. District heating is the same as an electric grid.

We do worry about the source of the electricity if a B.C. line from BC Hydro goes up and covers most of the Arctic, because B.C. is now losing some of its hydro capacity and is having to switch to gas-fired electricity. The energy you lose going from, say, Victoria to Yellowknife is fairly significant. That is a bit of a semantic point. Is it renewable electricity getting up there, or is it coal-fired, gas-fired, or whatever?

We oppose gas being used for generation in Ontario. I did the study for the Suzuki foundation. If you were to have what we call a green therm standard, and you forced, by regulation, 20% of new homes in Ontario to install a green heat--that is, solar thermal, geothermal, or biomass thermal--we could displace one billion cubic metres of natural gas by 2020. Do you need a billion cubic metres of natural gas? Yes, I think you do. It's the source of electricity generation we worry about. Is it a good source--that is, a renewable source--or is it a fossil-based source?

The other point I want to pick up from you is that conservation is important, yes. To us, “Close the door, stupid” is what we say to everybody who complains about being cold. Then people have single-pane windows. Thank goodness that's a diminishing problem in Canada.

The Arctic seems to have proven that their buildings are energy efficient. Again, they don't use nearly as much energy as I thought they would. They are very well built. You can tighten those building codes and make it even lower. We have proven that you can get down to five kilowatt hours per square foot per year. We've proven that it can be done--with a sick obsession on my part, but it is possible to do. I think most Canadians can move a little bit closer towards that goal and reduce their need for heat.

Electricity is another problem. Make sure that everything is Energy Star rated. Make sure that you don't use electricity in peak periods. There are quite a few load demand issues that Canadians, I think, need to understand a little bit more. That would get us halfway to where we want to be.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Do I have time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Actually, that's it, Mr. Duncan, unfortunately.

I need to get one point of clarification, if I could, Mr. Eggertson. This is on the question of scale. You talked about solar and wind potential for smaller communities in the north, but would you comment on the scale of backup power needed to complement it?

For example, let's say a small community might need 50 megawatts of power, and that capacity is there in wind and solar. Maybe that's not a small community, but let's use that as an example. How much would you need in diesel or other conventional sources to complement it during that time so that you would have a reliable or stable source of electricity? What's the scale of that complement?

[Bill Eggertson]

That is a valid criticism of renewable electricity. You are correct. If you need 50 megawatts for community X, you can put in 50 megawatts of wind turbines or 50 megawatts of solar, but you still actually have to have 50 megawatts of gas generation backup.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It's one for one.

[Bill Eggertson]

Yes, it is, or you tell people to stop using power. You can use certain measures to do it, but the trick is that yes, you have to build the 50 megawatt gas generating station. You have to have the tanks of gas ready to go. Hopefully you'll never use them, or you'll use them very little, but you do have to have that dispatchable backup.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay, that was the key point.

Okay, members, thank you very much for your indulgence.

Mr. Eggertson, I appreciate it. As you can see, it was a very popular topic, and I'm sure that it will serve to inform our study in a great way.

Members, we'll take a brief two-minute suspension, and then we'll resume our meeting. We will be in camera in the next section to consider instructions for the draft report.

We are suspended.

[Proceedings continue in camera]