I'd like to express my sincere thanks to members of the committee for the opportunity to speak on the role of the federal government in promoting integrated urban energy systems, a new approach to planning. Integrated urban energy systems result from smart and thoughtful planning at the community level.
The logical alternative to integrated urban energy system planning is disintegration between energy suppliers and energy consumers in the community. This arises when energy supply is considered separate from the needs of the local community. The producers and suppliers of energy often view the community as a black box. Unaware of the factors that govern energy use and energy demand in the community, they are simply concerned with hooking it up to electricity, gas, and oil supplies sufficient to meet the peak demands of that community.
Likewise, community planners often give no consideration to how the design of their communities predetermines the patterns of energy use and energy demand of that community. Generally, there's a cookie-cutter approach taken to planning homes. It's done according to code. The utilities come in and hook it up to sufficient electricity to power the block.
This is simple, and what's wrong with simple? The problem with this old way of planning communities is that supply and demand are subject to different planning regimes, and because of this, significant inefficiencies are built into the system.
Power is generated, often in distant locations, and transmitted over vast distances. In this format, energy is lost. Electricity and energy along the transmission lines is lost as a result of electrical resistance in the lines. While some of the heat generated to produce electricity is captured and converted into electricity, much of it is vented to the atmosphere. So again, there is precious, expensive energy being wasted.
In this old method of planning communities, infrastructure locks in certain types of energy use patterns. Simply put, natural gas is for heat, oil is for transportation, and electricity is for lighting and power equipment, even if these are not always in optimal combinations. Why not electricity for transportation, for example? Why not use natural gas to produce heat and power in the home or in the building?
As a result of these decisions, reducing energy is achievable only via end-use efficiency improvements, like taking out an incandescent light bulb and replacing it with a compact fluorescent, or simply shutting down the services, a la earth hour. Communities based on this non-integrated approach to energy system planning suffer from an inability to respond creatively to energy crises and climate change. Local energy sources and opportunities for efficient management of energy are not fully exploited. Often they compete with the existing energy supply infrastructure. So you could site a community on a rich, geothermal resource, but with the old method, you wouldn't use that resource. You would just truck in enough electricity, oil, and natural gas to heat and power the community. These opportunities are not identified and exploited in the old method of doing things.
Energy use scales the population growth, so within a range, the amount of energy consumed per head is fixed. As you grow the population, your energy increases and the emissions associated with that grow. As a result, deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are more difficult to achieve and more costly, simply because fewer options exist.
The new approach, integrated urban energy system planning, empowers the community to take action to address these issues. New and existing communities can realize opportunities to dramatically lower energy consumption and associated GHG emissions. A community using the integrated urban energy system approach considers energy production, or supply, and energy consumption, or demand, in the planning stage.
Options for local energy supply and efficient distribution are considered, again, in the planning stage, and this fosters a whole-system approach to managing not only energy but also water, waste, and transportation. All of these things are possible through the integrated systems approach, again, as opposed to the disintegrated systems approach.
This movement towards integrated urban energy systems is gathering momentum. A collaborative network of industry representatives, environmental groups, governments, academia, and those in the consulting communities are working together to foster integrated community-based approaches that address energy end-use and reduce related emissions. We call ourselves QUEST, quality urban energy systems of tomorrow. We've mapped out six principles that I think are very consistent with my colleagues' deputations here. I'll run through them very quickly.
Number one, improve efficiency. Reduce the energy input required for the given level of service. So if you can achieve the end-use service, be it transportation of a good or a person or illumination through lighting or heating, what is the most efficient and effective means to achieving that service using the least amount of energy possible?
Optimize “exergy”, which is to say avoid using high-quality energy in low-quality applications. So rather than burning natural gas simply to produce heat, we burn natural gas and use the high-quality BTUs to generate electricity, and the waste heat is perfectly suitable for heating homes and buildings through district systems.
Manage heat. That's in a similar vein. Capture all feasible thermal energy and use it, rather than exhausting it.
Reduce waste. Use all available resources such as land-fill gas, gas pressure drops--which is a very interesting option that I'd like to return to during the Q and A if you're interested--and municipal, agricultural, industrial, and forestry wastes as well.
Use renewable resources, that is, tap into local biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind energy.
Finally, use grids strategically. Optimize the use of grid energy as a resource to optimize the overall system and ensure reliability.
While the federal government certainly has cause to see the approach to integrated urban energy systems planning succeed, you have set targets for deep reductions in GHG emissions by mid-century. The urban regions and communities in Canada account for 50% of all the energy consumed and GHG emissions produced, so finding ways to enable these communities to dramatically reduce energy use and achieve deep reductions in GHG emissions is fundamental.
Furthermore, integrated urban energy systems is a critical component of a cleaner, greener, more sustainable national energy framework, and the role of the federal government in promoting and facilitating integrated urban energy systems is best achieved through three points: policy leadership, investment incentives, and skills and knowledge development.
I'd be pleased to take your questions.
Thank you very much.