Natural Resources Committee on April 23rd, 2009

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

My apologies to committee members and witnesses. I have to run to the House in a little bit.

I have a question for you, Mr. Wörlen, about local community input. In my province of British Columbia right now there is an attempt to make a great deal more energy happen from renewables, but there is a lack of policy directive or a policy envelope that allows local input or any decision-making. I know Germany has had this large expansion. What attempts were made to involve local citizens in the placement and location of some of these projects? Or was it done entirely by the state legislature, to the exclusion of the local?

[Dr. Christine Wörlen]

No, this whole wind movement was a bottom-up movement. It was a garage industry and it grew.

In the 1990s we had a whole movement called the citizens' wind park, where we had problems with the acceptance of wind parks in local communities. So the project developers went out and tried to sell shares in the wind parks to the local communities. That worked very well because people were suddenly happy when windmills were turning. Where formerly they were complaining about fluctuating shadows and noise, they now literally heard how their money was being generated in these wind parks. It was their wind park and it was a share. So this was definitely one movement that came across very well.

Maybe my colleagues from Sweden also have some examples.

[Peter Öhrström]

I agree. There has been a big movement among the people.

We have also seen that by providing a good example. We have had authorities coming in and helping with the pilot projects and showing how things could be done. Once they see it and see that it works, that it can be profitable, then they get interested in this new technology and the new way of producing energy or reducing the usage of energy. This starts the movement, according to the environmental aspects. It is driven by the market, actually.

[Arne Sandin]

We have a few examples in Sweden where cities are referring to themselves as sustainable cities, where government or local politicians or administrations have performed studies of how to make a sustainable city in a local way, taking in things like heating, electricity, water, and how to use waste.

That is really a big thing here in Sweden and it makes big groups of ordinary citizens interested in how the cities and how the environments are planned in the future.

That's one way of making....

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I have a question for Ms. Wörlen.

With respect to the feed-in tariffs that you talked about, this is something we struggle with in Canada with many of the utilities: the guarantee of price. You talked about people being able to buy into shares of local energy production. I assume that was also connected to the feed-in laws and the tariffs that were made available for communities to go out and borrow money or finance these projects.

How critical was that component in allowing for, first, local commitment to the projects, but also to the projects themselves, those feed-in laws for local power generation?

[Dr. Christine Wörlen]

It's inseparable, because the feed-in laws give the certainty to small business people to know how the business will run. As I said, the uncertainty is taken out of the business plan, which helps a lot.

Of course, utilities were fighting this tooth and nail.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

We share that experience with you, then.

Thank you very much, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Cullen.

We now go back to the government side, to Mike Allen for up to five minutes.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here.

I'd like to start my questions with what we call our rural-urban divide, given that Canada's population is somewhat spread out over a very large area, as opposed to that of Germany and Sweden.

Also, I read in the brief from Mr. Öhrström and Mr. Sandin that the prime markets right now are the U.K. and Canada, as they believe these two countries really are interested in the experience gained in Sweden.

Can you tell me what challenges Canada might expect when developing integrated energy systems because of the size of our geography, as opposed to what you saw in Sweden and Germany?

[Peter Öhrström]

Yes, we actually have some similarities with you because even if Sweden is a much smaller country, still it's not densely populated. We have quite long distances between our cities and villages as well.

The systems we have are locally based. We have district heating systems based on the local sources. We use energy sources from the neighbourhood. Either it's wood that we use, the biomass, or if we have geothermal opportunities, we use heat pumps and bring energy from the ground. If there is a big incineration plant, we use that. Especially if there are big industries with waste heat, we use the waste heat.

So it's always the opportunity of using the local possibilities when developing new energy supply systems to integrate between the supply and the demand.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

What have you found as the optimum geographic area for implementing one of these systems--just in square kilometres or something of that nature? Do you have an optimum?

My second question is on one of your comments that in your systems you see over 75% to 95% of your municipal buildings and other public buildings on your district heating systems, and for small houses it's 12%.

I'm just trying to figure out whether you have an optimum geographic size and whether you expect to be able to get more homes onto your district heating systems.

[Arne Sandin]

Actually, when we started with district heating in Sweden, the bigger building was the target, and it was municipally built, so often the bigger buildings, hospitals, were the first ones to participate in the system. In the last 10 years we've actually been connecting smaller facilities to the system, and it's growing larger in every proportion.

I don't think it was the strategy, really. The strategy was to connect the bigger buildings first, and the market has asked for even the smaller buildings to be connected, because of environmental reasons but also because of price, because oil and gas in Sweden is quite heavily taxed and they saw an opportunity to get a lower price for their heating by using bio.

I would say there wasn't really a strategy for it. If you were to build it somewhere else, you should have a strategy for it and you should, as Peter told you, go by the local possibilities. You can use almost anything for this system, so in a small way you can build it for 100 buildings, or you can build it for 10,000; it's just the possibility of getting fuel for it.

[Peter Öhrström]

We are actually talking about heat density. It's the number of kilowatt hours per square meter of ground. So the dense areas are most interesting for district heating, as the distribution system is a large investment. So the distribution grids for small houses become quite costly. Also, due to the expansion of nuclear power in the seventies, we had an excess of electricity in the seventies and eighties, which was put out to heat small houses. They are not as easy to convert to district heating. More often they are direct heated, as we don't have the water system for distribution within the houses. That's the problem. It takes some time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

We'll go back to the Bloc Québécois for up to five minutes, and Madame Bonsant.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Good morning, Madam; good morning, gentlemen.

Ever since you began your presentations, I have been asking myself one question. Biomass generates 42% of your energy. In your countries, how do you manage to conserve biomass and protect your forests?

[Peter Öhrström]

It was not really the electricity, but district heating, that was based on biomass—but quite a lot of the electricity as well. But the major portion of electricity production is based on hydro power and nuclear power. But still, we have an increasing amount based on cogeneration and biomass. We have biomass in Sweden, as we have a lot of forests. So there is an opportunity to use the residues from the forestry industries for this energy production, and that is what we are using.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Ms. Wörlen.

[Dr. Christine Wörlen]

In Germany we are definitely limited by the amount of biomass we can generate locally. We do have a significant forestry industry, but we use much of the biomass for heat. As you can see from the slides, 84% of our renewable heat comes from biomass. Most of that is wood. It's either residues or it's wood taken out of forests in a sustainable way by small-hold foresters, and it's mainly informal, too. But there is also a global trade in pellets, a processed type of fuel wood, which can be fed into these ovens automatically, making them easier to use. So there is global commodity trade in pellets and it's not all German wood that we use.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I know that your countries are densely populated. But I have communities of 112 people in my constituency. So it is a little complicated to try to manage that.

Have you felt any resistance to change from people? By change, I mean substituting renewable products like biomass for oil. Were your people ready to make this change?

[Dr. Christine Wörlen]

I think people, particularly in rural areas, like to have their own stoves with wood. From friends of mine who also live in these areas, this is my impression. They prefer wood.

[Peter Öhrström]

In Sweden we do have small district heating plants for small villages. They are very common in Sweden. Small villages with small plants—not cogeneration, but just heating plants—supplying local villages with heating. That is very popular in Sweden and has been increasing a lot. People prefer to have this kind of centralized system, because it's easier than having your own stove.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Have you thought of establishing a kind of community wind generation that can supply villages and communities of 600 people, say?

[Peter Öhrström]

Yes. We have such cooperatives. We have cooperatives that put up windmills. You can buy a share in the windmill and you have a very low electricity cost, but you have invested in the plant.

[Dr. Christine Wörlen]

In Germany you would not produce electricity for just one village, because all the villages are connected to the grid. There's basically no area that is not connected to the grid. So you produce it in the villages, and it goes into the national grid and then goes where the use is.

[Peter Öhrström]

In Sweden it is the same thing. We have a national grid and an international grid. But you can do that anyway because it is just a question of metering and counting. The amount that is produced within the windmill is counted, so you can use the same amount for your house. That is possible, although it is a national grid.