Natural Resources Committee on April 2nd, 2009

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Good afternoon, everyone. We welcome members of the committee and we welcome our guests. We appreciate your being here.

It's a lovely day, and we've had some excellent presentations on integrated energy systems. We're fascinated with the topic and the opportunity to look at downstream energy applications in a broader way and in a strategic way, so we appreciate your coming to us from your various disciplines, backgrounds, and experiences. We are looking forward to hearing your deputations.

I think we'll go in this order. We have Elizabeth McDonald from the Canadian Solar Industries Association; welcome, Elizabeth. From the Centre for Agricultural Renewable Energy and Sustainability, CARES, we have Art Schaafsma; welcome, Art. From Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition, we have Gordon Shields; welcome, Gordon. From Pollution Probe, we welcome Bob Oliver. Welcome to all of you.

As an explanation to the committee and to you, I'm not the chairman; I'm the vice-chair. Mr. Benoit was not able to make it, but he does send along his best regards. He's sorry that circumstances are such that he can't be at this meeting.

We'll begin with the Canadian Solar Industries Association. Elizabeth, would you like to make your presentation? If you could stay within five to ten minutes, it would be just wonderful.

Thank you.

[Elizabeth McDonald, Executive Director, Canadian Solar Industries Association]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Elizabeth McDonald and I'm the executive director of the Canadian Solar Industries Association, or CanSIA, as we call ourselves. I'm accompanied today by Wes Johnston, CanSIA's director of policy and research. This is my first opportunity to appear before this committee, so I really appreciate the invitation.

For many of you, CanSIA and I are the new kids on the block. Solar energy is not a new concept; however, the technology has evolved considerably since the solar mini-boom of the mid-1980s. We've also evolved a lot since then as an industry. So you don't have to ask me this question: Canada does have excellent solar resources, better than Germany, the global poster child for an integrated renewable energy strategy. Too often Canadians get confused between coaled and solar resources, so I thought I should make that statement right at the beginning.

Before I go any further, I would like to acknowledge some of the leadership that already exists in this area from the Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition, CMHC, and dedicated and helpful public servants who work tirelessly, particularly in the Department of Natural Resources. While we are not yet members of QUEST, their goals and efforts are laudable. We are a small association with limited resources, so we're just beginning our dialogue with QUEST.

I'd like to thank you for inviting us to appear and for taking on such a forward-thinking concept. The one thing I've learned since joining this industry is that the success and reliability of a forward-looking energy policy for communities across the country will have to have an integration of different energy types or a mixed energy supply agenda embedded in it.

As I was considering this appearance before you, I thought about how I could be helpful. Last year I chaired a solar task force for the Ontario government, and it underlined for me the complexity of the challenges facing governments in this area. How can we make it simple and understandable? How can we be realistic? It struck me that we had a very successful laboratory experiment only 29 kilometres outside of Calgary in the community of Okotoks. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself noted, Okotoks is “the greenest community in Canada”.

I am sure all of you are aware of Okotoks. Indeed, you probably know more about it than I do. But for the record, the town of Okotoks became one of the first municipalities in the world to establish growth targets linked to the infrastructure development and environmental caring capacity when it adopted its legacy plan for municipal development in 1998. At that time, the town faced an intersection of its evolution. Dependent on the Sheep River for its water and its ability to treat and dispose of effluent, Okotoks had to choose to either continually grow without limits, in line with regional development and access to regional infrastructure, or take the road less travelled and intentionally choose to live within the caring capacity of its local environment. A community-driven vision was created that chose to respond rather than manipulate the environment in order to sustain its standard of life. It has been a great success.

How does Okotoks work? It established four pillars for a sustainable Okotoks: environmental, social, economic, and fiscal sustainability. It went on to recognize a basic truth:

Sustainability is not a magic cure that can be taken once. It is not a single tool or design feature. It is not a short term vision. Rather, it is a long range philosophy towards design, construction and utilization and maintenance of the built environment that attempts to rectify some of the more serious transgressions of contemporary development practice and living.

My point here is that we do have a successful project from which we can learn.

What next steps are needed? From our perspective, this is where we need to go next.

We need a national road map that will include a strategy on how to create sustainable communities in Canada. We cannot expect government to do this on its own.

We need industry, government, and NGOs like the Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition to work together. And this needs to include all levels of government, not just the federal government.

Any such road map will need to embrace certain core principles or objectives, and the Okotoks pillars are certainly an excellent starting place. It will need to recognize the diversity of the country in terms of climate, energy sources, culture, and economic realities.

Representatives of aboriginal communities must be at the table, as they face great challenges in this area, but they also recognize the opportunities in terms of jobs and other economic activity that adopting sustainable technologies can bring to them.

CanSIA recognizes that the Government of Canada has taken steps to invest in new technology, with solar being part of that initiative. However, it's important to realize that technology on its own is not the only answer. We need to take it another step further and learn how to implement new energy technologies that encompass sustainable principles.

Most importantly, as a country, we need to find the best approaches to link clean energy technology to communities and the built environment. This should be one of the broader objectives of this new road map. Also, we need to address industry capacity. We can develop a road map with objectives, but if we do not have a trained workforce, then we will fail miserably.

We also need to address community awareness. This was driven home to me this week when I was interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen about a family that had decided to put solar panels on their home to generate electricity. They worked with a “handyman who is good with electricity”. But Ottawa Hydro was reluctant to hook them up. Why? Because the minimum standard is to have an electrician do the hookup, and often these electricians work with trained solar industry installers. This, in the end, is about safety.

Adopting new forms of energy like solar and PV, or photovoltaics, is about generating electricity. One quote of mine, which regrettably the Ottawa Citizen did not run was--and I will quote myself--that, “We're not talking about installing a dimmer switch in a dining room: this is about generating electricity.”

In conclusion, from CanSIA's perspective, a truly integrated approach to sustainable communities in Canada requires the following.

First, it requires a road map that is based on sound and responsible objectives.

Second, it requires participation by private and public sectors--and by public, I mean federal, provincial, and municipal--and the NGO community. This does not mean that every province and every territory needs to be at the table, but the group needs to be representative, and it needs to consult. Having chaired a task force in the province of Ontario, we found that the consultations were very enlightening and very useful to the report we finally delivered.

Third, industry capacity must be addressed. We need to be prepared to inform our citizens so that as they adopt sustainability they do it in a responsible, safe, and successful manner.

Finally, we need to have definite timelines to establish the road map. An undertaking like this could go on forever.

Polls are telling us that Canadians are concerned about their environment and looking for ways to adopt more sustainable practices. They want this road map. They need this road map.

Beyond Okotoks, we also know from the European experience that the deployment of sustainable technologies or renewable energy does generate economic activity. It creates jobs--long-term jobs.

Renewable energies like solar, wind, and geothermal are local and they will create jobs in our communities--in your communities and in my community. These are the jobs that we want our young people--my sons--to have going forward.

Thank you for this opportunity to be here today. We'd be happy to respond to any of your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you, Ms. McDonald.

I neglected to also welcome, on behalf of the committee, your colleagues who are here: Wes Johnston, director of policy and research at the Canadian Solar Industries Association; Ron Bonnett, from the Centre for Agricultural Renewable Energy and Sustainability, CARES, and first vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture; Abimbola Abiola, who is the chair of the Olds College School of Innovation; and Bruce Bibby, manager of energy conservation, Hydro Ottawa Limited.

Welcome to all of you on behalf of the committee.

Thank you, Ms. McDonald.

We'll now go to the Centre for Agricultural Renewable Energy and Sustainability, with Mr. Schaafsma.

[Dr. Art Schaafsma, Director, Ridgetown Campus, University of Guelph, Centre for Agricultural Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES)]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the committee today. This is also my first opportunity.

This is my colleague, Abimbola Abiola, from Olds College, in Alberta. We're representing four nodes of activity with agricultural campuses across Canada, looking at renewable energy and sustainability as they relate to linking agriculture and rural communities. Each of those campuses is indeed in a rural community.

From my own experience, I moved to Ridgetown, Ontario, 20 years ago, and our population has declined by around 3% to 5% annually. Most of our smart people—except me—moved away and have taken jobs elsewhere. This is something that's near and dear to my heart, in that we need to look at turning around that tide of declining rural economies and taking advantage of the opportunities that we see in the bioeconomy and also in the areas of renewable energy.

When you look at this type of endeavour, it has to do with many different facets, many different areas of emphasis and so on. It's not just agriculture. It's not just rural economies. It's not environment alone. It's not energy alone. It cuts across all of those sectors.

What many folks have noticed is that there is no single body or unit that brings those pieces together at the grassroots so that we can enjoy and put together all the benefits. That's what CARES came about as trying to be. It's about being applied, it's about being grassroots, it's about rolling out technologies and integrating them so that we can maximize our benefits to improve the rural economy.

With my partner here, Dr. Abimbola Abiola, we're trying to spearhead this across Canada. We have been working with Alma College, or Collège d'Alma, in Quebec, and also with the Nova Scotia Agricultural College. We hope to emerge, with the leadership of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, as a lead organization to bring these various institutions together so that we can engage our youth, our agricultural communities, our rural communities, in trying to stimulate the best advantage of all of these important areas of environment: nutrient cycling, water cycling, and the creation of energy and utilization of energy.

Again, we are focused on the community aspect and the farm and rural areas. We are here to try to alleviate the risk that these agricultural producers take when they adopt these technologies: try it first, and then try to look at ways to integrate these technologies, and then allow them to take it over. It's about scale. It's about looking at the footprint. It's about how to integrate all of these things together.

So this community of enterprises, which will be something that we have across Canada, is about technology assessment, it's about commercialization. We also have the opportunity, then, to build education programs: to train our youth to learn how to manage and operate these technologies and support them. It's about looking at opportunities for applied research and consulting with the various clients we have.

We have the vision and goals to be the conduit for these types of technologies for the rural community and to try to accelerate access to these technologies and increase their adoption. We want to promote innovative and interdisciplinary research on renewable energy issues relevant to the agricultural community. Our goal is also to serve agriculture, primarily through the primary producers, through the application of research results, consultation, and the introduction of new program initiatives. We seek to be a leader in curriculum development in the area of renewable energy at the technical, undergraduate, and graduate levels and in a range of professional and continuing education initiatives. We also seek to be a source of current, comprehensive information on renewable energy for a range of audiences through publications, newsletters, visiting scholars, demonstrations, conferences, and workshops, as well as electronic media.

So what are some of the direct spinoff benefits of what we hope to do?

We hope to stimulate the rural economy, as new technologies will need to be built and serviced. We hope to increase the profitability of farms, making the industry more attractive for young farmers. We hope to provide high-skilled employment for youth in the rural regions. We also hope to provide a green bridge between agriculture and rural communities--closing that loop. We seek to launch a paradigm shift from highly centralized, fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture to closed-loop agriculture with reduced environment and energy impact.

We've sought to establish this centre. It had its first meeting with a national board of directors in January. We're meeting quarterly, as a board of directors, to get this particular organization off the ground. Our next meeting is in April, at the end of this month.

Again, our partners are Olds College, in the west; and we have the Great Lakes region, represented by the University of Guelph at the Ridgetown campus; Quebec, being represented by Collège d'Alma; and the maritime region being represented by the Nova Scotia Agricultural College.

I'd like to give my colleague, Dr. Abiola, a chance to explain how Olds is working on this as well.

[Dr. Abimbola Abiola, Chair, Olds College School of Innovation, Centre for Agricultural Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES)]

Thank you very much, to members of the committee and my colleagues who are here.

Elizabeth, thank you for at least highlighting some of the things that have happened across this country, within Ontario and in Alberta. I've been very involved with the situation in Okotoks also.

Olds College, as the node for the western CARES, is working with other centres in the west, including University College of the Fraser Valley; Lakeland College, in Alberta; SIAST, in Saskatchewan; and Assiniboine College and Red River College, in Manitoba.

At Olds College we've been working with industry, especially producers, in introducing biofuels to use in agricultural communities. Over the last three years, we've actually developed one of the first applied research biodiesel production facilities, and we are working with communities, counties, and school divisions to introduce the use of biodiesel in the community. We have had successful projects, and we've had our industry partners coming to the table.

Based on our experience, Canadians are ready. Under your leadership and the leadership of the government, Canadians are ready to adopt technologies that are going to save this country and provide an environment for our children.

I believe that despite our regional differences, our national goal, as a country, would be to create an environment and a legacy for our children so they will be able to live in health. We have an opportunity to make it the best that it can be.

I want to thank you for the opportunity. I am open to any questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you, Dr. Abiola.

We will now go to Gordon Shields, with the Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition.

[Gordon Shields, Executive Director, Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for this opportunity to present before the committee.

It's a pleasure being here today on behalf of the Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition. My name is Gordon Shields and I'm the executive director of the coalition.

Joining me, as you pointed out, is Bruce Bibby, the manager of energy conservation at Hydro Ottawa. He has been a great supporter of the coalition. I would be remiss if I didn't note that Elizabeth McDonald, through the Canadian Solar Industries Association, continues to be an active member in the coalition as well, and with her leadership, it was one of the founding members of the coalition a while back. CanSIA was really in at the beginning with the coalition. There has been a lot of progress with our activities and our coalition, but CanSIA has been an excellent partner in that regard, and so has Hydro Ottawa.

The coalition was formed in 2004 and has been working with various levels of government in an effort to raise awareness of, and encourage support for, the development and deployment of net-zero-energy homes in Canada. We represent a cross-section of stakeholders who are primarily involved in the new residential construction sector. Our organization has become the leading voice on the advancement of net-zero-energy homes across the country. We've held multiple workshops and forums domestically and internationally. This process has culminated in a proposed blueprint framework strategy for deployment of net-zero-energy homes.

That was probably shared with you in advance. I did give that to the clerk.

When we initially began our efforts, the question was, "What is a net-zero-energy home, and why should we support this style of home instead of just promoting our existing efforts behind recognized energy efficiency labels such as R-2000, Novoclimat, or Energy Star, etc?”

The most important aspect of a net-zero-energy home is the ability to produce, at minimum, an annual output of renewable energy that is equal to the total amount of its annual energy consumed and purchased from utilities. On the green building continuum, it is a transformative step forward that is happening in many countries and is slowly gaining root here in Canada.

I should point out that there are some PowerPoint slides that you might try to follow. They don't totally correspond to my remarks, but they will help give you a glimpse of the context that I'm talking about.

Most importantly, ladies and gentlemen, a net-zero-energy home is grid-tied. This allows for the home, and ultimately the consumer, to integrate and become part of the energy mix solution, enabling both a culture of conservation and a transformation in the way homes are built and the way they interact with our energy systems across Canada today. Indeed, the net-zero-energy home represents the potential for a paradigm shift in the design of energy policy and its interrelationship with Canadian homeowners: it's not just homeowners as consumers of energy, but homeowners as producers of energy.

While this step forward is taking time to take root in Canada, progress has started, and now is the time for governments and the private sector to begin accelerating larger partnerships on initiatives that enable cost-effective programming, capacity-building, and development of market-driven solutions.

The builder market in Canada is quickly recognizing that energy efficient housing alone is no longer sufficient as a means of diversifying one's products. Builders are looking beyond EnerGuide 80, once thought to be costly and difficult to reach, and are looking at the integration of on-site renewable energy options as part of the overall housing design. Equally, consumers are acutely sensitive to energy and operating costs in the home and are looking at alternative means for lowering these expenses.

I think we can all agree that governments across the country are grappling with the challenge of implementing effective policies that lower greenhouse gases and increase cleaner sources of energy production in the country. For too long, however, governments have directed most of their policy and regulatory attention toward industry and its large final emitters. This is only half the problem. The other half is the built environment: our residential sector represents 16% of our greenhouse gases and 17% of secondary energy use in Canada. If we are truly to find a balanced and holistic approach to these challenges of environment energy, more attention must be directed to the net-zero-energy home concept.

Net-zero-energy homes can address several issues when considering integrative approaches to community generation, including dual role of power plant and effective demand-side management; reduced dependence on expensive and imported peak electricity; reduced need for transmission and distribution infrastructure; an integrated approach to deploying available renewable energy technologies into the marketplace; and integrating sustainable living and community development.

As mentioned earlier, we're beginning to make progress. In our dialogue with governments we were pleased to see the federal government support a demonstration of 15 net-zero-energy homes, led by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and in partnership with Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, and Industry Canada.

Natural Resources Canada has been building international attention to its Super E net-zero-energy home label. Furthermore, Industry Canada is helping to facilitate a technology road map on sustainable housing aimed at addressing barriers and opportunities for improving the design and integration of net-zero-energy home principles and other issues such as waste, water conservation, affordability, and others.

Finally, through Canada's participation in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development in Climate, we started working with the government on establishing Canada as an emerging leader in this area and leveraging the work of our coalition in an effort to build wider public and private participation toward innovation, technology exchange, and, most importantly, larger demonstrations.

Ladies and gentlemen, in this brief summary I've outlined some positive developments happening in Canada on deployment of net-zero-energy homes. However, the fact remains that a significant policy gap remains in the way we deliver programming for the residential sector. In particular, there is no program for new residential construction that helps transform our industry toward this next generation of housing. Such a program is important, as well as the need to support visible community-scale demonstrations that help address economies of scale and the learning curve associated with design integration at the builder and developer levels.

In conclusion, governments are doing good work on improving the energy efficiency of our current building stock; however, if we don't start turning more attention to new construction and developing a pathway to the principles of net-zero-energy housing, then we'll be continuously trying to correct the mistakes of the past.

The glass is not half empty, but surely there is more to do. I look forward to answering your questions today and hope this helps move us further in the coming weeks and months ahead.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you, Mr. Shields, and right on time.

All of you actually were within time, and we appreciate that, too.

Now a final deputation from Pollution Probe.

Mr. Oliver.

[Bob Oliver, Executive Director, Pollution Probe]

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.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you, Mr. Oliver.

We'll now go to the committee for questions, and we'll begin with Mr. Regan for his seven minutes.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Allow me to express my appreciation to all the witnesses, not only for being here today, but for the excellent presentations that were very interesting. I trust my colleagues will all agree that they were interesting and informative for us.

I don't know if I'll have enough time in my seven minutes for all the questions I have, but I'll start.

For starters, Ms. McDonald, it's nice to see you again. Most of my questions will relate to what the role of the federal government should be. So when you talk about the road map, who should lead in the development of that road map. What is the federal role, and how should it be developed?

[Elizabeth McDonald]

One of the challenges we face in Canada is the fact that we have policy in all the different provinces and municipalities. So it is, at best, schizophrenic. Where the adoption of sustainable communities and renewable energy has really been successful from both an environmental and an economic point of view is where there is national leadership.

The one that everyone points to, and I'd be remiss not to, is Germany. Basically, Germany faced several challenges. They faced what they thought were environmental challenges. They had energy security issues and serious economic problems, so they took leadership. While they still have states within Germany and each of the states has different policies, the leadership came federally, so it's more coherent.

I think one of the largest challenges we face is the coherency issue. If you're going to embrace targets and all those things, how do you do it in a coherent manner? Can we get everybody to come to the table—at minimum, I would use the term “check your egos at the door”--and come together?

I think it can be done. I saw it in a small way in Ontario, and I think there is enough energy. There's a lot of excellent research available now, too, so it doesn't mean we always have to reinvent the wheel. There are some good ideas within Canada suitable to our climate and our particular situation. But in addition to that, a lot of people are ahead of us. We're kind of behind. So there's a lot to learn from and there are a lot of best practices to pick up from. I see a great opportunity for the federal government to lead, and I think it would be very popular.

I can only say as an aside that I was in the broadcasting and film industry for a long time. When I gave up that job, I thought my two sons would be disappointed because they'd lose their tickets to the Toronto Film Festival, but they actually think what I'm doing now is much cooler. So this is where the young people in Canada want us to go.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I'll bet they do. I'm not surprised. Congratulations on that.

Let me turn to Mr. Schaafsma. You've indicated in your written presentation to us, which we got a few days ago, that you'd like committee members to support the establishment of CARES nodes in Quebec, in Alberta, and, as I particularly noted, of course, in Nova Scotia.

What can we do to assist in that? What should we be doing to promote that in places such as the Nova Scotia Agricultural College?

[Dr. Art Schaafsma]

As in everything, it needs a kickstart. The model we're trying to develop is some base capitalization and the development of highly qualified personnel. The model has it that it should run itself over time, because if the CARES model can't make this technology work and return revenue, how can we expect the producers to do the same?

We're trying to go to the trough early and deeply, in some fashion, and then hopefully we can have a sustainable model coming out of that in the long term.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Shields, you mentioned that there's no program for new residential construction that helps transform the industry toward the next generation of housing. What are the obstacles to that, and what should the Government of Canada be doing?

[Gordon Shields]

That has been a long-standing issue for many years. There is a concentration of effort on the retrofit side, which understandably has a lot of merit. What I take issue with is that we are constantly trying to bring our existing building stock up to a new level, whether it be an EnerGuide level of 80 or higher as we move forward.... However, rather than trying to always correct the mistakes of the past, we should be trying to change the way we make those mistakes and in fact improve on ways of trying to avoid those mistakes.

How can the government help? First of all, identify an existing program around a vision of net-zero energy. That is the ultimate in energy vision for how you're going to address the energy component in the home. That's a step forward in that regard.

Energy is and will remain one of the most important components of how this country is going to prosper in the future. Whether it's energy produced through conventional oil and gas or energy produced, I would suggest to you, at the residential level by an individual consumer or homeowner, all of it goes into the energy mix, strengthens our energy mix, makes us a better nation, creates more economic opportunity, and limits the environmental footprint overall. However, it does take a new program that would be identified through net-zero-energy home principles, designed toward the new construction sector.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Oliver, it's your turn. I know you're dying to talk about gas pressure drops, but before you do that, I want to ask you something. When you talk about the need to integrate the thinking about various energy sources in the planning process, to what extent do you think municipalities in this country have the capacity to do that? How can that change? Is there a federal role in assisting in that regard?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

You have one minute to respond to that, Mr. Oliver, please.

[Bob Oliver]

The lack of capacity is a reflection of the lack of knowledge. They need information, tools, metrics--things to guide their planning. It would also be helpful if there were a fundable requirement--that's maybe another role for the federal government--for a community energy plan to be part of the initial proposal for an expansion of a community area or the building of a new one.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Good. Thank you.

Madame Brunelle is next for seven minutes, please.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

Ms. McDonald, your association has been in existence since 1978, and it seems to me that we have been hearing talk about solar energy for a long time now. Why are things not moving forward more quickly?

[Elizabeth McDonald]

It is easier for me to express myself in English.

If you're asking about the penetration of solar in Canada, it's because we don't really have a renewable energy strategy that's federally driven, as they do in other countries. If you go to Europe, their needs and desires are somewhat different. We are blessed with quite a large supply of fossil fuels, but we're cursed by them in a way because they have made the uptake slower. When you go to Europe you see some of the challenges they face in generating the power they have and hoping to do something about their pollution and GHG.

Our neighbours to the south are more concerned about energy security than most Canadians are, so I think that's a second element of it. We've been slow to move and have not recognized until quite recently that we are taking more from the world than we're giving back. The technology is there for solar and all the others, and it is improving at quite a rapid rate.

We are also not recognizing the economic opportunity. It is an environmental opportunity, a climate change opportunity, and an economic opportunity. We can really create jobs. Through their strategy Germany has created about 250,000 jobs in the renewable energy area, of which 50,000 are in the solar energy area. That includes solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, and solar air to some degree. So it's embracing all of that and moving forward where I think we just have not had that vision and opportunity.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

With relation to that, Mr. Gordon Shields, you talk to us about these houses. In your presentation, you talked about the price-quality ratio. My impression is that this must be a very important element in the decision to purchase one of your houses. Furthermore, in Quebec, we see that the houses are getting bigger and bigger, perhaps because they are heated by electricity, and families are getting smaller and smaller. It appears to me that we have quite a hill to climb in convincing consumers to come on board.

How might we go about convincing people that virtue is a good thing? What do you think you might be able to do, on your end, to make these houses attractive? What can you do to make their cost-efficiency appealing, while at the same time ensuring that these houses are beautiful enough to attract our very demanding consumers?

[Gordon Shields]

Madame Brunelle, the cost is always going to be an issue right now. We are in the early stages of proof of concept homes. Builders are becoming more familiar with this principle of net-zero-energy housing. A moderate number of consumers are asking for it, to some extent.

When you address the issue of cost, which is the first question any consumer is going to ask when they want to purchase a house, especially a house of this kind, you're going to get an extraordinarily high amount associated with that incremental cost to the house, above and beyond conventional design.

Right now there is no easy way to answer your question, to say how we come up with the best marketing solution for our consumers and how the builder best sells this, if I understand your question correctly.

The issue right now is that we have to better educate the builder community first, and equally better educate the consumers about the combined benefits this kind of housing provides for both of these stakeholders.

When you walk into a display home, where builders offer different varieties of products or a different kind of housing, it's rare to find a builder who will say they can put photovoltaics on your rooftop or that they could design the house such that they could pre-install some of the wiring in case the owner wanted solar on their roof or in their home in some capacity.

We need builders who are beginning to market this, but they first need to learn more about it. And that's part of the leadership that can come from the federal government, but most importantly from the provinces, who have primary jurisdiction over this issue. There is a huge education curve and a learning curve. But combined efforts at a federal-provincial level--and I would even suggest at a municipal level--are required and can be done. It's happening to a certain degree right now in Ontario and will be, I hope, in British Columbia soon.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Do I have a little bit of time left?