Thank you for the invitation. My name is Pierre Langlois. I am the president of the Canadian Institute for Energy Training, called CIET. I'm here with Olivier Cappon, who is a senior manager at our organization.
CIET is a wholly owned subsidiary of Econoler, which is a Canadian-based consulting firm that has been working in energy efficiency for 35 years in over 160 countries. We work with all the IFIs and bilateral organizations on economic growth and climate change issues around the world.
We have been working, as well, in Canada, with all federal and other government agencies related to energy efficiency over the last 25 years. We obviously strongly believe that energy efficiency is the most valuable option for Canada, both on the supply side, for energy and growth, as well as climate change issues.
I will not address the climate change issue much, because a lot of the other speakers have done so, as well as Daniel. I will essentially concentrate my presentation on the fact that energy efficiency is the best option for the growth of the economy and jobs creation.
As a note, we are currently working with NRCan on greening the government's assets related to energy efficiency. We are training a lot of federal employees related to the use of energy efficiency as one of the best options for the government itself.
Last but not least, we have been training people, and over the last five years, there has been growth in our market. We are training three times as many people around Canada as we did five years ago, showing that there's definitely a trend and interest about energy efficiency.
One of the things we have to understand is that energy efficiency is the cheapest fuel. It has been demonstrated over and over again, and I don't think I have to flood you with numbers about it. The fact that something we don't use is cheaper than something we consume is likely evident.
Furthermore, we talk a lot about green energy in talking about renewables. Renewables are only part of the solution. We have to understand, as well, that renewables will always cost more than energy efficiency. That's very simple to understand.
If our planners for the last 50 years who built these plants had essentially started with the most costly one and gone to the cheapest one, we would have added energy supply in the system as a cheaper option all the time, and the global cost for end-users would have gone down. However, obviously you understand that this never happened. When we built these plants, we always went from the cheapest one up to the most expensive one. Adding up supply will always cost more. It's impossible the other way.
If you think about energy efficiency, it will always cost less, because when you don't consume energy, you won't have to pay for it. Furthermore, energy efficiency will never be exposed to inflation as any other source of energy will. The benefit of energy efficiency is not only that it is going to cost the least, but that its costs will never increase over time. That is not going to be the case for the supply side.
One of the things that are interesting is that there is already a huge movement within Canada. I brought a recent book—I have a few copies, if others want to have it—that I wrote with one of my colleagues, related to the Canadian energy efficiency outlook. The point of that book is essentially to demonstrate how every province and territory is currently involved in energy efficiency in different ways.
That has been my experience internationally, when I've been asked about the energy efficiency market in Canada. It's not a single market; it's different in every province. Every province does it differently.
As an example, British Columbia has had a long-term resource plan for 20 years, and an associated short-term plan, for five years, on demand side management. Ontario has a “conservation first” framework, a revision of the energy conservation act; Nova Scotia has the Electricity Efficiency and Conservation Restructuring Act of 2014; and Quebec has a very aggressive plan on energy efficiency, even though all of its electrical production is renewable.
One other thing is that, even though I would be able to convince you that energy efficiency is the best source of energy, the cheapest source and the cleanest source, the question you have to ask is why it is not exploited as much as the supply side. The reason is that there are a lot of barriers within the market, and Daniel and the others spoke a bit about that.
However, we know for sure that if we continue with business as usual, at least two-thirds of the whole potential in Canada about energy efficiency will not be exploited, even though we do have a lot of programs, a lot of initiatives, public or private.
I will essentially try to present the case of energy efficiency on the economic side on three pillars. One is the impact; another is the competitiveness; and the last is the possibility of exporting because of our specific situation.
The IEA, among others, would say that potential job creation ranges from eight to 27 jobs per $1.5 million of investment in energy efficiency measures. That's been looked at all over the place. Alberta, for example, said that by investing in energy efficiency, its economy grew by $475 million through increased economic activities, and created over 2,300 additional jobs.
The other thing that has to be very interesting for you is that jobs created in energy efficiency are not necessarily related to high-skilled professionals. Energy efficiency measures can create jobs for everyone. Obviously, on the supply side, it's not exactly the same thing, because you have a lot more skills.
The other thing is local jobs. Think about the new wind power. If you have a wind-powered mill, most of the investment related to that mill will be related to buying a turbine, which most of the time will not be produced in Canada. But if you have energy efficiency, most of the jobs created will have to be locally based. You're not going to hire someone from abroad if you're going to insulate your home, replace your lamps, or increase your energy efficiency at an industrial level. It creates jobs not only globally but also locally.
It will create indirect jobs as well, because all of the money saved is going to be free for government, industries and individuals to use for something else. Obviously this creates indirect jobs, because it's going to free up financial capacity.
Increased competitiveness, I think, has been talked about before, but obviously an industrial sector will reduce its operational costs and be able to compete a lot better within, and outside, Canada.
We don't discuss efficiency in terms of the use of money or the use of time, or any other use of efficiency in the economy, but when we're talking about energy efficiency, it's a little more difficult. Efficiency is a virtue. Efficiency is good in every aspect of economic life, and it should be as well for energy efficiency.
In the public sector, all governments, including the federal one, are facing increased needs of budgets. There are a lot of demands worldwide and in Canada, including at the provincial and municipal levels. If you reduce your energy costs, that money is going to be used a lot more wisely than just on a supply that goes somewhere and is not being invested in the communities.
As for export, I've been working in Saudi Arabia, one of the biggest producers worldwide. Saudi Arabia now has a policy of efficiency first. They figured out that it's a lot better to sell their petroleum outside of Saudi Arabia than to consume it internally. Economically, it makes a lot of sense.
Canada is a little bit in that same position. We are an exporter. We are able to sell electricity, oil and gas. Wouldn't it be great if we were able to sell more abroad, especially our clean energy, than to just use it and waste it internally?
Last but not least, it's about increased skills and capacity. Energy efficiency is a complex topic, probably a lot more than the supply side. I'm not saying that the supply side is not complex by itself, but in energy efficiency you have a diversity of measures. It's not only one thing; it's hundreds of different things. You don't do the same efficiency measures in the residential sector as you do in the industrial one. It requires a lot of different skills. Creating the skills within our Canadian economy is very important. Basically, if we're able to increase those skills within the community, jobs will be created because the demand will be there.
I would say that even when organizations invest in energy efficiency building systems, cost will not be avoided by itself. It needs operators. It needs people who know how to manage it, at your home level or at the industrial level. Whatever we do, as far as investment is concerned, we'll need skilled technicians, engineers and operators. That capacity-building is going to create a lot of wealth within Canada. It will not only create jobs; it will make the end-user more efficient and create a more efficient economy globally.
In conclusion, I hope that through the different presentations you will have a very good perspective on energy efficiency, not only on the environmental side—I think everybody understands that the lack of energy use will obviously generate a lack of pollution and positively affect climate change—but also in creating economic growth. We don't have to oppose the environment to the growth of the economy. They can be very well combined.
Such benefits will happen throughout the economic sector. We talked a little bit about industry, and I totally agree, but it will also be at the government level, the commercial level and the residential level, the voters.
As well, jobs created per dollar are going to be more than if you continued to invest in and support investing on the supply side, just because the next supply-side option will always cost more than the last one.
Finally, for good economic and environmental reasons, I think energy efficiency has to come first within our energy policy. It should not be just one of the potential solutions but really the first one.