Evidence of meeting #46 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 technologies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
Director, Policy, Smart Prosperity Institute
I'm not an expert on electrification. I think if we are serious about climate change, we will have to use more electricity in the future, but I won't comment further than that.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Desrochers, when I was the mayor of Cranbrook, I went to China—this was part of our friendly city relationship—and visited an innovation and technology centre where government subsidizes new businesses until they get their feet under them and are able to fly on their own.
I'm curious why you think it's okay for government to subsidize research and development at universities but not support research and development in the private sector through subsidies.
4:25 p.m.
Director, Institute for Management and Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga, As an Individual
There are various sources of funding in universities. There's government funding. There's private sector funding. I could argue, although I won't be very popular with my colleagues for doing this, that perhaps the funding wouldn't need to be more targeted at universities. Perhaps more industry funding would force people to focus on real problems.
I studied the history of university funding in the United States. Before the Second World War, most of the funding came from either private foundations or industry. There was plenty of innovation going on in those days. Then the government stepped in, of course, and we hired a lot more people at universities. But I would argue that perhaps some of that funding lacks the specific focus that industry would require.
At the same time, universities are in the business of doing fundamental research. Private businesses are in the business of developing practical technologies. I believe if there were promising technologies, plenty of venture capitalists and investors would invest in those things. I don't believe government funding overall is very significant in terms of funding innovation for promising technologies. If you look at the history of the development of greener technology practices, as soon as something looks really promising, capital will flow. That won't be a problem.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Yes, but you do have to get it to a certain point, though, before it can look attractive, I would think.
4:25 p.m.
Director, Institute for Management and Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga, As an Individual
There I would probably disagree with you, because historically, when you look at those stories, you see that they often come from sectors that are completely different from the one in which they ended up having an impact. You never know where these new ideas will come from.
What I would argue with regard to government funding is that government is often very reluctant to take a chance on things that might be promising but that are not really.... As you know, government often tends to subsidize winners, in my experience, and to subsidize large firms rather than small start-ups. If you lower the overall tax burden, if you let people keep more of the money they've earned, I think the history of technology shows plenty of evidence of people then taking chances on things that seemed off the wall and that would never meet the kind of criteria that a government program might require. In a way, I would argue that if you look at the history, you'll see that there were plenty of people with extra money left in their pockets who were willing to take chances on things that looked promising. I don't see why things would be any different in the future.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
You don't think some of those were winners because of government subsidies helping them to get going?
4:25 p.m.
Director, Institute for Management and Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga, As an Individual
Well, as you know, government has subsidized so many things that of course a few things will have succeeded, but I would argue that in the cases I showed you there, the funding was entirely private. Again, I have no doubt that if things really are more efficient, if new technologies look more efficient and have a reasonable promise of earning you a return on your investment, private investors will risk their own money and will fund them. I have no fear of a capital shortage in that respect.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Mr. Yauch, I would like to go back for a minute to Ontario's Green Energy Act. When we look at what happened in Ontario, we can see that they apparently committed to some pretty high-priced buy offers, particularly around solar energy, which was priced really high in 2010. When you look at where the technology is taking us, you can see that the cost is dropping. In the last RFP the Ontario government put out, they had wind power at 6.5¢ for the first time, which is lower than what nuclear power costs and lower than what wind power cost five years ago at 13¢.
There seems to be a trend going on. As technology improves, the costs of power, for example, are going down. With that in mind, would you agree that the Ontario experience has been more a failure of policy and pricing and not a failure of the technology itself, which is getting better and cheaper all the time?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Consumer Policy Institute
I'll half agree with that. I do agree that there is a failure in the way they did the policy and the pricing.
You've talked about the lower prices for wind energy and solar energy that are happening in the wider marketplace, and that's true to a certain extent. However, first, Ontario ratepayers aren't benefiting from that because we were locked into long-term contracts, so any competitive forces at lower prices haven't actually made their way through. I think that's something we should consider. Second, wind power could almost cost zero cents. In many cases it's useless, because it produces power that's totally unreliable, at times when we don't need it. Solar power has I think a brighter future in the sense that it at least provides power in a more reliable manner, but we don't need the wind power that's coming online right now, whether it's at 6¢, 5¢, 4¢ or 3¢. It doesn't really matter; it's useless at this point.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Unfortunately, we are out of time.
Thanks to the three of you for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate your making the effort to be here today and thank you for providing valuable information.
We'll suspend for two minutes and then carry on with the next segment.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
We're going to get started with the second hour, or a little bit less than an hour, so I'm going to dispense with too many formal introductions.
We have three witnesses for this segment, one in person, Mr. Gilmour from the Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow; and two by video conference, David Popp, a professor from Syracuse University, who is also from the C.D. Howe Institute, and Bryan Watson, the managing director of CleanTech North.
Gentlemen, each of you will have up to 10 minutes to do an initial presentation, and then we will open the floor to questions. We're running with some pretty strict timelines for presentations and questions, so I may have to interrupt you from time to time to keep things moving.
Mr. Gilmour, I understand, was kind enough to provide us with a deck, but it's in English only. It was a last-minute delivery so I'll need approval from around the table to distribute it.
4:30 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
We're all in favour of that, so that's fine.
Mr. Gilmour, you're here, so why don't you start us off?
4:30 p.m.
Brent Gilmour Executive Director, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow
Good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to address the standing committee. My name is Brent Gilmour. I'm the executive director of QUEST, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow.
Across Canada, communities account for 60% of our energy use and over half of our greenhouse gas emissions. At QUEST, we're focused on supporting all levels of government to achieve their greenhouse gas and energy objectives through the development of smart-energy communities. Smart-energy communities put in place the conditions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy use, drive the adoption of clean technologies, and foster local economic development and job creation in Canada.
Established in 2007, we have a national grassroots network involving thousands of organizations across Canada, including local, provincial and territorial governments, utilities, energy service providers, building owners, landowners and operators, and clean technology companies working at the community level to develop smart-energy communities.
There is no shortage of capital to invest in clean energy technologies, and there are no shortages of community-energy-scale projects
We've documented that there are over 250 community energy plans covering more than 50% of the population, which have identified the need to deploy mature clean technologies for energy efficiency, renewable energy, the efficient use of conventional energy sources including natural gas, and transportation. These plans are developed by local governments, utilities, industries, and businesses, and they represent local clean technology investment road maps for investors in projects related to energy efficiency, storage, harnessing local renewable energy, and the efficient use of conventional energy systems.
The challenge is that most of the community-scale projects are best positioned to support small and medium-sized enterprises.
However, this sector often lacks the capacity and funds to procure the kinds of professional advisory services that larger companies will typically underwrite, such as engineering studies, debt financing, equity capital raising, power purchase agreements, and associated legal services for a clean-tech project.
As a result, many of the community projects identified in the 250 community energy projects and plans are at risk of not going ahead even when the underlying economics may be sound and it is in the community's best long-term interest to see them proceed.
A well-known barrier that often stands in the way of the adoption of clean-tech projects is the ability to assess the technical and financial capacity required for the project development stage, and not the actual financing of the project. Just to be clear about that, we're talking about the preconstruction stage and not the actual financing of the project when it's ready to go. That's what attracts the big capital, which I will go through on these diagrams for you.
Most proponents find it extremely difficult to attract financing from investors either because they are too small to warrant the cost of due diligence by the investor or because their project does not meet the risk profile required by investors, meaning the project has just gone out of the preconstruction stage, which can include prefeasibility, environmental permitting, engineering design, and so forth.
Possibly the most significant hurdle is scale. The average transaction cost for an investment of scale last year was $440 million by institutional investors. That would be what we often refer to as pension funds, shown as the larger oval in that diagram, which says institutional capital.
Further down the investor scale, clean-tech investors, or what we call commercial investors, are often looking for projects of greater than $50 million. For most community-scale projects, those in your ridings, such as small-scale district energy or micro cogeneration, which you hear talked about a lot, the scale of investment is much less—from hundreds of thousands to $25 million.
There is an immediate opportunity to de-risk clean-tech projects and attract investment for community-scale energy projects like renewable and natural gas, as well as for district energy systems, combined heat and power, smart grids, energy efficiency retrofits, and the construction of new net zero-emission buildings.
Many existing projects that have been identified or proposed by communities, including indigenous communities, need support at the project development stage. We have three key considerations for the committee with regard to de-risking clean technology projects at the project development stage.
First, promote the development of purpose-built lending products to foster small and medium-sized enterprise adoption of clean technologies. When we think about small and medium-sized enterprises, for those who are familiar, about 86% of the 1.7 million private sector employers, who make up most of the workforce in Canada, are under 20 people. That's the group we're talking about, the ones who may not be able to attract larger-scale investors and understand how to aggregate.
The opportunity here is the adoption of clean technologies, including energy efficiency, district energy, combined heat and power, micro-cogeneration, and renewable energy installations. Examples of these smaller programs include the Global Green Growth Institute, which is working with governments to establish financing projects that will unlock debt capital. For instance, in India they put forward a $30-million U.S. fund that has successfully attracted $430 million in off-grid energy projects. The focus, though, wasn't on financing the project. It focused strictly, at that beginning pre-construction phase, on allowing those projects that could make the financial test and hurdle more attractive to investors by de-risking it.
Second, facilitate stronger networks through a greater focus on clean technologies in broader initiatives that support centres of excellence, communities of interest, and partnerships among researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry with the goals of advancing and demonstrating emerging technologies and supporting commercialization in key opportunity areas. A really good example that's happening now is the “low carbon partnership”, a collaborative of four organizations—including QUEST, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow—that is proposing to work with thousands of SMEs and is well positioned to support the Government of Canada's climate change objectives by undertaking to scale up proven tools and programs. What we're looking to do is engage 4,000 businesses in over 300 communities from now to 2025, delivering about $150 million in cost savings to SMEs across Canada, and aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from half a tonne to one to two tonnes by 2025.
Third, pilot the establishment of a project development advisory program with the purpose of supporting community-scale projects through the development process and connecting them with investors. A good example of this is called “Climate Investor One”, which is being seen globally, right around the world. They have established investment funds to finance renewable energy projects—quite honestly, they're looking at all kinds of projects—at specific stages of the project life cycle. Their primary focus, though, is early project stage development, recognizing that this is where you get the biggest bang or return for your buck.
Other variations can include “batch-mentoring”—a term you might not have heard—a series of project proposals at the regional level through the project development cycle. That's a nice way of saying that it's providing services and support through an expert advisory committee, which can provide either in-kind or subsidized services for the pre-construction phase of a project. That is, how do you help someone figure out the engineering studies they need to do, which is complicated unless you hire an engineering firm, and who do you hire? What's debt financing, who do you go to, and what does that look like? What about the equity capital raising, power purchase agreements, and associated legal services for a project? The batch-mentoring process is intended to get projects to the bankable stage and attract private sector investment. It is not intended to finance them.
Those are our three key considerations for the committee that I wanted to share with you today.
I really thank you for the opportunity to join you.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Thank you very much, Mr. Gilmour.
Mr. Popp, maybe you can pick up from there.
4:45 p.m.
Dr. David Popp Professor, Syracuse University, As an Individual
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I'm a professor of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. I'm an environmental economist who has studied the interactions between policy and clean technology development for the past 20 years.
Over the last summer, I wrote a report for the C.D. Howe Institute on the development of low-emissions technology in Canada. As part of that work, over the last 18 months I've had the opportunity to give presentations in Toronto and Ottawa and to speak with government officials in Ontario and Alberta. While I wouldn't consider myself an expert specifically on Canadian energy policy, I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about it over the past two years.
Given the questions that were sent out before the meeting today, I will focus my comments on the adoption of clean technology. The most important thing to keep in mind here is that policy is the main driver of clean technology adoption. Many if not all the benefits of clean technology go to the general public, in the form of a cleaner environment, rather than the user of the technology. This translates into what economists call a “market failure”, in this case an externality. Without clear policy signals, investors have little reason to adopt clean technology.
This is important, because this also adds risks to the process, particularly for capital investment. Within the natural resources sector, we're often looking at equipment that may be used for 20 or 30 years. This means that investors want to know not just what will be in place today but what policies will remain in place for the future. It's important to think about what signals the government can provide that the policy in place today will exist through the lifetime of the investment. As a simple example that we all may be familiar with, even when gasoline prices increase, consumers may be reluctant to switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles if they expect that prices will fall again in the near future, as they so often have.
Given this, what should these policy signals be? That depends on what the policy goals are. I want to lay out a couple of different options. The simplest thing to use is a broad-based, technology-neutral policy that simply addresses the environmental externality. Examples could be large-scale policies such as the carbon tax in place in British Columbia, or the cap and trade that has been used in Ontario. It could also include sector-specific policies that do not explicitly favour one technology over another, such as a renewable portfolio standard.
In cases such as this, firms will comply with these policies by choosing the most cost-effective technologies available to them. This means that technology-neutral policies favour the technologies that are closest to being market-ready. Essentially, it narrows the gap between the cost of fossil fuels and the cheapest available renewable energy source. Such a policy has been efficient in that it keeps the compliance cost as low as possible. If that's the policy goal, then a broad-based policy is best, and we need to only ask what other market failures might exist to discourage the adoption of otherwise clean technologies. I'll return to that point later.
I would argue, however, that clean technology policy should focus not only on adoption but also on innovation. Since technology-neutral policies favour the clean technologies that are closest to market, they're not enough to support the development of technologies that are not yet market-ready and are considered important to meet future environmental needs. Thus, if the goal is also to encourage the development and the deployment of new breakthrough clean energy technologies, you'll want to complement these broad-based policies with additional policies targeting those technologies that are not yet market-ready. As an example of this, as I mentioned before, renewable portfolio standards encourage the development and diffusion of wind energy. Countries, states, and provinces that have used that policy have seen the development of wind and not as much the development of solar energy.
The development of solar has occurred in countries with more targeted policies. Germany, for example, uses feed-in tariffs, which were set initially seven times higher for solar energy than for onshore wind. As a result, it's led to a big expansion of solar energy in Germany, and Germany has become one of the leaders in solar energy usage. It's important to keep in mind, though, that there's a trade-off here. Such a policy comes at a cost, as these higher feed-in tariffs are passed on to the consumer in terms of higher electricity prices. Really, there are two competing needs to balance off here—the goal of keeping current costs as low as possible versus the goal of trying to encourage continuing improvement with a technology.
Once the environmental externality has been addressed, we can then consider what other barriers remain. Within the natural resources sector, a couple that are particularly important include the high cost of capital. Because the natural resource sector is capital-intensive, clean technology requires large up-front investments, which leads to a couple of issues. One issue is that it raises the cost of switching to a new technology. There's the concern that policies may lead to the lock-in of currently affordable technologies that make it difficult for a new technology to come online. When we think about the challenges that electric vehicles have, not having charging infrastructure online I think would be an example of that.
Financing is also a challenge, particularly for small firms. The United States has used a couple of policies that have helped to address some of these financing barriers. I'll talk about a couple of them and how they've been successful.
One is the small business innovation research grant program. This is not specific to energy. It's required of 11 different U.S. government agencies to set aside a little less than 3% of their extramural R and D budget to give out to small firms.
A recent study of the Department of Energy's small business innovation research program by Sabrina Howell, an economist at New York University, shows that the recipients of these grants, compared to applicants who applied but did not receive the grants, were much more successful. They received more subsequent patents, they were more likely to receive future venture capital, and they were twice as likely to earn positive revenue. When they did earn positive revenue, they made more money than the non-recipients of the grants did. Her research went on to show that the reason for this success was that these funds were important for developing demonstration and proof of concept. It's very challenging for these smaller firms to come up with the initial financing to get their products under way.
Another program that has been successful is the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program. This has received negative press because of the funding that was given to Solyndra, which eventually failed; but overall, it's important to note that the program received more back in interest payments than it lost on failed loans.
A key point here is that targeted funds that can help commercialization can be useful, but should focus on things that the market won't do on its own. This could include breakthrough technologies further from the market; complementary technologies such as improvements to the transmission grid, which are important for the development of renewable energy; and, focusing on smaller firms that may have more difficulty raising capital in the financial markets.
I'll conclude with some recommendations.
Any policy effort should start with broad-based policies. Here, it's important as well to provide long-term signals. For example, using the revenues from a carbon tax to lower other taxes signals a long-term commitment, right? If the revenues are used to lower the taxes, the government is less likely to take away the carbon tax because doing so would necessitate raising other taxes to replace that revenue.
Any targeted policies that are used should focus on breakthrough technologies that are further from the market. It should encourage some adoption of these, enough to encourage further development of the technologies, but they shouldn't be so large or widespread as to make the use of expensive technologies over cheaper substitutes the dominant technology in the market. The goal isn't, for example, to have solar energy overtake wind, but to encourage enough investment in these costlier technologies so that further learning and technology development can continue.
Finally, I would note that higher energy prices are not a substitute for environmental policy. It's important to distinguish between prices that increase due to energy market forces and price increases that result from policy.
A clear example of this comes from the oil market. Oil prices reached record highs during the early 21st century. Because of Canada's rich natural resources, these high energy prices spurred innovation within Canada, both on low-emission technologies such as wind and solar, but also on methods designed to increase the extraction of fossil fuels, such as the expanded efforts in the oil sands of Alberta.
Thus, simply relying on uniformly higher energy prices provides incentives for the development of both renewable energy and enhanced energy extraction.
In contrast, by reducing the price gap between low-emission energy sources and fossil fuels, policies such as a carbon tax encourage additional development and adoption of low-emission energy technologies, but do not promote additional investments in new oil recovery technology.
Thank you for your time.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
February 23rd, 2017 / 4:55 p.m.
Bryan Watson Managing Director, CleanTech North
Thank you very much. There were some speaking notes provided, but that was fairly late in the game, so I don't know if those came across. If not, that's fine.
Thank you very much to the committee for letting me provide my testimony. My name is Bryan Watson. I am the managing director of CleanTech North. It's perhaps also relevant to this discussion that I was a partner at Flow Ventures, and previously the executive director of the National Angel Capital Organization, focusing on early stage capital.
Specifically on CleanTech North, we are a consortia of clean technology companies from across Canada. Our mission is to help clean technology companies commercialize their innovations and grow internationally. We take a consortia-based approach and focus specifically on the technology companies, not necessarily on the projects where they are being implemented. For example, we would be working with companies that have a new wind turbine, but not necessarily working with companies that are providing the wind farm and that project rollout. That's the context that I'll be approaching things from.
I believe we are the only organization that focuses on a broad base of clean technologies and not strictly on water, oil, or soil remediation. We look at all technologies. We find that provides a good cross-sector perspective.
The questions that were posed to this committee and to witnesses like me fed quite nicely into a survey and round table discussion that we hosted about a year ago, so I'm going to address those in terms of the recommendations and findings we had from that survey and round table session.
The specific topic of that survey and session was what the challenges are both for selling to and for adopting clean technologies. The participants in that were all our members. They included companies that were selling clean technologies into industry—early-stage SMEs, venture backed and angel backed; end users, such as utilities and others of that ilk; and, of course, angel investors and venture capital funds.
There were four main categories of recommendations and risks that were identified. I'll go through those sequentially: financial de-risking, including access to capital; industry receptor capacity development; technological de-risking; and, ecosystem navigation and support.
With respect to financial de-risking strategies, there were a couple of recommendations. For the preferred recommendation and preferred mechanism for helping de-risk early-stage technology and growth companies from a financial perspective, two were highlighted.
The first was using the SR and ED tax credit instrument as a vector for helping induce more investment into early-stage clean technology companies. In Ontario, for example, that input tax credit was reduced in 2016. That certainly had a negative impact on the amount of money our companies were able to spend on the R and D side of things. The recommendation from our group was that there be a focus on clean technology and upping that at the federal level.
The other side, which speaks more to the access-to-capital side of the equation, is an investment tax credit. Similar models have been in place in B.C., Manitoba, and many states in the U.S. In B.C., this is specifically a venture capital and angel tax credit, which provides for an incentive to pull money into early-stage technology companies. I can speak more on that later, if requested.
The third recommendation was to augment capital. In Ontario—and in another couple of other provinces, I know—a number of programs are set up specifically to act as co-investment funds to leverage the investment that private investors are putting into companies. Specifically, there is the investing in business innovation program of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, which invests usually via a debt mechanism of one third to two-thirds. That means industry and angel venture capital investing two-thirds, with FedDev doing their own due diligence but often following on as a co-investment fund for that extra third of the capital needed, up to $1 million.
The full recommendations were to introduce a 3% to 5% clean technology R and D tax credit; to support an investment tax credit based on the B.C. model; and to continue to fund such programs as the FedDev IBI program, similar to those in other provinces, and to ensure that those programs do not run out of funding within a five-year window, which has happened numerous times in the lifespan of FedDev internally in Ontario.
On the industry receptor capacity development side of things, the recommendations were to support industry receptor capacity-building on both the private and public sector sides. There is a lack of confidence in new technologies and ways to bridge that gap such that new technologies can be trusted to be implemented. There are many ways to do that. One that was recommended, and I think referenced earlier, was the U.S. Department of Energy's small business vouchers pilot program. We could implement a similar program here with a clean technology voucher program to support the engineering, legal, financial, and other services that are necessary to give end-users the confidence they need to implement clean technologies.
The other recommendation from our members was to support a clean technology version of the NRC IRAP program, the digital technology adoption pilot program. This was focused specifically on digital technologies for the web-cloud infrastructure, but the recommendation was to repurpose a program such as that to focus on clean technology adoption.
The third recommendation was for technological delisting. There are many programs out. There are more acronyms of programs than I could possibly list that support and provide grants and other supports to early-stage clean technology programs. They're generally effective, but they often don't match the pace of business. They often have a year-long application cycle and by that point a lot of the projects people hoped to undertake have had to begin regardless of the grants. The recommendation is to support those programs to take the technology readiness level from a six-to-seven range to an eight-to-nine range but to focus specifically on those granting agencies that can provide that in a timely manner and ideally, through a local entity that can help form consortia of end-users as well as funders with that early-stage company.
Finally, we recommend ecosystem navigation support. The clean technology innovation ecosystem is a confusing and many-faceted one. There are many different partners that a clean technology company needs to employ from end-users to investors to various different government programs, to R and D partners, to universities and colleges. It is a confusing ecosystem to say the least, so the two recommendations that our members brought forth were to set up a strong cross-sector community of interest to support the technology companies in the navigation of that process and to set up a concierge service to help navigate that process so that those companies can actually both find end-users and navigate the process through the various different grants and other services needed.
I have a quick comment on what's working and what's not working, and we can certainly be open to more of these as requested. Things that our members highlighted that were working well were the SR&ED tax credits program and the programs hosted by Sustainable Development Technology Canada and all of the partner programs with organizations such as the Ontario Centres of Excellence, Alberta Innovates, etc.
There are also the network centres of excellence programs, particularly the business-led network centres of excellence, which require business-led consortia to be put together to pull technologies into use by those consortia. Specific examples include the GreenCentre Canada and LOOKNorth out of Newfoundland and Labrador.
There are also government procurement programs. The Build in Canada innovation program was well received by our members, who found it to be a good process to help companies get the government to be their first consumer, thereby helping support access to capital as well.
With that, I will turn it over to the committee again.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To our three witnesses, thank you for your presentations and for your preparation for today.
I want each witness to spend 30 seconds defining the term “renewable energy”. Earlier, two of them had difficulty defining it.
Let's start with you, Mr. Gilmour. I want to know how you define renewable energy.
5:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow
When I look at the definition of renewable energy, it would, in context, be all sources that would actually contribute to the goal you're trying to achieve. I wouldn't start putting barriers or constraints on what's in or what's out. I think it's about what you're trying to achieve: the performance outcome.
5:05 p.m.
Managing Director, CleanTech North
Certainly, and I've actually been in rooms debating the definition of clean technology ad nauseam, for days on end, so I appreciate the depth of the question. In terms of renewable energy, I believe the best definition would be one that focuses on the fact that the inputs are, by definition, renewable. These are inputs that can be used, captured, and converted to energy, whether it be wind—which, ideally, has good storage capacities and we have clean technology companies that can store that sort of energy.... This sort of energy is provided by a source input that does self-renew, as opposed to one that by its very nature has a limit.