Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 30th, 2018

[Michel Dumoulin]

It's an excellent question, absolutely.

We make sure that we engage with our partners on terms that will satisfy our partners. If we work with a private company, it will remain confidential. They are the clients. They pay, so they decide.

When it comes to our own work, of course, we make sure we publish. It's going to be publicly available. In this particular case, PSPC's the partner. They have to make the decisions of when and how to make it available.

I must say, to pick up on the comment that you made earlier about the fact that this footprint is minuscule, yes, we agree with you.

Perhaps I may take a minute to go over the mechanics of how we work. We do have advisory boards of industry experts who come and look at our work and then give advice. They looked at a number of our projects. When they looked at that, they said “Wow, fantastic work, but with the scope of this project and the pace at which you're going, it's going to take decades before we have an impact.”

The next step is to engage with PSPC and to see how we make it broader and bigger—

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

You've anticipated my next question.

What recommendation would you have—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Unfortunately you don't have time to ask it.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Come on, Chair. It's the scale.

Maybe somebody else can ask it. How do we scale this up?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I'll give you 10 seconds.

[Michel Dumoulin]

It's to engage the value chain, making sure that the whole sector can actually engage and look in real time at these results and then move that out to the market.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Perfect. Thank you.

Mr. Falk.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both to Mr. Dumoulin and Mr. Nightingale for your presentation.

I want to tell you right up front how much I appreciated it and how refreshing it was. You used some terminology that resonates with me, and those are words like “benefit”, “cost” and “return”. Those have been conspicuously absent from some of the other presentations. There are some in this House, mostly on the other side, who would believe that reducing emissions at all costs is our objective. You spoke always of what's the cost and what's the benefit. I appreciate that.

I would like to know whether you work with certain matrices when you do evaluations of certain processes, as far as a cost-benefit is concerned? What kind of return are you looking for?

[Michel Dumoulin]

I would have to go back to our main mandate. Our main mandate is to push the envelope, develop knowledge that's available so that there is evidence, scientific data that others can use to make decisions.

Having said that, I guess in answer to your question, it really depends on the case. We will use whatever matrix of KPIs that we have at hand for the project at hand, and it varies widely.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Has this current government approached your department at all, asking you to consider different options as far as carbon tax and different ways to reduce carbon emissions here in Canada?

[Michel Dumoulin]

They haven't specifically on the question of a carbon tax. We are in constant conversations with NRCan, Environment Canada and PSPC on questions of energy efficiency, demonstrating or testing new technologies and new approaches, and doing life-cycle analysis on buildings. Trevor has led a number of these activities in the last few years. It's on a project-by-project basis. We basically bring science and technology data to the table.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Your department also makes recommendations for building code adjustments based on some of your projects or studies. Is that right?

[Michel Dumoulin]

Technically, we don't make recommendations. We support the national commission on building and fire codes from an administration point of view. We manage meetings on all these things, but most significantly, we convene the best brains to answer the questions that are being posed by Canadians.

Anybody can propose a change to the code. The commission will actually look at the request or the proposed change and apportion that to a technical committee. This is where we come in. We'll make sure that all the data needed to make a decision is there. We don't make the recommendation. We bring the data that is solid.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

On the tests that you've done and the data that you've collected, is there a kind of standard that you like to see, as far as a return on investment?

[Michel Dumoulin]

I'm not sure I understand the question. In terms of a standard of return on investment, it depends on the case. It depends on the industry. We work in such a broad sector.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Most of yours is in the building construction area. Both of you gentlemen are responsible for that. Isn't that right?

[Michel Dumoulin]

Trevor is directly in the construction sector all the time.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

In one of my previous roles as president of a very large credit union I built three separate branch offices, two of which were geothermal heated—one with the closed loop and one with the open loop geothermal system. The first was 45,000 square feet and the second was 95,000 square feet. One of the things we looked for there was a return on the investment, because it does cost money to be efficient.

Is there a guideline you could give of what you would like to see for that, or do you just collect data?

[Trevor Nightingale]

The return on investment that is going to motivate investment is owned by the building owner or the person who will make that investment, not by NRC or a government agency. They are the ones in control of their expenditures. We want to try to create technologies, information and guidance so that they can make the most informed decision and have access to the technologies that offer a compelling rate of return.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay. That makes me think of another question. What are some of the recent technologies that you've been testing that are compelling to explore?

[Trevor Nightingale]

For existing buildings, there's no question.... Technologies called building energy management systems essentially sit on top of the building automation system. Using algorithms and logic rules, they look for faults in the way in which the building is operated. They're very appealing because they typically have a return—on the office buildings that we looked at—of somewhere between eight and 12 months and typically you will pick up about 15% energy cost savings.

If you think about opex and capex, you could easily pay for this out of opex. It's really compelling in that regard.

Another thing that's really compelling is that it's non-disruptive. That system could be installed in a building without anybody ever knowing it, except for the person who pays the bill. It provides collateral benefits.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you. I have to stop you there.

Mr. Serré.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the two witnesses.

In my riding and in my colleague Paul Lefebvre's, there is SNOLAB, which is a research centre, and Laurentian University, respectively. I would like to thank NRC very much for its support to these two organizations and for all the work it does. We greatly appreciate it.

My first question concerns data. You said there was no national data. Our committee did a study on national energy data.

To help you in your work, do you have any recommendations for us on data collection for Statistics Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada? Have you ever done a study to see if departments can collect better or more recent data, that is, data that is not five or seven years old? Have you ever made any recommendations in this regard?

[Michel Dumoulin]

Thank you for your question and positive comments about the NRC. We are always happy to ensure a presence in the regions.

In terms of recommendations to that effect, I don't think we've done it formally. It is always very important in our field to have access to solid data. Mr. Nightingale referred earlier to a validated national database. There are many databases, and the amount of data is huge. What is important is what we call in our jargon properly organized and stored data. An organization is responsible for validating and maintaining the data. You were talking about Statistics Canada, which is the perfect example. Someone is in charge of validating the data and ensuring its veracity. In our sector, the energy sector in the construction industry, it is still very fragmented. I don't have any specific recommendations to make.

Trevor, do you have specific recommendations on how to move forward without having a more validated, more unified database?

Typically, we respond to industry needs. We respond to the sector needs. We would like to have an easier life, of course, with access to great data already, but that's not the point of our....

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

All right, but I will come back briefly to what my colleague Mr. Falk said.

We are talking about the role you play with companies, but I would like to know what your role is in commercialization. Some starts are like crossing the valley of death. There are many research projects, but it seems that everywhere, it is difficult to achieve commercialization.

Do you have a specific role to play? Do you have any examples or recommendations for commercialization, especially in the area of energy efficiency?