Oh, oh!
Evidence of meeting #120 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 economic.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #120 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 economic.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
I say “but” because you have to look at the economics as well. We're actually doing a study right now to look at four cities in Canada at the detailed energy system level. Let's say you convert a city like St. John's, Newfoundland to all-electric.
12:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
First of all, in transportation, you're not going to be able to do that, because you have people who need their trucks out in the woods, and they're not going to be driving out in the woods with just an electric vehicle. It's just not going to happen, so it's not going to be 100% penetration.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
I don't know why, because if you go out into the woods without gas, you can't create more gas. You can always create more electricity if you have even some of the small generators that—
12:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
It's the range anxiety.
That's just a minor point. Let me go to a more—
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
The bigger point is that you'll have to invest in distribution of electricity.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
I'm saying that the demand will only be there if we carry the day in creating the infrastructure necessary for the option of the electric vehicle. There's a second piece here.
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
Yes.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
That is why Mr. Langlois' point isn't axiomatic. It requires some planning.
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
It will require some planning. We're not sure what the cost will be.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Absolutely.
Mr. Langlois, on that point, do your retract your statement that it's axiomatic that the demand will be there, or do you think the market will take care of the requirement for electricity conversion for the transportation sector without any additional government intervention?
12:55 p.m.
President, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
I will speak for myself. I'm not necessarily in favour of too much government intervention. I think the market itself will probably come to the best solution. We have to investigate how to stimulate the access to market. When we talk about the needs for financing energy efficiency globally, whether it's transport or whatever, government will never be able to finance everything. There's no way. You probably have to de-risk the investment and find a way to attract the market. You're totally right.
The last thing is—
12:55 p.m.
President, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
You said specifically for one province.... I totally agree that you cannot look at one solution everywhere, because each of the provinces is very different. Not everything applies to the same—
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
There is one market-based approach that our party is promoting, which seems to solve the problems. You take a price on CO2 equivalency and apply that to different fuel types: from coal, obviously, which is more expensive per kilowatt hour, to oil equivalent, then oil, which is not as efficient as natural gas, and of course hydro, wind and solar at zero.
Isn't the best market-based approach just to put the appropriate price on carbon, wait for the market to take care of itself and adjust that price as we learn more?
12:55 p.m.
President, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
The only thing I would add is that I cannot see one market approach that would solve everything. I think there are a lot of different ones that have to apply in different markets and in different sectors. You put them onto transport, industrial....
I think there are a lot of market-based solutions, not only one. It's diversified.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
I have one last question.
It's probably true that we want to reiterate our approach until we get the outcome we want. In terms of your organization.... I guess it's really for Mr. Luymes. It was great to see you last week on the Hill for your event. It was great to meet with your organization.
This was one of the questions I asked the other professional lobby groups that came to appear before us last week. Does your organization have a position on anthropomorphic climate change? If you do not, why not?
12:55 p.m.
Vice-President, Government and Stakeholder Relations, Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada
We have not adopted a formal position. Our members may have positions of their own. I would suggest that they have a variety of positions that they determine themselves. We do not try to impose any kind of view on our members.
At the same time, I would suggest that our organization has shown leadership in a variety of ways in addressing the climate change challenge. We have several programs. We administered a program in Ontario that was tied into GreenON. That was specifically around heat pumps. We managed the program of contractor accreditation, to be able to be part of that program. We have a program called refrigerant management Canada, which takes environmentally harmful refrigerants out of the marketplace and properly destroys them.
We have a variety of programs that demonstrate industry leadership in the climate change area.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Sure. As I said before, when organizations fail to take a position on climate change, it's a bit like enabling the bully or being a witness to the bullying and not doing anything. It is important that when facts are facts, and anthropomorphic climate change is real, it's not really an opinion piece. It's just whether or not you're prepared to stand up for facts against various industry forces that conspire against the appropriate discussion of truth and solutions to the truth.
With that, we're probably done.
Thank you.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Thank you, Mr. Whalen.
We're all going to go back and get our dictionaries now and start looking up some of those words you used.
Thank you all very much, gentlemen, for being here today. We are very grateful to you for taking the time. Again, thank you for your patience and for waiting, given the late start.
On Thursday, we're going to have a meeting, but we need to spend a few minutes on committee business figuring out some drafting instructions for our analysts for our last report.
The meeting is adjourned.