Natural Resources Committee on March 24th, 2011

[Pierre Tremblay]

I'm not certain. Certainly the 11 plants in northern Japan are shut down. I don't know about the rest of them. They have a variety of light-water reactors—boiling and pressurized light-water reactors. They have a major commitment to nuclear power, but I don't know the specific status of all the reactors in that country.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay.

Mr. Cooper, I'm glad to see you take a strong stand on renewables. I come from an agricultural area, and we like to see that. We've had some concern here, mainly from the left-wingers in the country, about the fuel versus food debate, which I think is a phoney debate. I'm glad to see you supporting renewables.

But I want to challenge you a bit on your commitment to wind. At the end of your presentation you say that nuclear has moved to the end of the line compared with efficiency, natural gas, and wind. We've heard a lot about the low prices of natural gas right now. But we have some wind generation in Saskatchewan and are finding that it's very inefficient. Your construction costs here put it at about two-thirds of nuclear, and it's 30% effective.

Would you maybe talk a bit about both wind and solar? You have them at $80 per megawatt, and nuclear at $120. Both of those are very intermittent sources of energy.

Maybe Mr. Tremblay wants to respond to this as well.

[Dr. Mark Cooper]

The costs that you see there are levelized, so they take into account availability. The solar number is again from Lazard, who is looking out to 2016 and sees solar coming down. He's optimistic about solar, and it turns out he's optimistic about nuclear.

These are levelized costs. These are busbar costs. They take into account the availability. Biomass is listed as slightly below wind. And these are straight from the source in Lazard.

If you look at the EIA numbers—

[Pierre Tremblay]

That's an exceptionally fine question—

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Doctor.

Go ahead, Mr. Tremblay.

[Pierre Tremblay]

I would say this is a real matter of practicality. Ontario had in the range of 1,000 megawatts of wind that was installed, I think at the end of last year. That capacity generated around two terawatt hours of power. Quite frankly, if I had done that out of the 1,000 megawatts from the Pickering B plant, I'd have been shot at dawn.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I think the government is about to be, it seems, and that's one of the reasons.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Pierre Tremblay]

The point is that we need a diversity of supply, and the one thing about nuclear power is that it's there, it's reliable, and it's baseload.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Yes, and I think the provincial government has realized that as well, from the steps they took in trying to force people to subsidize those industries.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

If there are there no further questions for the witnesses, Mr. Cullen does have a point of order.

I'd like to thank you both very much. It was very helpful information, and we do appreciate it. It will be used by the committee, if we get to writing a report before an election. We'll see about that.

Again, thank you. If you like, you can leave table; we have a short discussion on a point of order.

Mr. Cullen, on a point of order.

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

I have a very small point of order.

As you know, we have critical votes tomorrow afternoon, and it seems to be likely—all the campaign buses have been rented—to precipitate an election. First of all, I wish everyone the best of luck in what comes in the next 35 days.

[Scott Andrews]

No you don't.

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

I do, except for Scott. As part of my point of order, can we change the record to say “except for Scott”?

[Scott Andrews]

He took all my money in poker last night.

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

That's right, I took all his money in poker.

To the committee members, I hope the committee is able to reconvene this particular study. I think it's been of great interest to many of us. It's an important one, and I hope it doesn't get dropped in the next Parliament.

But mostly I want to say good luck to everybody. Knock on doors.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Cullen.

Of course should we decide to go to an election, it's up to the next committee to decide what we come back to.

Again, I wish you all the best in your campaigns. May it be a rewarding experience, assuming we're going to an election, of course. We'll find out tomorrow.

The meeting is adjourned.