Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm here representing a renewable energy company that takes waste and converts it to energy. It was started in Alberta, thanks to the Alberta Research Council in 1999 and the work that was being done there in conjunction with my business partners.
This work would have stayed in the province were it not for an acknowledgement by the province that it warranted being commercialized and taken to the rest of the world. Where my brethren in wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear all get to energy, so do we, but in the waste-to-energy space we're also taking care of some significant negatives. We destroy disease, and we take noxious elements out of the environment in cases where they are choking water supplies or threatening the water table and so on.
I understand that at this moment the committee is looking specifically at innovation in this sector. My main comment or take-away, if you remember nothing else from what I say, is that in the renewable sector and in innovation in general you're talking about a knowledge-based activity that is infinitely renewable and perpetual or is going to be reliable as long as there are humans on earth.
As long as there are humans on earth, there will be innovations and advances in science. The same cannot necessarily be said for quantities or fixed stocks of such things as petroleum or hydrocarbons. That's not to disparage those. I'm just saying that any help or incentives towards renewables or that form of energy is a bet on the future and on human ingenuity. As a technology investment executive, I think that's always a good place to place your money or your hopes for a better future.
I've just returned from a trip through Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asia. Even in those jurisdictions that, by some standards or impressions, are awash in energy and have very low energy costs as a result, you have those jurisdictions now acknowledging that such things as the hydrocarbons—gas and oil—will end up being swing supplies of energy that address the margins or peak loads, while renewables will end up in the position of supplying the baseload power. That steady power that we all rely on and that our infrastructure relies on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, will end up being the conventional source of energy. Less and less conventional, or more and more precious, you might say, as stocks dwindle on the hydrocarbon side, you'll have those very valuable and easily deployed sources in gas and oil being saved or preserved for the more precious uses, and we'll find ourselves relying on renewables for our baseload power, as it's known.
You have jurisdictions such as Saudi Arabia itself now predicting that they will themselves cannibalize for their own economic activities the oil that they produce and sell to the rest of the world. Now two-thirds of their oil goes to exports, but they're predicting that in the not too distant future they themselves will be consuming the equivalent of what they produce today. So in regions on the other side of the world from us there's a call to arms that says renewables are the way of the future. They have to be because, as I mentioned at the outset, my take-away for you is that anything based on human ingenuity or anything based on science and actual knowledge or developments in the state of the art is a good place to place your bets.
You have the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, having established their sovereign wealth fund, modelled after the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, now being capable of running that whole country just on the interest alone, the interest on growth in their sovereign wealth fund. But you have them, who people might forgive for focusing completely on hydrocarbons, lobbying hard and succeeding at bringing in IRENA, the new renewable energy association equivalent of OPEC, to house and establish itself in Abu Dhabi. Why? Because with the characteristic vision there on this subject of energy, they've said that they want to be on top of and understand or be at the forefront of any of the innovations going on in renewables.
I'll make my closing comments to the committee.
The innovation that we enjoy in Canada—specifically, I can talk of the Province of Alberta—is second to none. Not only are we are a global energy superpower on the conventional side—hydrocarbons and petroleum—but we can be for renewables. We have started to show our chops or credentials globally, and in our case, for waste to energy, as I said, started by the Alberta Research Council and generously and fortunately supported by SDTC, based here in Ottawa, with the fantastic work they've done along the way in taking an early position in our developments and scale-ups.
Without the Alberta government, with programs such as BCMDP and PCP, the producer credit program, we would not be able to add to the fuel pool in a way that we're now doing with our Growing Power Hairy Hill project. Also, Himark, as a technology provider in waste to energy, could not itself go around the world, as we are now, building some of the biggest biogas plants in existence. There's one being constructed in Kansas as we speak, and another under development in Karachi, a city of 18 million people with only 60% to 70% of the electric power it needs and a lot of waste.
Again, without the support of programs and institutions that this government has been responsible for forming—I'm referring to the SDTC again—we wouldn't be where we are, and Canada wouldn't be in the enviable position of being an example to the rest of the world as to what's possible with energy writ large.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.