Evidence of meeting #55 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 technology.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
When it comes to carbon dioxide greenhouse gas, if you had the wood waste sitting there, is it better to burn it as a biofuel?
Senior Adviser, Cleantech, MaRS Discovery District
You can use it to make electricity if you like, but it's more valuable as a liquid fuel. From a technological point of view, liquid fuels are harder to replace and there is more economic value in a liquid fuel than there is in the same amount of energy in the form of electricity.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Okay, I'm just trying to get at the carbon dioxide production.
Senior Adviser, Cleantech, MaRS Discovery District
The carbon dioxide production, woodland being the example, is a 92% reduction in carbon dioxide compared to the gasoline it replaces, and that takes into account the full life cycle.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Really, I was rushing through this. Where do I go now?
Liberal
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I'll go back to you, Mr. Wissing, and the east-west power grid. Could you just spend a minute talking about that?
Electrical Engineer, As an Individual
I'm glad you are giving me that opportunity. You have a map somewhere. This is basically the map we are looking at where I proposed how the grid runs. You notice that it's quite high up in the north, and the reason you want to put it there is that if you look at the wind map you'll find that the reddish part on the wind map is where the most wind is.
Currently we have most of our wind turbines in Ontario at the same height as Rome, at the 45 degrees parallel. If we put it there, then you'd wonder why, as Rome is not known for wind turbines or windmills at this time. But if you put it at the height of Moosonee, in the northern part of Ontario, which is at the height of the Netherlands, then you know there will be definitely more wind there. If you look at the earth, the more north you go, the more wind you get, and from the equator, the more south you go, the more wind you get. As a matter of fact, Antarctic is the windiest continent in the world.
There are several issues with how you compete against, say, Europe. The European Union has a land mass that is half the size of Canada and there are 500 million people, so if you want to put a wind farm up there it is very expensive because ground is expensive and you have to fight a lot of battles. In our case with relatively cheap land, you could convert that wind to carbon-neutral natural gas and actually make it an export item because Europe doesn't have enough room to make renewable energy and we could export carbon-neutral natural gas to Europe for them to use because we are uniquely positioned, as a country, with a massive amount of land mass and with a relative low population, which Europe doesn't have.
There is another product that is called torrefaction, which is converting wood to bio-coal. It's the same thing. You can take coal-fired power plants in Europe and give them this bio-coal and they will be carbon neutral at the same plant with no change of technology. This is the whole thing. If we want to save money in the world and give it to the rest of the world as far as that goes, this is the opportunity because the infrastructure for change is so expensive that you'd better use sources of energy that are carbon neutral.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Thank you very much. That was a long minute.
Thank you very much to all our witnesses. Mr. MacGregor had to leave a bit early but we're very grateful for your taking the time to be here.
Mr. Rand, thank you again for joining us twice.
We will adjourn for the day.