Thank you very much for an excellent question. It really gets to the core of the work that's done at NRCan.
Let me go back a couple of years. One thing the department undertook was to sponsor a major national panel on what Canada's priorities should be in the area of energy research and development. We had an august number of experts from across the country who provided over the course of a number of months information to the department.
One thing they said is that you have to look at what the energy profile of a country like Canada is. Given the dominance of fossil fuels as one part of Canada's mix—we're also blessed to have hydroelectricity and other sources of energy, but we have extensive reserves of coal, oil, and gas—any program for clean energy R and D must have as one of its core priorities investments in carbon capture and sequestration.
We are in good company, because this has also been identified by the G8 as being one of the priorities for the world in addressing GHG emissions. The largest source of emissions in Canada is the burning of coal, which is by far the largest—I think the top eight of the top ten emitters in Canada are coal-fired electricity power stations—and also the emerging and growing area of gas and oil exploration.
We have been providing advice to governments that carbon capture and sequestration must be a priority. At the same time, it's important that the committee understand that this is really new technology. We in Canada have been the leaders internationally, with the work that has taken place at Weyburn. We contribute to that early demonstration of sequestration and also do so in conjunction with the International Energy Agency.
It is recognized that the costs per tonne are fairly high. At the same time, if we assume that we're going to continue to use fossil fuels, which is a pretty safe assumption and one that experts are certainly in agreement with, then we need to address those emissions through that kind of technology.
We recommended that the government make a significant contribution to carbon capture and sequestration. We have already partnered with the Government of Saskatchewan and the Government of Alberta, which have both taken the same views over recent years. We are part of a commitment under the G8 to having 20 projects initiated by 2010. So Canada is in a fairly good position; I would just say that we're still in the very early stages. We're partnering with companies such as Shell and TransAlta. They're putting a significant amount of investment in, as are our partner provinces.
But when it comes to the actual level of what the cost will be per tonne, we are still in the early stages of understanding it, because of the amount of science that's going on now in the front-end engineering designs as well as the importance of what the actual cost will be. The important part to remember about this is that the real costs are around the capturing of carbon; that, we understand and know. In our own research facilities at NRCan and in conjunction with other researchers in Canada, that's been a primary area of focus.
What we really know is that this is a very important technology for Canada, given the profile of our energy system and given who the large emitters are in this country. That's what has been the driver. We've had a fair amount of dialogue on this, through both a national task force and a provincial task force out of Alberta, which continues to provide information and advice that this is where we need to focus as one of our top priorities. We also have investments in other areas that are really important for Canada. If we're going to drive and change the trajectory of emissions in Canada, it's going to require significant investments in carbon capture and sequestration.