Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for coming today. I certainly enjoyed both your very good presentations.
I want to speak briefly to biomass. It seems we're going to go into a period where we're going to have short-term emissions reductions from all sectors. Biomass is an excellent fuel, it can fit into many parts of society. I reference our correctional facility in the city of Yellowknife that was just converted to wood pellets by an independent operator at a price lower than the existing fuel oil price. This suggests industry is ready to move on this. In fact, the pellet industry is in short supply right now because much of the biomass that can be moved is being moved down to the United States.
We have an issue. We need to increase the supply in the biomass industry and we also have many customers who could fit in with much less technology development, much less cost up front, and we could move the biomass much more quickly into emissions reductions right across the spectrum.
I remember having a presentation from the Dutch coal companies that produce electricity. They add pellets into their stream to effect carbon dioxide reduction and produce green electricity. They don't really need any technological development. In fact, they were buying the pellets from Nova Scotia at the time.
I think you hear where I'm going. Why should we put such an effort into biomass technology for these other uses when quite obviously sectorally we're going to have use for biomass? The technology is there.