Natural Resources Committee on May 9th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good afternoon, everybody. We're going to get under way. We're running a little late and we have a lot to do today, so we're going to adhere very strictly to the timelines.

Just before we get going, I want to let everybody know that, while at the last meeting we had a discussion about some potential travel plans, I am not going to be taking that to the Liaison Committee because we do not have unanimous consent on that.

As for our presentations today, unless anybody strenuously objects, I'm going to suggest presentations be kept to nine minutes each, which will allow some opportunity for more questions.

To our witnesses, thank you all very much for being here. We have three presentations in the first hour. Young Women in Energy, I would like to thank you particularly because I know we cancelled on you last week, so thank you for making the effort and joining us again today.

I will open the floor up to each group for up to nine minutes. You don't have to use all nine minutes, but you're free to if you'd like to. I encourage you to speak in both official languages because you may be asked questions in French or English.

Ms. Reschke, since you were kind enough to return, why don't we start with you, if that's all right?

[Chelsey Reschke, Member, Young Women in Energy]

Thank you very much for having me. It was an unfortunate occurrence last week with the line strike. I am in the pipeline sector, so I guess it was somewhat of a fateful event.

I'm thankful to be here on behalf of Young Women in Energy and my employer, Keymay Industries. I'm humbled and excited at the opportunity to present my views, which I've gathered over the last eight years of being in energy, along with being a voice for about a dozen or so industry leaders I consulted in preparation for this speech.

I want to spend my time speaking to two interests, “clean tech” definition clarity and platforms that support the commercialization of technology. First, I'll explain how Keymay Industries, my company, which was historically in manufacturing, is now involved in the clean tech market.

Within the natural resources ecosystem, transportation via pipelines is a pretty critical component. Oil and gas pipeline construction is particularly challenged right now by the current political and economic climate, with sustained low commodity prices and an increase in complexity. Fostering innovation has understandably been taking a back seat, as businesses tend to pursue their operational survival.

I think a lot has already been said by other witnesses about the importance of policy stability and reliability from term to term helping out a lot in that sector. We do notice that the large-scale adoption of technology is much more reliant on having that for the long planning cycles they tend to have.

I agree with that sentiment, but I'm giving you the small and medium enterprise perspective here: there are other driving factors for innovation. During the 2015-16 downturn, Keymay Industries spent 1.5% to 2% of our revenue each year on the development and commercialization of an automated coding technology for pipeline construction.

The equipment, which is called the AutoBond, replaces a manual painting process and provides a major savings to our customer in the form of efficient improvement and very large-scale reduction in one-time use materials. It's a significant environmental impact. Like I said, the landfill reduction is a key component here. We estimate that in the course of the next couple of years, there's going to be about 2,500 kilometres of new pipeline construction, and we're talking about a landfill savings of 240,000 pounds of waste.

This brings me to my first point. Is this clean tech? Many who I talked to in preparation for this said, “Absolutely,” and nodded, while others said that the government is looking for biofuels, batteries, and grid solutions. There's a lot of work to be done here in ensuring that small, medium, and large enterprises are included in the development of clean tech.

The definition provided in this study is “any product, process or service designed with the primary purpose of contributing to remediating...any type of environmental damage”. The latter two words are really the key part, “environmental damage”.

At first glance, the example I gave you about the AutoBond may seem like a very small drop in the bucket. It's important to acknowledge that small companies all the way through to large companies have an important role to play as we transition to a more sustainable energy ecosystem.

The major emphasis within the clean tech definition that you have provided us seems to be the remediation or prevention of environmental damage. As there is no generally accepted clean tech definition nationally or internationally, I see this as a leadership opportunity for Canada to champion the measurement and classification of clean technologies using a much more holistic view of the impact, rather than isolating purely the end benefit or product. This is what some would call the wheel to well philosophy, this holistic kind of balance of considering all components that go into the end product, and not just what it's doing at the end of its life cycle.

Life-cycle impact is a much more valuable part of the definition. The reality is that without measuring cradle to grave, how do we truly know if there is a prevention or remediation piece occurring?

One example is the recent tax that Singapore levied on Teslas, and this is a very eye-catching kind of headline. The Singapore land transport authority did a study, and they discovered that the energy that goes into generating the electricity for Teslas uses over 400 watt-hours per kilometre. They taxed the Teslas, because this wasn't as efficient as some of the other energies that could go into driving a car.

Similarly, if we look at the biofuels debate, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that increasing bioenergy crop cultivation poses risks to the ecosystem and biodiversity. Their examples are that biofuels—some of them, I should specify—produce greater total greenhouse gas emissions than those of petroleum products.

The clean tech study is an incredible opportunity for the government to engage industry experts and economists, first to design the proper instruments and tools that you'll need to measure these life-cycle impacts that I'm referring to, and then to provide that feedback to the public so that all stakeholders, including industry, academia, and associations, have a clear understanding of where that area of priority will be and where we will be making a real difference.

The motivation to create clean technology isn't solely for the environmental benefit or the intrinsic benefit. It is also for profit. Where there are inefficiencies or wastefulness, there will be entrepreneurs. In my opinion, clean tech products or technologies will spring to life not because of government policy or incentive but as supported by government policy and incentive. Really, when we look at the $2 billion already spent in the last three years on clean tech R and D, a very healthy amount of that, almost 70%, comes from industry as compared with about 18% provincially and 14% federally. I really don't believe there is a lack of motivation or incentives impairing the creation or adoption of clean tech. I think we need to start looking at some of the disconnects between the R and D and commercialization stages. There is definitely a disconnect there.

There has been a lot written already, such as in the 2015 publication “Canadian Energy Strategy”, about technology and innovation as a high-priority area of focus, but it is very heavily leaning toward the development and research side of things. Really, this is where I'm starting to echo a lot of the experts who have 20, 30, or 40 years more than I do in the industry. It's very unclear in those studies what portion of that $2-billion expenditure is in what stage of that product being developed or realized. Is it more in the R and D stage or is it on the commercialization side? As I said, it's surfaced in almost every single conversation I've had with my peers and mentors that a focus on commercialization is essential, and it's often missing.

The programs they mentioned most frequently, since you guys are looking for examples, included Technology Partnerships Canada, which was retired in December 2006, and the Canadian innovation commercialization pilot program. They mentioned these repeatedly because they had something in common. They both supported pre-commercial products and services, not R and D. There were a lot of examples within Technology Partnerships Canada, where the government was able to get a return on this investment, up to 1.5 times, for the technologies that were successful. But I'm sure you guys have much more access than I do to all of the information behind those programs.

To reiterate, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you. I believe that the highest value the government can provide in fostering clean tech is to assume this leadership role in defining clean tech in a manner that emphasizes life-cycle impacts, and to ensure that the expenditure that will be spent in the next little bit on clean tech development and adoption is inclusive of both carbon-based and carbon-free or renewable-type industries at all levels—small, medium, and large enterprises. If we are going to prioritize anything, it will need to be the investment in the commercialization phases of the technology, not pure R and D.

Thank you very much for having me.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Wright, why don't we turn the floor over to you.

[Tony Wright, General Manager, Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy]

Thank you to the committee, both members and to the staff, for your kind invitation for us to be here today. On behalf of everybody at the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy, or FORCE, as it's commonly known, it's an honour.

I'm pleased to be joined by Melissa Oldreive, our environmental programs manager at the facility, and Jeremy Poste, representing one of our berth holders at FORCE, who is with a company called OpenHydro Technology Canada.

We're happy to be part of a conversation about how clean technology can be part of our economy and our environment. We're here today to discuss specifically the marine renewable energy sector, which includes river current, tidal, and wave technologies. Our specific focus at FORCE is with respect to tidal devices, which have application for both tides and rivers. Tidal turbines operate much like a windmill, but albeit under water. They convert the natural flow of water and current into electricity.

FORCE, where Melissa and I work, is a demonstration facility that connects these turbines to the Nova Scotia transmission grid. FORCE was supported by a $20-million grant from the Government of Canada. That grant has been a huge success for us, spurring nearly $100 million in development activity in this sector and the involvement of over 250 Canadian companies. That activity is projected to reach $240 million as each of these devices is installed at our facility.

The FORCE site is in the Bay of Fundy's Minas Passage, which contains approximately 7,000 megawatts of power potential. That's enough to power almost 2.5 million homes, or all of Atlantic Canada at peak demand. It's quite a staggering resource. That resource flows across the country. It's not limited to the Bay of Fundy, where it's estimated 40,000 megawatts of tidal power from our coast regions lie in wait. This potential climbs significantly if we apply that estimation to Canada's rivers, where it's estimated 340 gigawatts of power lie in wait for all Canadians.

If you look at a map of Canada, you can predict places where tidal and river energy can be extracted. Just as the water speeds up when you hold your thumb over a garden hose, you'll find an energy resource any place where two shorelines pinch together. Unlike other forms of renewable energy, tidal energy is predictable. We can predict the output today, tomorrow, or a hundred years from now, and that makes it easier to plan and integrate into the grid.

Last year, my colleague here, Mr. Poste, did just that. He deployed the first large-scale, grid-connected tidal device in the Bay of Fundy. This is certainly not the first deployment in the world. In-stream tidal energy projects are expanding in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, France, China, and South Korea. Others, like Chile, India, and Japan are also taking early steps. At the moment the U.K. leads this sector, with over 1,800 megawatts in development. The region has deployed dozens of devices, including the first industrial-scale, four-turbine array, the final step before moving to pure commercial farms.

The technology also has applications in northern and remote communities, where people often rely on diesel-based generation for their power sources. Even at this early stage, tidal technology can compete with those costs. North America has seen small-scale deployments in British Columbia, Manitoba, New York, Maine, and elsewhere. In fact, an in-stream project in a small Alaskan village has already shown potential to lower and stabilize electricity rates for remote communities. Importantly, although the project is located in a sensitive spawning ground for salmon, monitoring to date has shown no significant impacts from the installation of this device.

Whether we place a turbine in Alaska, the North Sea, or the Bay of Fundy, continued environmental monitoring will be crucial. Power developers need to provide clear and convincing evidence that their technology is safe and that impacts are acceptable. That means getting in the water and getting equipment wet, and that's something Canada is very good at. Hundreds of Canadian companies have the skill to directly translate to supporting this industry, and they'll have already been put to work monitoring and measuring the resource, transporting and installing substitute power cables, and building turbine components and pioneering new research.

Canadian scientists and contractors have also been hard at work around environmental effects monitoring. Working with them, FORCE has built three underwater science platforms to gather data from the sea floor. These platforms are creating a critical new piece of Canadian expertise: the ability to see and sense extreme turbulent flows located, for example, in the Minas Passage. Wind projects rely on meteorological data to get the ball rolling, both for consenting and for project planning in terms of profitability. We're building the comparable tools for tidal. The data the platforms produce makes everything possible: the technology, design, resource assessment, financing, public acceptance, and more. These sensor platforms and the expertise surrounding them are pioneering. They are also a huge export opportunity for Canada.

Getting the industry moving has also taken the considerable political will of both provincial and federal governments. For that, we would like to thank you. We still need it though, and this includes infrastructure, specifically related to port facilities and a greater capacity that can accommodate increased adoption of renewables; federal policy leadership on renewable targets in tandem with your leadership on carbon; and financial mechanisms to support cost reduction.

As I mentioned, we're not alone in this race. Capturing even 10% of the global market could translate into $5 billion in exports by the year 2050. We're off to a great start.

Again, 250 Canadian companies have been involved in the activity in the Bay of Fundy alone. Across the country, Canadian companies like Rockland Scientific and Instream Energy Systems in B.C., New Energy Corporation in Alberta, and MilAero in Nova Scotia are already providing solutions to the international market. Small Atlantic Canadian companies like EMO Marine have been bought by international firms like the MacArtney Underwater Technology Group.

As the industry matures, so will the opportunity. We believe our oceans and rivers have the potential to create those opportunities right here in Canada.

Thank you very much. I'd now like to turn it over to Jeremy Poste.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks. I'm going to have to ask you to keep your comments to about two and a half minutes though.

[Jeremy Poste, Country Manager, OpenHydro Technology Canada]

Members of the committee, I am sincerely delighted to be with you here today.

As mentioned by Tony just earlier, when it comes to marine renewable energy, Canada is not only a huge potential of untapped resource across the country, but more importantly, Canada has no shortage of talent to harness this resource and foster economic development across the country.

My last three years with OpenHydro in Canada have been dedicated to demonstrating that tidal energy can be safety extracted from the Bay of Fundy to power Canadian homes without compromising the environment in which in-stream tidal turbines are placed.

On top of generating electricity from a clean and predictable energy source, this project has demonstrated that a few megawatts of ocean energy can generate significant investment within the local supply chain. Indeed, more than $33 million were invested during the construction phase and installation phase that employed more than 300 people, 100 of them new job creations.

Marine renewable energy is such an urgent and early-stage sector that it needs political leadership, and appropriate policy instruments to de-risk its development over the next years and achieve adoption within the renewable energy mix.

There are four key areas that are essential to the successful commercialization of tidal energy and marine renewable energy by extent, and that will need appropriate attention and leadership in order to keep the development of marine renewable energy on track with our renewable energy objectives. They are detailed resource characterization and environmental monitoring, grid availability, infrastructure, and long-term visibility through government support and leadership.

We need to develop a suitable understanding of our marine environment through applied research and development in order to optimize the safe and sustainable conversion of marine energy into affordable electricity for Canadians. Whereas tidal energy is highly predictable, a fine understanding of site characteristics is key. Tidal and river current sites are extremely challenging and turbulent environments that require innovative measurements and measuring techniques in order to de-risk financial models based on energy production.

My second point is about grid availability, which involves the development of a coastal grid infrastructure to export the power extracted from offshore marine energies. I am hopeful that the Canada infrastructure bank will look positively at projects that promote smart grid integration, as well as the expansion of a grid infrastructure for the transmission and distribution of clean renewable energy to customers.

My third point relates to infrastructure, and how to develop a suitable marine infrastructure to support the commercial development and create long-term local jobs.

France, for instance, has decided to invest 50 million euros, about $75 million Canadian, in the expansion of existing port infrastructures, wharfs, and quaysides in the port of Cherbourg in Normandy. This project has immediately attracted companies all over Europe to co-finance the establishment of industrial facilities for offshore wind blade manufacturing, offshore wind farm pre-assembly works, and the assembly of the upcoming OpenHydro turbines.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I apologize Mr. Poste, but I'm going to have to stop you there. We do have your speaking notes, which will be available to committee members, so we will have the benefit of your presentation.

Mr. Switzer, I will turn the floor over to you, sir.

[Jason Switzer, Executive Director, Alberta Clean Technology Industry Alliance]

Thank you very much. Good afternoon.

I'm very pleased to be here representing Alberta's clean technology sector as executive director of the Alberta Clean Technology Industry Alliance. I also worked in the oil patch for much of my professional career and then more recently at the Pembina Institute, Canada's leading energy and environment think tank.

Alberta's clean tech sector, we've discovered through undertaking our first major survey of this sector, is largely focused on the needs of the natural resource sector, unsurprisingly, with over three-quarters of the companies in our province marketing to oil and gas or mining.

The health of this sector and its absorptive capacity—the ability to take on novel technology and commercialize it—is actually vital to the long-term success of the clean tech ecosystem in Alberta. I'd encourage you to have a look at our report at www.actia.ca for more details. We think our province is going to become a world-class destination for clean tech venture investment and scale-up and are working regionally with partners B.C., Ontario, and Quebec through the national alliance Canada Cleantech.

Like the previous speaker, I would say our perspective on clean tech is wide. It involves both something new, some element of novel intellectual property or business model, as well as the inclusion of environmental performance better than the competing alternative as part of its core value proposition. In short, you could include clean tech in the natural resource sector in oil and gas as well as in new sectors such as increasing natural sink capacity through CCS or soil carbon enhancement.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for giving us an opportunity to discuss this topic, which is vitally important for the future of our country and of Alberta.

Here, I would like to emphasize how the space of innovation can be stepped up in the extractive sector.

As you know, our oil patch has an incentive and certainly a history of adapting to change, but the need to demonstrate step-change environmental and economic performance comes at a time when leaseholders and their service providers are at a historical disadvantage, losing money on a large portion of the barrels being produced and facing the prospect of a capped or even a declining market in their future. But it's worth remembering that the oil sands industry was borne out of adversity, bankruptcies, operational failures, and even the famous Abasand fire, which took the first commercial plant out of operation permanently in the 1940s. That didn't lead to the abandonment of the sector then.

I would say don't count the oil and gas sector out of the future, but the future will look significantly different than the present or the past.

First off, it's important to know that the high prices for oil and gas in the last decade planted the seeds for the current crisis. As prices escalated, investment focused on developing novel sources of hydrocarbon, including in the Arctic and the oil sands, in Brazil, off the Gulf of Guinea, and so on. It also laid the groundwork for the success of lower cost, high productivity development right here in North America. In fact, companies like Encana were at the front edge of applying a kind of manufacturing approach to resource development. As a result, we've moved to a situation where the problem is supply and not demand.

In fact, McKinsey and others forecast that the global demand for oil and gas will peak within the next 10 to 20 years. Some forecast that it has already peaked and that, with the advent of electric vehicles and demand reduction technologies, we're likely to see a significant decrease over time. Certainly, no serious attempt to address climate change includes growth of oil and gas combustion.

Innovation, in my view, is key to going where the puck is and not where it was. Some changes to technology, process, or business models are merely incremental. I think we realize that incremental will not get this sector where it needs to be. Research on this sector has shown that technology adoption is relatively slow with an average of 16 years from concept to widespread commercial adoption. As a slow clock-speed industry, the oil and gas sector is disadvantaged by high capital cost and by the need for the public sector to intervene to accelerate deployment.

Among the key barriers to technology change in oil and gas is our historic tendency to under-invest in R and D, with only 1% of net revenue in R and D compared with 4% to 12% in computing or electronics. The high capital cost and high risk for any change to the technology template while piloting disruptive change in technology can be both costly and career limiting for proponents.

It also induces regulatory risk. If you change the template, you're asking the regulator to put new constraints on your project approval.

In terms of intellectual property conflicts, one of the tendencies in the industry is to sort of paper around a particular innovation to prevent other people from doing it, and of course, that slows innovation. Most fundamentally, there's a kind of cultural challenge: business architecture lock-in. For example, one study of the adoption of the Internet of things in the oil and gas sector concluded that managers are deploying things, but are confronted by the fact that they can't change their fundamental business architecture, so you're maintaining existing organizational silos rather than changing them.

There are two fundamental ways to disrupt this. First is to rethink what business we are in and then, second, to rethink the role of the public sector in supporting innovation.

Let me talk about the business piece first.

Upstream, a future-oriented view would look toward investment in extraction technologies that leave the carbon in the ground while recovering the electrons, the hydrogen, and the rare earth elements. Several researchers in Alberta and elsewhere are working on this, but like the oil sands before they were commercialized, these are technologies that are outside of the profitability horizon of publicly traded oil companies. Public investment is urgently needed here, and maybe a technology prize, something that catalyzes imagination. Of course, if that's the case, then count ACTia in as part of that.

In downstream refining, I'm aware of a group of experienced engineers and technologists from several leading companies who, working out of Sarnia's Bowman Centre, are investigating the potential for transforming long-chain asphaltenes, the heart of the oil sands, into graphene and carbon fibre. In that view, if you can imagine it, if Ontario were the world's lowest-cost producer of carbon fibre, what would that mean for the long-term prospects for our auto sector or our building sector? There's a moat in there that even Warren Buffett would applaud.

If we were to seriously focus on rethinking what the downstream market is for a product, we might have a long-term story that would be unique globally.

There are several public sector interventions that are necessary to accelerate clock speed in oil and gas. They will include rethinking IP and incentives for technology deployment as well as for rethinking the industry model. As an example for your consideration, Alberta, in reviewing its oil sands royalty regime, struck new ground in offering royalty incentives for non-combustion uses of bitumen. I think that's a model that would be really important in other sectors as well.

There are a few other elements, such as regulatory incentives and flexibility mechanisms for innovative technology deployment. As I mentioned, when you change the template, you create risk for the regulator. In the U.S., the EPA offers negotiated performance waivers under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. This empowers authorities to trade certainty of environmental performance for the opportunity of better performance at a lower cost.

One could also offer a fast track in regulatory consideration for projects that are better than the average or better than the last project that came through the queue. On that basis, companies would compete for a spot in the NEB queue on the basis of how well they were doing from an environmental perspective, rather than how well the project did in terms of getting itself into the queue on a first-come, first-served basis.

We also need a lot more focus on pre-commercial technology sandboxes. A good example of that is the partnership between Natural Resources Canada and the Government of Alberta to launch the Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre in support of the carbon Xprize here in Alberta. Technology sandboxes are the magnets around which ecosystems can form. Much like you go to CERN in Geneva if you study particle physics in order to smash atoms together and understand the fundamental stuff of the universe, we need to create these kinds of magnets in other domains, here in Canada. Like the carbon conversion centre—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I'm going to have to interrupt you, Mr. Switzer, and stop you there. We're just over our time limit. Thank you.

[Jason Switzer]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Tan, you're up first. I understand that you may be sharing your time with Mr. Arseneault.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Yes. I'm going to share my time with my colleague.

Mr. Switzer, the oil and gas industry has always been a very important industry for Alberta, so I have no doubt that you really want to make use of your clean technology to help the industry reduce its carbon footprint and increase its efficiency.

How willing is the oil and gas industry to adopt and to apply your so-called clean technology? How long will it take for the industry to get the proof that your technologies are worthwhile? What's the time frame?

[Jason Switzer]

I think the absorptive capacity of the industry has traditionally been limited. That's why I think a focus both on incentives for technology deployment, which may be financial mechanisms, as well as these technology sandboxes is critical. Getting over the commercialization valley of death where the cost of deploying new technology can number in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars requires the ability to essentially plug and play. You want the infrastructure in place so the companies are able to see examples in practice that allow them to move more quickly.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thanks.

Mr. Poste or Mr. Wright, when the turbine technology is used in the near shore, and solar technology as well, the tidal turbines are subject to corrosion. There might even be a deposit on the blade or even on the pathway that reduces its capacity and reduces the lifetime of the tidal turbine. How do you compare your tidal technology with others, wind and solar?

[Jeremy Poste]

At this stage, there has been no convergence of technologies in the tidal energy sector. You would see different technologies like three blades, wind turbine type, and some other concepts like ours with no axis in the middle. It differs among technologies.

There are a lot of technological challenges to overcome in this industry. You rightly pointed to the fact that we are in the ocean where there is not only corrosion, but high flow, biofouling, and all of those technological challenges that we are trying to demonstrate through our first project at the FORCE test centre. That means we have a suite of sensors that monitor most of those challenges on the technologies themselves. That's where the demonstration projects are necessary because we get to see that over the lifetime of those tidal ranges, over 15 years, and check the predictions of all those changes every six months, five years, 10 years.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Tan.

My question is for Mr. Wright or Mr. Poste and concerns the energy generated from tide currents.

I am from New Brunswick. For those who don't know this, the Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world. So it's an ideal location, on planet Earth, to conduct testing and research.

In that regard, is the research conducted and the technologies used in bays with much smaller tides as useful as in the Bay of Fundy?

[Jeremy Poste]

Topologically and geographically speaking, I think that the Bay of Fundy is very unique. It gives rise to the highest tides in the world. When it comes to tidal power, the beauty of the Bay of Fundy is that it also has very strong currents. So the bay provides both a difference in elevation between low and high tides, and very strong currents.

Today, it is estimated that the Bay of Fundy's harnessable power is between 2 gigawatts and 3 gigawatts. The entire tidal power market, around the world, is between 100 gigawatts and 120 gigawatts. So the international market is much broader in scope than the Bay of Fundy's market. Of course, the Bay of Fundy has an exceptional resource. But the resources in Europe, in Asia or in other locations where OpenHydro operates have current speeds that may be comparable to those in the Bay of Fundy.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Once conclusive results are obtained, it is possible to install those kinds of turbines, which look like spaceships, by the way. They are quite something, at least from what we can see. They can be installed in much less imposing bays.

[Jeremy Poste]

Exactly. A few years ago, the Government of Nova Scotia, along with the providers and promoters who had come to the Bay of Fundy, decided to prove that the technology would be technologically and financially sustainable in one of the most extreme parts of the world in terms of tides.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You're right on time.

Mr. Strahl.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Ms. Reschke.

You said that clean tech products or technologies will spring to life not because of government policy or incentive, but supported by government policy or incentive. Some might say in spite of government policy or incentive.

Can you elaborate on what the difference is between supported by but not because of, and what that means as government designs programs? What should they be focusing on?

[Chelsey Reschke]

The whole concept that I'm trying to drive at here is a broadening of the policy and not trying to have the government play the role of picking the winners and losers.

The problem is that the market decides in most cases. Like I said in that investment summary, the significant investment comes from industry as it is, and that's far in advance of this clean tech study, or any of the involvement that the government plans to have in the future.

What I'm trying to say is that we look at broadening the horizons to include more scale—so small, medium, and large enterprises. I know there's a lot that needs to be done to support the large enterprises because of the complexity and the long time frame, and government is probably going to be a major player in the large enterprises because you can be more patient.

I think you asked the gentleman, Mr. Switzer, about the time frame. Most of the time he said it is an average of 16 years for implementation. If the government is going to do anything, I think it's to be patient, and to make sure you are broadening and not narrowing that definition. If you are going to narrow it, you're going to pre-emptively eliminate some opportunities for things to naturally come on board out of the minds of inventive entrepreneurs and people who naturally have a knack for anticipating where the market is going and what the industries are going to need to transition.

We understand that this is a transition. I'm in Alberta. I grew up in oil and gas. My mom was in filtration. I'm in corrosion, protective coatings for pipelines. We all see what's happening, but it's not an overnight thing so let's broaden the definition and make it more inclusive while that transition occurs.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Right.

Part of my next question to you was going to be on the ill-defined nature of clean tech. We've had oil and gas folks in here talking about improvements to drilling technology, for instance, running rigs on natural gas, which is at the source, where they are. We had members on this very committee who didn't think that qualified as clean technology.

You touched on it briefly, and we had Pierre Desrochers here who said of green technologies, “Often they create, I would argue, more problems than those that existed before. It's not because they're based on renewable energy sources that they are necessarily more sustainable.”

You mentioned the renewable fuels initiative, which I remember watching unfold. There were demands that the government of the day get a percentage of renewable fuels into the system, and it was considered to be unacceptable that it wouldn't happen immediately. Within five years, the policy was rejected as having caused a spike in food prices, a shortage of worldwide food supply, and a realization, as you said, that the greenhouse gas emissions or the inputs to create that fuel were just as high as traditional oil and gas.

Can you maybe explain how, in your view, we need to have the longer view, that if we don't properly consider life-cycle impacts, we're going to not only endanger the economy but our environment?