Mr. Boyce, go ahead.
Evidence of meeting #119 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #119 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
President-Elect, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
Following on from that, you need to measure what's going on to actually manage it. The building EQ program gives you a measurement, but it goes beyond that, because it starts to give you options to actually improve your use of energy. It would really respond to a price on carbon or just wanting to reduce your cost of operations every day.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Great. There's actually cost baked in. As a price on pollution increases the cost of the pollution, your EQ would actually prefer the reduction of whatever we happen to put a price on.
12:50 p.m.
President-Elect, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
That's correct.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Are there other chemicals or industrial pollutants that are measured by your organization in providing air conditioning and other engineering services that we should consider pricing in addition to carbon to get the same effect? This is in terms of other environmental damage.
12:50 p.m.
President, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
Right. We're looking at my opinion here, but I think carbon is something that's measurable. We can quantify it. Whether you measure it directly or say that by using this amount of energy from this resource, this is how much is being contributed—
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
I was thinking of industrial pollution like fluorocarbons. I think there's a cap and trade on those to reduce them. I'm just wondering if there's anything else in the pipeline within your organization in terms of what we need to stamp out.
12:50 p.m.
President, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
If you're looking at refrigerants, the category that fluorocarbons would be in, then yes, ASHRAE is very much focused on investigating alternatives for lower global warming potential refrigerant options. Do we tax them? That would definitely be one way to influence behavioural change and how they're being consumed. There are a lot of active ways to motivate change through countries' commitments to supporting the Kigali agreement through the Montreal protocol. ASHRAE is very much engaged in those activities as well.
November 20th, 2018 / 12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you very much.
Mr. Cheliak, one thing we hear when we're talking about global climate change and the fight against carbon pollution is the fact that coal is twice as polluting for the same amount of energy as natural gas. Natural gas seems to be the most carbon-efficient way to get energy out.
Is this a real solution? If Canada exported all of its natural gas, how much coal would that really be able to displace in Asia? Is that a real solution, or is it really such a small part of the pie that it will only be one of a number of measures that we need to take?
12:50 p.m.
Vice-President, Public and Regulatory Affairs, Canadian Gas Association
There's a lot there. Look, you're correct that natural gas offers a greenhouse gas emission benefit relative to coal. It offers criteria air contaminant benefits to coal. Exporting our product to nations that use coal should be, and clearly is, a priority for the Government of Canada.
In terms of quantifying the exact amount, that would depend on how much we export. There is one project approved with a final investment decision, as you know. That's a start. We know there are projects on Canada's east coast that are looking to materialize as well. In terms of quantifying the exact amount, we'd have to make some assumptions about exactly how much we anticipate to export, but absolutely, it's part of the global endeavour. We're interested in knowing more about how Canada would earn potential credits through article 6 of the Paris Agreement for those international exports of our energy.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Perfect.
Staying on that same line, I just tried to do some back-of-the-napkin calculations. You'll probably be able to fix these if I'm wrong, but Canada's proven reserves are something on the order of two billion metric tons of oil equivalent now. The U.S. has about five times the reserves we do. Is that because we have less natural gas or we just haven't explored for it? How could Canada encourage exploration for natural gas to displace coal internationally?
12:55 p.m.
Vice-President, Public and Regulatory Affairs, Canadian Gas Association
I would have to get you the numbers on that. I do know that over the last decade, we nearly doubled our proven reserves of natural gas in the country. That's fairly tremendous, given that we've been producing gas for over 100 years in Canada. Similarly, in the United States they've doubled their proven reserves in the last 10 years.
As to the quantum of the reserves, I would have to get you those numbers. I believe the latest estimates from Natural Resources Canada point to a 300-year supply in Canada.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Sorry, that's all the time we have for our witnesses today.
Thank you all very much for coming today. Thank you for your patience in waiting to start a bit late. Your evidence is going to be of great value to our study. You can look forward to reading our report.
We do have a few minutes of committee business as there are a couple of things I want to talk about. Witnesses, you are free to stay or you can be on your way.
There are two things.
There's no appetite for the motion that was on the table, I gather, so we're not going to deal with that.
The second thing is that we are not having a meeting on Thursday now. The minister was scheduled to come. He's now been called out of town. He's no longer available, and because of the short turnaround, we weren't able to get enough witnesses to have a meeting that would be viable. I know that you're all disappointed that you won't be here to see us on Thursday, but there will be no meeting.
I don't think there's anything else.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
Mr. Chair, we're working on another date to bring in the minister, either on a Tuesday or a Thursday. We're trying to bring in the minister before the session ends.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I should have said that. Thank you.
It's not a cancellation. It's a postponement and rescheduling.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
There's no appetite for it. That's what I said. They're going to say no.
The meeting is adjourned.
