Natural Resources Committee on April 2nd, 2009

[Gordon Shields]

The United States has already targeted 2020 as where they want to see 70% to 80% energy reduction in their homes, which is effectively net-zero timelines and targets. I would say we're that far away. But I don't like to suggest that's where we have to look to right now. The vision is important, but nothing prevents where we are going to be in the very near future. Our building codes across the country, which will be effectively EnerGuide 80, will put us in a range where you can then have builders offering the potential of solar thermal or improved passive solar design or even photovoltaics as an option. But it's a near net-zero-energy stepping stone that we want to get to as a first point to allow the homes, first of all, to even be upgraded—retrofitted, if you will—at a later time, when the economies of scale improve or when the prices overall just come down and let in the consumer to be able to expand their house toward that path of net zero.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

If I could pull a suggestion from what you're saying, it would be to prepare the houses for future technological advances. That would be worthwhile. That's what we're aiming for.

[Gordon Shields]

That's what I'm trying to get to. That's the stepped approach we're aiming for.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

We'll move over here, because I saw someone wanting to answer the question.

[Dr. Art Schaafsma]

Just briefly, I don't think we can expect to turn a switch in one or two or three years and say we're there. It's a step-wise process. There are a lot of things we can roll out immediately towards a great benefit, but it's going to be an evolving process.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you. We're out of time, Mr. Trost.

We'll now go to Mr. Ouellet for five minutes.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I much appreciate what you are saying. Indeed, government assistance is required and that is where these questions are leading. The government's help could be much greater. Twenty-five or 30 years ago, the government provided a lot more help to the solar energy sector. That is obvious.

You stated that government buildings should be the first to be refitted so as to provide examples of efficient solar buildings. The Confederation Building, next to the one we are in, still only has single glazing. The federal government is far from setting an example, but that is what it should be doing.

Mr. Shields, you mentioned the National Building Code, which is very important. It is somewhat limited to say that we are building net-zero energy homes. These are always small original and isolated houses, whereas we should be building gigantic zero energy consumption buildings. All of these buildings and multi-dwelling projects should also be net-zero energy.

Could the code be assessed? We have an energy code. The National Building Code includes a section on energy, but this section is not revised often enough, nor as in-depth as it should be. What do you think?

[Gordon Shields]

I would agree that the code is an important tool to move the builders along the green building continuum. That's important.

The codes are designed right now for the lowest common denominator—the laggards, if you will. Codes should be designed to help provide a pathway to a better place and incrementally grow and bring everybody along with them. You're always going to have the push and pull with industry in codes and regulations. I understand that challenge all the time.

But codes are only one part of it. You can't just raise a code and assume that the builder capacity is there to actually reach that threshold. Governments have a role to play in that regard to help build capacity or always facilitate the industry's capacity to effectively develop its way toward the pathway the government wants to see them move to—in this case, net-zero energy. It's not a single solution, but one part of it.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

I am happy to hear you say that. That is but one part of the solution, and the federal government could take care of that. It could also continue to provide help with regard to the larger buildings.

It is not necessary for houses and buildings to be completely net-zero, but it would be appropriate for them to aim for that. We have for 20 or 25 years now been erecting buildings that consume 50% less energy. That is where we are at. In Quebec, Hydro-Québec has several programs aimed at a 50% energy reduction.

Should the government be doing more than providing financial assistance? As Ms. McDonald mentioned, the government could not only provide help, but also launch an awareness campaign aimed at consumers, architects and engineers.

[Gordon Shields]

Well, it's of all governments, if you were speaking specifically of the federal government.

I go back to a principle of what we were about and what we came to be about. It is that it requires a paradigm shift in the policy, in the way we view energy produced in this nation. We tend to look at the residential or the built environment as a consumer-only issue: how to reduce the consumption.

If we change the mindset and don't just look to the central generation sources—nuclear, hydro, coal, to speak of where we are right now—as the only option, and if we look to the built environment as part of the solution on a production level, I think the federal government has a role to play there, with a national energy vision or strategy. I don't want to use the term “national energy policy”, because that's a bad term, but a “national energy strategy” of some kind that gives opportunity to these varied options of energy production. We lack that in the country.

If we could find one, potentially the energy sources—whether for transportation, or electrical sources of energy for the home, or thermal energy sources.... We need a strategy that identifies how we can find those strengths and leverage them. We don't do that right now by identifying the built environment. Until we do it, we're going to continue making programs or initiatives in silos and never effectively take an integrated approach to how we're going to produce energy in this country.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you,Mr. Ouellet. We're out of time now, so we're going to have to go to Mr. McColeman. Thank you very much for that line of questioning.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you very much. I'm a fill-in today, but I'm feeling quite at home, actually. I've been a builder my whole life, prior to six months ago. As president of the Ontario Home Builders, representing about 4,000 building companies in Ontario, I know through the years that I served the industry as a person elected by my peers that there were many changes to the building code that moved us toward more energy efficiency. Through the years, we were involved with CMHC in developing standards, developing new technologies through R-2000 and in other ways.

Mr. Shields, I'm finding the assertion that I think you've made, that nothing is moving towards that ultimate goal of zero energy consumption, difficult to understand, because there has been great progress. I might say, too, that our peers around the world generally consider the housing stock of Canada to be the finest in the world. I'm wondering whether you have any comments in that regard.

[Gordon Shields]

I most certainly do.

First of all, if I've given any impression that I was critical of the industry, that was not my intent. Frankly, it's quite the opposite. You're right, Canadian homebuilders have been among the best in the world in building safe, healthy homes.

As for R-2000, I'll speak to that point, because it helps illustrate some of the challenges. Approximately 6,500 R-2000 homes exist in the country today. How old is the program? And there are 6,500 homes out of the length of it.

There has been an enormous uptake of interest in R-2000 in terms of training, so that builders could learn how to build the homes and tell people that they were an R-2000 builder. But do they produce them? That was the question.

As to the consumer—I'll just try to answer your question—part of the problem is how you effectively market a need that may or may not be there at the time. R-2000 might have been ahead of its time, if you ask me, to a certain degree. But we know how to build energy efficient homes right now. Consumers now, for the first time, are becoming more acutely aware of the energy cost challenges, the operating costs of the home, because of higher energy prices. This is the reason we have more interest from government and more importantly from builders in Ontario and across the country, concerning how to design and construct these homes.

I would say to you that it's not a question of builders failing Canadian consumers; rather, it's a question of leveraging what we know builders can do today, helping them move the code on energy efficiency and then recognizing that it's not net-zero homes overnight as a concept, but net-zero-energy homes over an extended period of time that matters—just giving the consumer the option to get to that point. I think builders can be part of it, and they are already building them.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

I know we are. I guess the point is that builders build what consumers buy. The consumers drive the product, and there is a huge consumer expectation in this country, for that matter, of a certain standard of housing. This is all necessary to make incremental progress. Any expectation that this is going to happen in a relatively short period of time.... It may take several generations to get there, instead of following a fast track. What they have is all driven by consumer choice and consumer expectation.

I'm not saying that as a scenario. As I said, I think our housing stock in general terms is some of the highest quality in the world.

The other thing is that you made a reference to the codes being developed on the lowest common denominator of housing. I would question that. I think that in Ontario at least, some of the building code standards required right now, as far as energy efficiency goes, are not the lowest common denominator, not to my mind.

Do you have a comment on that?

[Gordon Shields]

Typically, homes right now are built at around an EnerGuide 72 or 68 range. The province is suggesting that they get to 80. The Province of Ontario is suggesting that they'll be at EnerGuide 80 in a short period of time, by 2011 or 2012, I think at this point.

My only opinion about the role of the code is that the code brings everybody onto a level playing field. It doesn't imply leadership. It just implies that you must get there now and that's what you have to build. Then builders will inherently have to build to that. It doesn't mean they want to build to that; they have to build to that.

There are builders who exceed that right now. Those builders are the innovators, the ones we're leveraging right now and trying to recognize and celebrate in saying, “You know what? The yardsticks can go further than EnerGuide 80, and if you do that, this is the product that can result.” That's why they think it's worth the risk.

Right now, the energy component in the home, beyond just energy efficiency, is a bigger sell in the homebuilding community, and it's growing. It's growing in the United States. It's growing in other countries. That's why those respective countries now are going down this path on a policy level. Hopefully, we will too.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Okay. We're out of time, Mr. McColeman. Thank you.

We're going into the third round, with Mr. Shory and me.

If you trust me to stay within the five minutes, I will vacate the chair. Is that okay? I'll watch my own time.

I just have a couple of questions. I think the committee would be interested in any examples, perhaps, Mr. Oliver, where there is an integrated energy strategy that would include what you mentioned as the challenge of trying to use electrical systems in transportation. Are there any examples of best practices across the country where an integrated energy approach has been taken to include transit as part of the strategem?

[Bob Oliver]

Not as such, but any community that has a public transit system powered by electricity is representative of what can be done under an integrated urban energy system. If it's in Vancouver, or if it's in Toronto or Calgary, for that matter, wherever you have electrified rail and electrified transit, that is an example.

What I was suggesting was more along these lines. The way we do it now is we build our communities according to some prescribed processes and then we hand that over to the transportation authorities to figure out how wide to make the roads and how to service the expected level of mobility that comes with that. A better approach would be for the transportation planners, the builders, and the local energy distribution companies to come together to figure out a system that might work in an optimal fashion.

Again, if you're hooking your block of homes up to natural gas, you might be able to produce heat and power for your home, and that power might enable a certain amount of private electric vehicle use, or it might also be able to feed to the local electric bus grid. All of these things are examples.

The one example I would point out is in Victoria at Dockside Green. It doesn't have the transportation component that your question leads towards, but it does represent the efficient use of energy, waste water, and so forth.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Good.

On the QUEST principles, our analyst has pointed out to me that point 6 is “to use grids strategically”, which means optimizing the use of grid energy as a resource to optimize the overall system and ensure reliability. Could you just expand upon this a bit in terms of what it means?

[Bob Oliver]

Certainly. We're not suggesting that centralized power be abolished and that all homes generate their own energy and the energy for the surrounding neighbours and so forth. There is a role for facilities such as institutional buildings and manufacturing plants in communities to generate heat and power for those communities. As well, there is a role for individual homes to feed the grid and share power with the district, with the community, but there may also still be a need for central power to bolster any shortfalls.

That point simply speaks to the need to look at the system holistically, to not be driven idealistically toward a certain objective, but to just utilize what we have. That's why I say it may be cost-effective immediately because you're starting at the planning stage.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Ms. McDonald.

[Elizabeth McDonald]

I was going to point out that what we're really talking about here, too, is the adoption of smart grid technology. That was among some of the discussions that took place between the Prime Minister and Mr. Obama when he was up here. That's part of that dialogue that is going to take place between the U.S. and Canada.

I think the best example of what that means is.... If you've seen the GE ads--I'm not giving them a commercial, but they have the straw man from the Wizard of Oz saying, “If I only had a brain”. We have old grid infrastructure, and if we gave it a brain with the technology that's available, I think we would get a lot of the efficiencies that we're talking about. That would be an important place where the federal government can take a role. It would be an important place for it to happen.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Mr. Bibby.

[Bruce Bibby]

With respect to smart grid technology, there have been committees within and without Ontario, and there are documents that have been released probably in the last four or five weeks. It would behoove the committee to take a look at this. It's probably a good picture of where smart grids could go. It captures everything, encompassing electric cars right through the entire network.

[Elizabeth McDonald]

I can provide you with a report done by the American Wind Energy Association and the American Solar Energy Society on smart grid technology. I'd be happy to make it available.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

That would be excellent. We would appreciate it. We could consider it as we bring our report together.