Greenhouse gases are produced when we use mostly carbon-based fuels. What we suggested in the report is that one of the very important technologies that we think Canada should really focus on, right from very basic research through to demonstrations of commercial-scale operations, is a technology broadly described as gasification. What this means is taking these materials and breaking them down into constituent parts in a contained, closed system and reassembling those parts with other materials—you may put more oxygen in, or whatever—to produce different products. When we do that, we have technologies that would allow us, if we produce a lot of CO2 in that gasification process, to separate that stream of CO2.
Following from that, the second major technology push we talked about in the report that we think Canada should focus on was one David spoke about in his address, and that is how we can essentially store that CO2. We have to separate it, we have to transport it, and we store it. We talk about sequestration, and that's storing it.
I suggested that we have more room to store CO2 than we will ever produce of CO2, in the western Canadian basin. What we need to do is to find those principles that the government and the private sector can agree on as to where we want to drive this system. It could be in part by regulation.
I would cite an example of very effective regulation that was also brought in, and in a very effective way. That was for sulphur in gasoline and sulphur in diesel. It took over a decade to do it. Industry was involved, a timetable was worked out, the investments were made in R and D and in new processes that allowed it to happen, and everybody got there. In fact, the interesting thing is that every industry in the country was using a target lower than the target agreed with government, because they knew that eventually, if it was possible to do it, they'd be required to do it anyway.
To do these things, think of the energy we're using up all of a sudden to collect, transmit, compress, and store the CO2. The system gets more energy-intensive, but it's cleaner in terms of the things we think we need to do to clean it up.