Thank you, Chair, and you'll notice—we didn't plan this on purpose—that our presentation will dovetail nicely with Trent's, from Cobalt.
Good afternoon, committee members, fellow witnesses and guests. I would like to thank you for allowing us to present here today to the members of the Standing Committee on International Trade for your study on Canada's exports of environmental and clean technology goods and services.
My name is Matt Wayland. I am the executive assistant to the international vice-president and Canadian director of government relations for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, or IBEW. Joining me here today is Ross Galbraith, international representative for the IBEW from Atlantic Canada.
The IBEW represents 70,000 members right here across the country in Canada and 775,000 members in North America who work in a variety of sectors in the electrical industry. The IBEW is the longest-standing and largest union of electrical workers in the world. Work in the electrical sector is extremely complex, and the majority of our members work in highly skilled trades, technical and professional jobs, with many coming from science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, occupations, such as the various types of technicians and technologists we have, members of the skilled trades, engineers, information technology and communication specialists.
As technology in the electricity industry has changed over the last 130 years, we've been there to change along with it. We welcome the work of the committee to undertake a study of the Canadian exportation of green, clean and low-carbon technologies.
We firmly believe that there are many opportunities, as the other guests have mentioned, for Canadian technology in a variety of world markets, from our neighbours, the United States, to other growing countries and regions that are hungry for clean tech like Europe, Asia-Pacific, China and India, to name a few.
In drafting our remarks, we wanted to focus on the motion before this committee, and also ask ourselves just what clean technology is.
A recent post by Export Development Canada defines clean technology or clean tech as “any process, product or service that reduces environmental impacts, fosters sustainability and provides goods that use less energy and fewer resources than the industry standard.”
The article goes on to quantify the growth of the clean-tech sector. Clean-tech exports have been increasing at a compound annual rate of 4% since 2008. By 2015 that value had reached $1.2 trillion yearly and is now projected to be over $2.5 trillion. Growth in this sector will only accelerate, as the other witnesses have already explained. Due to the simple fact that the world has recognized the existential threat posed by climate change, clean tech is becoming an essential component of all sectors of the world economy, not just here in Canada.
Although there are significant export opportunities in the clean-tech sector in industrial and extractive processes, transportation, recycling, energy efficiency, water management and agriculture, our presentation will focus on our area of expertise, which is electricity.
We all know the foundation of a modern society is built on access to safe, reliable and high-quality electricity. It heats and lights our homes, powers our communication and entertainment, and the many Zoom meetings we've been on over the last year and a bit. It enables information technology and increasingly will be relied upon for transportation.
Accordingly, there's a high demand around the globe for cleaner electricity generation, energy storage solutions and capacity, better utilization of our electrical grid to ensure efficient use, and reliable delivery to the end consumer.
In the interest of time, we're going to focus our comments on electricity generation and smart grid development, which includes energy storage.
We are a world leader in clean generation, with 80% of Canada's electricity coming from low-carbon sources such as hydro, nuclear, wind and solar. We have pioneered commercial-sized carbon capture and storage technology in Saskatchewan at Boundary Dam 3 for use in the thermal generation sector.
These existing investments and our expertise in this area lead to a massive opportunity to export Canadian-produced clean electricity to our friends in the United States, and Canadian-designed and -manufactured generating equipment can be exported right around the world.
An especially important opportunity exists within the well-established and well-respected Canadian nuclear industry. There's a global demand for large amounts of low-carbon baseload energy as a foundation to intermittent renewable forms of generation and for the cogeneration of hydrogen gas through high-temperature steam electrolysis.
Not only is Canada an established leader with the CANDU nuclear reactor design, but we are also at the forefront of the development of the next generation of small modular reactors, or SMRs, as recognized by the recently announced Canadian SMR road map. These reactors will be built in centralized manufacturing facilities and then transported as modules to their site location and built on site, rather than being built from the ground up.
This represents a huge global market to the country that can build and operate first-of-a-kind demonstration units. Not only can SMRs be mass produced in Canada and then exported around the world, but low-carbon energy produced by Canadian-based SMRs can be used within Canada as we continue to decarbonize our power grid and electrify our transportation sector. There is also the opportunity to export the final product of this technology for the sale of surplus power generated here in Canada to the United States.
Moving on to storage and grid management, you might be interested to know that the North American power grid is the largest interconnected machine on earth. As complex as our current power grid is, the grid of the future will be very different from what you and I know today, and even more complex to meet the changing customer demands and needs. How, when, and where electricity is produced, and when we use it is shifting to integrate variable renewable energy sources like wind and solar and to create efficiency in energy consumption. Smart grids will become more reliable and self-healing, providing sustainable, safe and quality electricity to all consumers.
This means that the grid itself is in the process of changing from a simple pipeline that transmits electrons from point A to point B into a super computer, with millions of controllers and sensors that utilities will be able to use to integrate distributed energy resources and stored energy, increase reliability, reduce waste, and improve energy efficiency across the grid.
Many technology companies are working on solutions to these needs and looking to partner with power utilities across Canada to develop and demonstrate these new grid management technologies. In many cases, the integrated nature of our regulated power grid could serve as a perfect test bed to demonstrate new technology that clean-tech firms can then scale up and scale out, across Canada and for export around the world.
As we have described, there is a global demand that exists for the low-carbon electricity and associated power grids that drive our modern society. Canada has a massive opportunity to export our knowledge and expertise in these areas, but to take advantage of these opportunities I have described, it would be necessary for us to foster the environment where these costly and highly regulated technologies can be demonstrated and brought to market before other global competitors get there first.
In all of the cases above, there is a role to play by our existing electrical utilities. In many cases, however, they are constrained against using rate-payer-generated revenue to invest in innovation or new technology ideas. In addition, many of the clean-tech firms in the nuclear and smart grid fields have gaps in product development funding and scale-up financing.
One of the best ways that government agencies at all levels can help Canadian clean-tech businesses scale up and export to new markets is to adopt measures that will support both clean-tech energy firms and, of course, our existing electrical power utilities, which are willing to test and deploy these new technologies. Many of these are manned by our members in the IBEW.
Whether this is direct financial support for first-of-a-kind, commercial-scale products or other mechanisms that can help overcome the financial risks for both parties in developing and demonstrating innovative technology and bringing it to the market, there is a window of opportunity that exists for Canada to not only claim a share of these global markets but to be looked at as a leader in clean-tech.
If we can foster an ecosystem that supports and nurtures these types of partnerships, clean-tech firms can both demonstrate their new products and services, and also tap into the infrastructure and operating experience as well as the highly skilled IBEW workforces that exist within globally respected Canadian electrical utilities and construction alike.
We feel this is one of the best ways to partner and develop clean-tech products that will benefit Canada, provide good-paying jobs, and compete in a global market.
Thank you to the committee chair and members. Ross and I both look forward to your comments and questions.