Evidence of meeting #48 for Natural Resources in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was million.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Exactly what kind of assistance could the government provide to spur the development of this technology?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Forest Products Association of Canada
Certainly I can answer that.
When talking about these graphs, to a large extent they're choices. They're predictions based on choices.
If we choose biomass, we'll get there faster. Frankly, right now biomass is six times wind, solar, thermal, and all of that combined. I know wind is sexy, but biomass actually gets done.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. McCarthy, are you aware of the state of repair of the gas pipeline that winds it way across the country?
Business Leader, Commodities, National Energy Board
Bon.
The gas pipeline is regulated by the NEB. We have a complete pipeline integrity system that we require for all pipelines regulated by the NEB, and we have been successful.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Can you provide us with a document detailing the quantity of CO2 emitted each year in Canada as a result of gas cogeneration?
Business Leader, Commodities, National Energy Board
We don't produce such a document, and I'm not certain that I could retrieve one, but I will try to see what we can do. Talking to our researchers, we may be able to source a document.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Could we have your business plan and your growth projections?
Business Leader, Commodities, National Energy Board
The growth projections for--
Business Leader, Commodities, National Energy Board
Sorry, growth for the energy?
Business Leader, Commodities, National Energy Board
We can provide you the preliminary numbers. What we found in our consultations is that we may have been a little high, and we are going to change those growth numbers a little bit, based upon the consultations. But I will provide to you what we provided others; it will probably still be preliminary, but I can give you that.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Chairman, gas cogeneration is a very interesting subject, because we're talking about the first plants to be converted down the road to geothermal energy.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Lee Richardson
I was wondering how you were going to get that in. Thank you, Monsieur Ouellet.
Mr. Allen.
Mike Allen Tobique—Mactaquac, CPC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your presentations. I have two really quick questions. I hope we can get them in.
Slide 11 of the cogeneration challenges talks about two of the challenges: industrial cogenerators not always being able to sell the excess power in the grid; and obtaining access to the transition grid may be costly and time-consuming.
This does impact the forestry companies that are actually using cogeneration as well. What do you see as those constraints? Is it transmission constraints, from an infrastructure standpoint? Is it the deregulation of the market that is causing independent system operators to get into this argument about who pays? Or is it plain utility inertia to let people on the grid?
Technical Specialist, Economics & Energy Analysis, Comodities Business Unit, National Energy Board
I think it does vary a bit from province to province. Sometimes there are constraints when it comes to access to transmission, I guess the rules of the market. In some provinces you can't sell directly to end-use customers. You can sell it to a utility, but perhaps not to the highest-value customer.
With respect to obtaining the actual connection, one thing we saw in talking to smaller producers in their emerging technologies was that the cost of doing the studies was quite often formidable in itself. There are two types. There are some that are required exactly to obtain transmissions, so they'd be looking at the impacts on reliability. At other times it might be sometimes environmental studies that they either would not be able to do or didn't know how to do. There are those two types, I think.
Tobique—Mactaquac, CPC
Okay.
My second question is for Mr. Lazar. I am very sympathetic to your early adopter case for the forest industry in terms of lowering your greenhouse gases, in the nineties especially, because there are a few who have done that in New Brunswick.
New Brunswick, of course, is exporting a lot of chips and stuff to sell, and they're burning it in Maine right now. What do you see as the risk for biomass in the market in terms of expense and availability to your companies?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Forest Products Association of Canada
Well, it's interesting: the success of our environmental consciousness means that what used to be garbage is now competed for. So sawdust, bark, and stuff that used to go to landfill--now the people who want to make plywood, the people who want to burn it, and the people who want to turn it into pulp are all competing to get a piece of it.
Certainly the use of biomass for cogeneration, for production in the plant, makes a lot of sense economically. To make it economical to actually harvest wood and then burn it for energy would probably require, at the moment, subsidy levels that would distort the marketplace. In Europe it has proven to be counterproductive.
There are exceptions. The beetle-affected wood in the west, which may not have any other economic uses, is an exception. You have to ask yourself something about our policy structure when it makes sense to change Canadian wood into pellets, ship it across the ocean and have them burn it, then call it an environmental plus.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Lee Richardson
Thank you, Mr. Allen, and thank you to our witnesses.
That does bring us to close this first section of today's meeting. I want to thank you again for great presentations and for your succinct responses to the questions we were asking.
May I just add, before you get away, that those documents that were requested by Monsieur Ouellet and any other member, if you would be kind enough to submit them to the clerk, we would then distribute them to the full committee in both official languages.
Thank you again for your presentations.
To the committee, thank you for your cooperation in getting through a great round on time.
I'm going to suspend for a few minutes while the witnesses leave, and we anticipate the arrival of the Honourable Gary Lunn, the Minister of Natural Resources, for our consideration of the estimates.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Lee Richardson
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to return to consideration of meeting number 48 and our consideration of the estimates of the Department of Natural Resources.
Appearing today we have the Honourable Gary Lunn, the minister, Cassie Doyle, the deputy minister, and Richard Tobin, assistant deputy minister. Thank you very much for appearing.
It's our standard practice to ask the minister to lead off with a brief statement, if you would, and that's followed by questions in the traditional manner.
With that, Mr. Lunn, thank you very much for appearing.
I'm just going to turn around and have a quick look at the clock, and I see it's about 4:35. We have promised the committee one hour of your time, and I appreciate your coming. I know how busy your schedule is. If I could beg your indulgence to give us the full hour, we'll go a little past 5:30, if that's all right with you.
Conservative
