I apologize again, sir. The intent was not to inundate you with statistics but to show a very superficial energy profile of homes in the north. Before we ever get into a discussion of energy, we like to know what's used, when, how, and some of the data on that. I apologize. I'll try to keep the statistics as light and frothy as possible. The bottom line, though, is simply that the Arctic territories are not as bad as what I had thought before going into the analysis.
On stationary energy use, all of the energy used in houses—which has nothing to do with transportation—and by applications in the north is actually very close to that used in the rest of Canada. In fact, 61% of the energy used in homes in the north is for heating the buildings. The national average is 63%, so it's not that far off. The north has slightly lower energy use for heating water: 12% of household energy is used to heat water, versus 18% elsewhere. The north uses more energy for appliances and light and, surprisingly, there seems to be no cooling load in the Arctic.
I throw those statistics out to underscore the fact that three-quarters of the energy used in the Arctic has nothing to do with running refrigerators, watching television, or running computers; it's for heating houses and for hot water. It's 80% in most of Canada, but this is an element of the energy use in Canada that very few people, including federal officials in NRCan, understand in terms of the potential for both energy reduction and GHG reduction, because most of the sources used in what we call green heat have high fossil fuel content.
Without getting into too many statistics, 64% of heating in the north comes from oil, 19% from gas, 10% from coal and propane, 5% from wood, and 3% from electric baseboards. Again, that is not far off the national average. Since 1990, total energy consumption in the north has increased 0.3%. In Canada, it's been 13%.
I'll skip a lot of these points and come down to the penultimate one, which is that the energy intensity of homes in the Arctic is twice as good in terms of the reduction in energy use. The Arctic has done twice as well as the national average.
The profile shows that homes in the north are not as bad, as I say, as I had expected when I started the profile, and not bad when compared with the national average, but anything that can reduce energy demand, make more efficient use of whatever energy is used, and increase the substitution by distributed resources, i.e., renewables, is in the best interests of the northern parts of Canada and Canada as a whole.
I admit to being biased, but I say that renewables work, and renewables can work in the north. Last year, the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada report “Sharing the Story” provided case studies of wind and solar thermal power at Rankin Inlet, solar PV at the recreation centre of Fort Smith and at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, solar air heating at the Weledeh school in Yellowknife, and numerous examples of district heating, waste heat recovery, and small hydro.
One of the first stories I ever did on solar power required security clearance from National Defence so that I could explain how their solar photovoltaic systems at the base in Alert worked. Sure, the panels only worked for half the year, when the sun was up, but the cost saving from not having to helicopter in diesel fuel to charge the generators gave a simple payback of three years.
Here are some little-known solar facts. The efficiency of solar PV—the photovoltaic solar cells that generate electricity—increases in cold temperatures. In the north, a cute little trick up there is that because of the latitude, you actually get more sunlight going into the solar panels because it bounces off the snow, so you get both the direct and the indirect bounce of sunlight going into solar panels up north.
Weather bases in both the Antarctic and the Arctic use wind turbines. It's a very effective technology, and wind continues to generate electricity at night, which solar power unfortunately does not.
Canada has a number of manufacturers of evacuated tube solar collectors. These can boil water in sub-zero temperatures. When I ran the geothermal association, I constantly had to convince people that the wide-scale installation of heat pumps in Sweden and Alaska proved that the cold in those countries was the same as the cold in our country. There's at least one federal building in the Arctic that has put ground coils around the foundation piles. It extracts the heat partly to warm the building, but basically to make sure that the permafrost never warms.
I look forward to questions from the members in the question-and-answer session, but your clerk did say that you wanted commentary on the ecoENERGY program for aboriginal and northern communities.
We support the principle that Canadians are responsible for Canada's energy and environmental challenges. Until recently I was heavily involved with a number of environmental groups, but I am less so now, because I've been distracted by their obsession with the tar sands and with large final emitters. Canadians are the people demanding large amounts of energy, and it is Canadians who must change their energy behaviours.
The ecoENERGY program, despite some flaws which I'll discuss in a second, does encourage Canadians to take the appropriate action. The One-Tonne Challenge was a brilliant concept, but it was badly implemented. Also, it focused on GHG emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, as a symptom rather than as the cause of the emissions.
The original ecoENERGY program was based on improvements in energy performance, but that was too complex a concept for most consumers. The current program that is being phased out is based on technology installations. That makes it easier to sell to individuals, but less strategic in its approach. For example, the rebate for geothermal heat pumps has no differentiation between a poor heat pump and a really great heat pump. The greatest gains often come from simply insulating and air-sealing buildings, but there is limited incentive in the ecoENERGY program for those options. Our house installed energy-efficient windows, but they were installed incorrectly. That meant that the energy efficiency of our house actually dropped, but I could get an incentive.
On the positive side, the program does recognize that space-conditioning energy is a major culprit for consumption and GHG emissions, which is in line with our green heat initiative. Specific to the northern ecoENERGY program, we certainly commend its emphasis on planning for efficiency and conservation. It was Amory Lovins who coined the phrase “negawatts” to explain that the cheapest energy is the energy not used. We tell people that if they're serious about renewables, they should close their windows and throw away the old fridge first. Renewables work best when the energy demand is lowest.
Also, I like the support in the northern program for baseline studies and the call to integrate renewables into infrastructure projects. However, I wonder if there is assurance that the appropriate renewable energy is being adopted. People frequently call us to ask how they can install a wind turbine so that they can get away from their hydro utility, because they don't like them. We have to spend a lot of time explaining that a wind turbine without battery storage, without inverter, without balance of system, is not going to do an awful lot for you, and that the electric plug load--the non-heating, non-water heating, electric usage--accounts for only 20%, or 25% in the north, of a home's average energy demand. Are we exorcising the correct demon? We always tell them not to replace a high-quality sine wave electric current when a low-grade thermal collector will work as well, if not better. The program's focus on reducing demand and then meeting that lower demand from renewables certainly matches our philosophy. It also supports a wide range of technologies, which avoids a single-widget approach.
Northern communities must be sustainable communities. I spent time in Timmins after the gold mines shut down, and I've seen the impact of non-sustainable extractive business models. Northern communities may have good renewable energy resources, but there are limits to exporting that green power to the load centres. I would hate to see the north used only as an exporter of resources, as I saw in the case of lumber in Timmins, for instance, especially when there are numerous opportunities to use the appropriate renewable energy technologies to develop the economy in the north as well as enhance the lifestyle of its residents.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, we c.a.r.e. promotes renewable energies, not just because they are cheaper to operate in all scenarios or because they are in most cases totally sustainable, but because they also allow a paradigm shift in the way we look at energy. Renewables avoid offshore oil spills. They avoid meltdown of reactor cores. They avoid long and vulnerable supply pipelines. They avoid the need to send soldiers into unstable political regions. They avoid community disruption and many health impacts. They avoid smokestacks and grid failures. They avoid mercurial price swings for energy. In short, renewables avoid a host of economic, environmental, and social ills at a very acceptable price, when you factor in externalities such as their ability to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic climate change.
If you add to that the overwhelming evidence from numerous studies that job creation in renewables is higher per dollar of public investment than any other energy option, and add as well their potential for export technology if we move decisively, among many other advantages, then the question arises: why would you not go renewable?
The north does present some unique barriers and challenges for renewables, but there are also numerous opportunities and benefits for doing the right thing in the right place at the right time.
I thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.
