Good morning, everyone.
Madam Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to participate in your study on Canadian green technology exports.
I know many of you saw me already a few weeks ago at the Special Committee on the Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States. I’m sorry to retread on some of the same territory, but I'll try to keep it interesting.
For those who don't know me and our company, AddÉnergie was founded by our current CEO, Louis Tremblay, in 2009, with a head office in Quebec City. It was the fruit of work that he did as a Université Laval student. Over the last decade, we have grown to be one of the largest EV charging networks and manufacturers in North America, with more than 200 employees. Our Shawinigan plant has produced over 40,000 charging stations for deployment across North America.
We are a company that proudly uses a very Canadian supply chain, with approximately 85% of expenses paid to Canadian suppliers. We've seen significant growth, especially in Canada, and now increasingly in the United States. That's important because the domestic market in Canada is likely not big enough to support the demand needed to build a globally competitive EV charging network and to be a manufacturing leader. That's why access to large, international markets like the United States and elsewhere is critical.
We've made some significant forays into the U.S. market, including deploying curbside charging stations across Los Angeles. We just announced last week that we're starting to deploy stations in all five boroughs of New York City in partnership with Con Edison, and we've also started deploying in the U.S. Midwest, starting in Cincinnati.
There is significantly more opportunity for us in the U.S. market. Recently, President Biden announced an investment plan for 500,000 charging stations to be deployed in the U.S. by 2030 to help support the American target of halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, along with Canada's enhanced commitment to reduce its own emissions by that date. In order for the U.S. to be able to meet this target, it has a critical need to get quick access to the best EV charging networks, services and equipment. We believe that AddÉnergie can play a very important role in providing these services and equipment to the U.S. market.
That's why, in addition to growing Canadian domestic demand, we've already started making significant investments to expand our own production capacity in Quebec, including our network and R and D centre, and we'll also be significantly expanding our manufacturing square footage in Shawinigan.
At the same time, we are looking at a U.S. plant to help service the U.S. market. Ideally, much as other major manufacturers across North America that make clean technology equipment, we'd like to do that by adding complementary production lines so that we can get those to maximum efficiency in both Canada and the United States. That's the dream, and that's what other major companies like automakers tend to do with their production.
What we're facing right now is a major challenge with the likely implementation of buy America. Unlike our American competitors, to whom we give access to freely participate in Canadian federal procurement, we may not get the same access to the U.S. market, which would of course limit competition.
The possible impact of these challenges is that we may be required to duplicate our production lines, which would certainly be less efficient for the purchasers of EV charging stations. The second possible issue is that we may face significant uncertainty and delay in getting products to market because, depending on how buy America is implemented, it could have significant impacts, not just on the end assembly of clean technology goods but also on their supply chains, which can slow down things including certifications.
If this happens, it's certainly not going to be good for manufacturers of charging stations, but it also will really impact our ability to get this clean technology product to market in a fast way and to help meet those American timelines. I would argue that it's also not very good for the Canadian economy. Being forced to produce entirely in the United States doesn't allow us to leverage some of that great work we've done building supply lines here in Canada. When we're looking at our ability to expand, this is certainly a major point of questions and concerns that we're hoping to see some progress on.
We really appreciate the opportunity to be here today and to share our views on how we believe we can contribute to exporting Canada's clean environmental technologies.
Thank you. I look forward to answering any questions that you may have.