Mr. Chair, thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee. I wanted to bring a perspective from the building sector, particularly the green building sector, in regard to the risk or opportunities for clean tech.
The green building sector here in Canada and globally is growing at a rapid pace year after year. At the end of 2014, the green building sector represented about $23 billion in GDP and about 300,000 full-time jobs working on constructing, designing, and operating green buildings across the country. Of course, one aspect of green building is low-carbon or high energy efficiency targets. I wanted to give my presentation today around one specific example. There really is an opportunity for innovation in clean tech and also an important role for renewable energy technology, which is really the movement towards low or zero carbon buildings in Canada.
The opportunities are there. According to a study that we did last year, research and development investment in the building sector is the lowest of any industrial sector in Canada. The building industry is still doing things in a way that is not very innovative. It requires research and development as one aspect and to de-risk new technologies and products moving forward. One of those areas is how we get buildings to a low-carbon or zero carbon position. While Canada is a leader in green building, Canada is not a leader on low-carbon or zero carbon buildings. Other countries such as Australia, the United States, European countries, are considerably well ahead of us and we're missing an opportunity for innovation in that area.
Carbon neutral buildings by 2050 is part of the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change. There are three aspects to it. First, energy efficiency is the most important mandate to reduce energy use and the use of carbon-intensive fuels in buildings. Second, we are the beneficiaries in Canada of a very clean electricity grid. About 80% of our electricity is clean. This is a real strategic advantage for Canada and the plans are to make the grid even cleaner. Finally, the real challenge is, under these circumstances, how we replace fossil fuels that are used for heating buildings and also how we reduce carbon-intensive electricity in the country.
In terms of our program, we should develop the best policy instruments to address climate change and encourage the adoption of clean tech, but we need to begin with the right frame and move beyond a tight focus on energy and look more at carbon. The policy language really matters because, even if we talk about carbon targets, we still talk about energy. What we should really start talking about is carbon. How do we design, construct, and operate buildings with carbon in mind? Actually, it changes the approach quite considerably. I want to focus the rest of my remarks on that, because when we focus on designing buildings based on their carbon footprint, we expand our focus from just energy efficiency to one that actually includes renewable energy. This is a real opportunity for Canada to invest and find a way to use renewable energy technologies, particularly for the building sector, in practical applications to reduce carbon emissions. It also encourages both on-site and off-site generation to get to low-carbon or zero carbon buildings and homes.
I have a couple of examples. When we think of carbon instead of energy, we actually drive innovation. We drive innovation in building design. We drive innovation in energy-efficient products, but we also look at what we call integrated renewables that are not just on a remote site, but are actually integrated into the building, which again, is an area of innovation. We look at power storage, which is very important not just for buildings, but for cars and other technologies, to make sure that we can have the energy available when we need it. There is the smart grid technology. There's a whole area of clean tech opportunities that really can help in the building sector and in other sectors as well.
There is an improved resiliency. When you have on-site renewables on a building site or within a community, they improve the ability to handle power fluctuations and outages.
Finally, it really is a very targeted approach, because you invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy in the regions where they are most needed.
It does make a lot of sense. Often you hear the concept of net zero energy. In Canada, we actually don't need to generate more energy. We have enough energy. What we need to do is to reduce the carbon footprint from the energy that we're using in transportation, in buildings, and so on. The net zero concept basically says that you need to generate the same amount of energy that you take from the grid and from other sources. But we have plenty of energy, so that should not be a main driving force towards a low-carbon economy.
In terms of our recommendations, I would like to focus on two, actually.
We need to consider the type and the location of the energy generation when designing renewable energy programs. The need for low-carbon renewable energy varies greatly across the country as a result of climate, the choice of electricity or fossil fuels for heating, and the carbon intensity of the grid.
Governments and regulators should look at buildings not in isolation but as part of a larger energy system. What does this mean?
Buildings can generate renewable energy on-site or it can be procured from off-site. Governments and regulators must encourage renewable energy generation on all scales, and not just one solution. It can be the roof of a building, or it can be a wind farm miles away.
The second part is that to reduce costs and increase uptake, renewable energy generation products should be designed to be integrated into buildings, such as building-integrated photovoltaics. This is an area that's been around for a number of years but really lacks the support to make.... The best way to put it is that you don't have unattractive solar panels on the roof; they become, actually, quite a beautiful design element. Construction of these buildings is actually cheaper if you integrate these than if you add them on to a building.
In terms of the questions you posed for this committee meeting, there are a number of institutions that could really help leverage this clean renewable energy technology. One would be the National Research Council. There are also Natural Resources Canada's office of energy efficiency and Canmet; SDTC; Infrastructure Canada; and of course, in terms of skills and capacity development, HRDC.
In terms of policy instruments, I think the best policy instrument you have at your disposal right now is the building code. The building code is a way to really move up the performance of buildings, maybe not to low or zero carbon, because everybody needs to have the ability to meet the code.
There's also room for voluntary action. There's room for research and development into these technologies, particularly how they apply to buildings and communities. Again, with voluntary action can come targeted investment, preferably from the private sector investing in buildings, which we already see happening, but also, on a larger scale, investment in buildings that have very low- or zero-carbon performance.
Thank you very much.