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.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm going to have to stop you there, unfortunately, Mr. Fogwill.
Mr. McCauley and Mr. Falk, you guys are going to split your time, I understand.
12:35 p.m.
Kelly McCauley Edmonton West, CPC
Yes. I'll go first.
Gentlemen, thanks for being here. I wish we had a lot more time, because you are certainly an interesting set of witnesses.
Mr. Langlois, I'm going start with you. You mentioned that you were doing some work with the government on greening the government's assets. Could you briefly walk me through what you're doing with them? The reason I ask is that we're actually studying energy efficiency and greening government in the operations committee. We had executives from Treasury Board, which essentially is in charge of the overall greening government strategy. We had Environment and Climate Change Canada and other departments. Not one person was actually able to say what the goal or outcome was for the government plans, whether it be a reduction of energy use, a reduction of costs, etc. There's not a single plan articulated.
I'm wondering what your role is and whether we're kneecapping ourselves by putting investments in and having all these bureaucrats working on something with no planned outcome.
12:35 p.m.
President, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
I'll ask Olivier, who is working directly on that program with NRCan, to answer you.
12:35 p.m.
Olivier Cappon Senior Manager, Business Development and Government Relations, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
Thank you, Pierre.
In essence, our input is to train federal government employees. I should mention that this is a voluntary program. There is nothing mandatory about it. The way it works is that, essentially, either managers or directors will bring to our attention a certain capacity that's missing within either a Crown corporation or a—
12:35 p.m.
Senior Manager, Business Development and Government Relations, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
No. Most of what we've done so far has been on capacity-building and awareness of the need for energy efficiency in buildings or in their processes generally. Again, that can be a Crown corporation, a government agency or a ministry. It's tended to be ministries and agencies so far. We've dealt with six so far. There has been a lot of variety in the types of things we've done, everything from agriculture—specifically looking at some of the farms and those structures—to energy efficiency on naval ships, warships, which was the most recent.
There's been great diversity, but I think there's a capacity to do a lot more.
12:35 p.m.
Edmonton West, CPC
Have you been involved in the pilot projects of upgrading energy efficiency in government-owned buildings?
12:35 p.m.
Edmonton West, CPC
I want you to comment on that because we've looked at the numbers, and when we presented the numbers to Public Services, saying, “You've spent all this money but your energy use in some of the buildings and your costs have skyrocketed”, the comment was “We can't figure out why.”
What's the point of a pilot project? Why are we spending millions if we don't have a measurable outcome that shows it's helping the environment or taxpayers?
12:35 p.m.
President, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
On the training, I would add very specifically that we train people on the maintenance side to better operate, on the design side to better design, and on the structural side to implement solutions, so it's very technical. On this, we also work with NRCan on the federal buildings initiative. It changed its name recently, but that's always the acronym I remember, FBI, because everybody laughs about it when I go to the U.S.
The federal buildings initiative works out of performance contracting. It's essentially the government launching tenders for entrepreneurs to come in, design, implement and guarantee the results over a period of five to 10 years. For sure the results happen, because they only get paid if the results happen and are demonstrated.
The challenge that you have when you talk about measuring—
12:35 p.m.
President, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
No, it's not a pilot. It's a program that's been running since 1995.
12:35 p.m.
Edmonton West, CPC
The PSPC has been retrofitting some buildings, and they're not able to show what their goal is, or even why energy usage was up. I wonder if you were involved with that.
12:35 p.m.
President, Canadian Institute for Energy Training
Not that one.... We're referring to the ones with the performance contracting, but you touch on one of the existing barriers: how to measure the savings compared to how to measure the supply side. On the supply side, you have a meter. Energy efficiency is not as simple; you're totally right. We've not been involved specifically in that.
November 27th, 2018 / 12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you.
I want to reiterate what my colleague said. I want to thank you for coming to the committee. Hearing your testimony has been interesting.
Mr. Fogwill, you talked about not necessarily abandoning existing power supplies and transmissions as being the most efficient and effective way to be energy efficient. Can you expand a little more on that? Do you have any examples that you could give?
12:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
Sorry, could you rephrase?
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
You talked a little bit about not necessarily abandoning existing energy models or energy supplies—
12:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
What I was trying to point out.... There is a term we use when we analyze energy efficiency programs, and it's called the avoided cost. The avoided cost is used to determine the cost of the next unit of supply, and any spending you would conduct on energy efficiency less than that is economic. Energy spending that's more than that is not economic.
12:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
In the last 10 years, we've seen a significant reduction on our supply options. Natural gas prices have gone down by at least half, which means that natural gas electricity prices are around 5¢ to 6¢ per kilowatt hour. Wind has also come down in price. When backed up with natural gas or even with an air compressor, wind is around 5¢ as well.
The cost of the commodity piece, where we thought that the cost of the next option was more expensive—and this is where I disagree with the other witness—is not anymore. That's a big disconnect from where we've been over the last 20 years, where we would say that energy efficiency is the cheapest and the default option. It's not, or not necessarily. If we think about it as a default option, that means we're not thinking. We need to do those tests, that analysis, because the price of the electricity commodity is coming down; the price of natural gas has come down a huge amount; the price of electricity transmission has come down because we're moving away from AC power to DC lines, and they're much more efficient in that movement.
My point is, just do the work. Do the analysis. Find out if it is more effective. Don't just assume that because it's energy-efficient, it's the best thing to use first. That's not necessarily the case.
I showed you the results from that UC Berkeley case, where they had this whole home energy efficiency plan. It comes in as -2.2%. From an economic point of view, that's not a good thing.
12:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Research Institute
Yes, it can be really energy-efficient, but it might not be economically efficient.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative