Evidence of meeting #52 for Natural Resources in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was lot.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON
The other thing I want to talk about is geothermal energy. It's not a big part of the systems that are used in Canada, but we could heat or cool our homes with geothermal energy. Is that correct?
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
Yes, there are two types of geothermal you can look at. You can either look at geothermal to produce electricity or geothermal more in a heat exchange—
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
It is a clean form of energy as you are using the ground, basically, to heat water.
NDP
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
It's a question of circulating the water through....
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
The technologies do exist for geothermal. Some provinces have programs specifically to encourage this type of local system for geothermal. This is much less of a technology challenge, so it's not an R and D problem per se. It's a question of how you implement technologies, how you encourage adoption in an area of provincial responsibility.
NDP
Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON
If we were to use more geothermal energy and if every new house that was built was heated with geothermal energy, would that save a lot of money and a lot of hydro?
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
It could cost a lot of money. It depends where your house is built. These systems tend to be fairly expensive compared to traditional systems of furnaces. It's the type of system that could be applied more to a community than to a single house.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Mr. Gravelle, your time is up.
We go now to Mr. Sopuck for up to five minutes. Go ahead, please. Welcome to our committee.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Perhaps I could help Mr. Gravelle. There was a report put out by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy called “Achieving 2050”. I happened to be on the national round table at the time this report was put out, and it did an evaluation of cap and trade. One of the things I found most interesting about that particular report was that it showed rural people and low-income people would be the hardest hit by cap and trade, so it's a very strange position for a political party to advocate hurting low-income people.
I would like to ask a question on environmental performance. Would you say that our natural resources and energy industries are getting cleaner and cleaner as the decades go on?
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
Definitely. This is why these investments are going in: so that the industry does become cleaner and the amount of water used is reduced.
Perhaps I could call on one of our colleagues here who has done a lot of work in the performance of the oil sands, in particular, to say a bit more about this.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Yes, I would be especially interested in how that relates to environmental indicators. We talk about inputs all the time—water use, energy use—but I'm also interested in the outputs, emissions and so on, and the environmental indicators, because I find in these discussions there's never enough talk about environmental indicators and what's happening in the environment itself.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Doctor D'Iorio, if you would like to call someone forth, go ahead and do that, please.
Go ahead, Mr. McGuinty.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
It sounds like an issue for the environment committee, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
Mr. Chair, I'd like to invite Kim Kasperski from our research laboratories in Devon.
Dr. Kim Kasperski Manager, Water Management, Department of Natural Resources
Is the question how much the efficiency is improving in certain supply-side industries?
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
As well, I'd like a relationship between that and environmental indicators, the actual environment itself—air quality, water quality.
Manager, Water Management, Department of Natural Resources
Hopefully, this addresses your question.
There are two sides to that. One side is that if you are looking at it in terms of per-barrel production, how much better is the industry doing versus overall gross impacts?
On per-barrel production, I can speak to oil sands. They are improving in terms of water use. In terms of air emissions, that's not my area of expertise, but, for example, Shell is instituting that carbon capture and storage on their upgrader.
For air contaminant releases, again they're trying to improve that, because it improves their economic side if they can get better at recovering the valuable things that also impact air quality.
In terms of the impact of water use on land, they are improving, but overall, because of the expansion of industry, the overall impact is increasing.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Okay.
I'd like to ask a slightly different question now relating to biomass energy.
What kind of research is being done on the use of wood and forest products that produce energy in Canada? The context of my question relates to a significant decrease in the amount of forest that Canada is harvesting because of the collapse of the newsprint industry and so on. A lot of what is called “annual allowable cut“ out there is not being harvested. What research is being done to look at the use of wood as an energy source?
For example, in Wisconsin there are electrical generating plants that are powered by wood. Is there anything like that going on in Canada?
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
There are a number of areas of research. Some of our colleagues in the Canadian Forest Service might be in a better position to talk about some of the programs with biorefineries and what you do in moving the pulp and paper industry forward to one that produces diverse products.
With respect to wood as biomass, there are a number of coal-firing biomass-type projects and demonstrations with regard to increasing the efficiency of that process that are ongoing as part of the clean energy fund projects that have been performed. A number of demonstration programs are ongoing in this particular area right now.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Okay.
I assume I have time for only one last question.
What is the future for hydrogen energy in Canada in relation to hydroelectric production, which during off-peak hours could perhaps be used for hydrogen production? What's going on in that area?
Director General, Office of Energy Research and Development, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
There have been two tracks for hydrogen. One, which I think has been a longer-term type of proposition, has been looking at hydrogen as a storage mechanism for energy. It's about being able to use renewables more efficiently, maybe generating electricity when you don't necessarily need it and being able to store that energy in that form. It's kind of large-scale storage.
That was one area of research, and the other one, of course, was looking at certain types of niche markets for transportation with respect to hydrogen.