Thank you very much, John.
On slide 7 I'll pick up the briefing from there, Chair.
While there are certainly incremental gains to be made in the performance of today's technologies, we believe that a fundamental change in technology is needed to make significant progress toward meeting the green challenge. We see our science and technology vision as an emissions-free electricity sector in Canada. Our mission is to develop and demonstrate new integrated technology solutions to eliminate all pollutants from fossil fuel-based applications, including power generation, oil sands operations, hydrogen production and cogeneration facilities.
Our approach at NRCan is to work in close partnership with industry, the provinces and research institutes across the country. And, since only a small fraction of the world's research and development is done in Canada, we also work internationally through the International Energy Agency and international partnerships such as the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum.
On slide 8, we talk about NRCan leading much of Canada's work in clean coal R and D, providing funding, providing support for networks, and mobilizing the R and D capacity in NRCan's CANMET Energy Technology Centre, other federal and provincial departments, and research institutes and universities.
We invest annually on the order of $5 million in clean coal and $8 million in CO2 capture and storage. These are important areas for us, making up 13% of our total portfolio.
There are three broad areas of research we're pursuing now. The first is to maximize the amount of energy generated per unit of coal, in other words, maximizing the overall generation efficiency of the system. Second is reducing and eventually eliminating emissions from the overall system, with our long-term vision and goal that of zero-emission systems. Third is maximizing the careful handling and productive use of the by-products in order to drive economic benefits from the process overall, such as using the captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery or capturing the hydrogen produced by the system for transportation purposes. This requires an approach that takes account of the fuel itself, the core technological process, the emission products, and also the valuable by-products in a fully comprehensive manner. In this regard, we have closely followed the advice of the national energy panel on the sustainable S and T strategy to adopt an energy systems approach for the purpose of designing our research and demonstration programs.
The government recognizes that one of Canada's most important challenges, and also an opportunity, is to be a clean energy superpower. This means we must use all forms of energy efficiently, recognizing that the greatest source of untapped energy is the energy we waste; that we need to increase our use of renewable energy in all forms; and that a concerted effort is essential to develop new technologies to make conventional energy cleaner.
To help achieve this goal, part of the new package of ecoACTION initiatives announced recently provides targeted funding for new technology. The ecoENERGY technology initiative, announced in mid-January, will provide $230 million over the next four years to support the search for long-term technology solutions, thereby reducing and, hopefully, eliminating air pollutants and GHGs from energy production and use. The goal is to foster development and demonstration of the next generation of clean technologies to break through to emissions-free production in energy end use.
Funding for further work on clean coal and CO2 capture and storage has been earmarked in the clean electricity portfolio within this package. Our priorities there include important areas for Canada, such as clean coal and CO2 capture and storage, as we've already mentioned, and also distributed generation and next generation nuclear systems.
On slide 9, we talk about projects.
The power utilities in Canada are also pushing ahead with studies to look into the next generation of clean coal technologies that are well-matched to quality and properties of Canadian coal.
The Canadian Clean Power Coalition, for example,
a group of power utilities in Alberta led by EPCOR Corporation, is doing a feasibility study of technologies for converting Alberta's sub-bituminous coal through gasification to combustible synthetic gas other by-products, with CO2 capture built into the process.
Saskatchewan Power Corporation has studied an oxy-fuel system which uses oxygen in place of air for combustion of Saskatchewan's lignite coal, also with effective capture of the CO2.
If projects such as these go ahead, Canada will take a world-leading position in the latest development in clean coal and CO2 capture technology.
Let me briefly wrap up our opening presentation today by underlining a few key points.
First, our goal is to work towards eventually achieving near-zero emissions from coal-fired plants, including all pollutants. Excellent progress is being made by Canadian researchers on the technology front through the development of next generation technologies, which are well suited to the needs of Canadian coal. If the results of the feasibility studies I've mentioned are positive, then there are emerging demonstration projects that will move Canada to the leading edge of clean coal technology, positioning our companies well to take advantage of commercial opportunities abroad.
Lastly, technology development is definitely a team game, and we highly value our partners at home and abroad.
I hope that we have addressed the committee's needs for an update on the exciting developments in clean coal technology and our initiatives underway now in the Department to move Canada ahead toward our long-term environmental goals of emissions-free electricity production.
We thank you for the opportunity to meet with the committee today and we look forward to any questions you may have or any follow-up information you may require.
Thank you very much.