Thank you very much, Madam Vice-Chair and committee members.
It's a real pleasure to have been invited to speak to you today. This topic is of critical importance to us all, and I'm happy to assist in whatever way that I can.
I started a career in energy almost 60 years ago, when I worked for a utility in B.C. As a student I earned enough working in the summer months to pay my way through university. I started at the bottom, but by the time I was finished my master's degree, I'd worked as a load dispatcher and trained some operators on how to operate a power plant.
I've worked for a number of energy companies in Canada. After retiring, I started a new company called Enbala Power Networks. Initially there were three of us. Our intent was to implement cost-effective solutions to reduce emissions in hotels in Whistler. We actually were successful. We reduced the greenhouse gas footprint for the village by 10%. This earned me the honour of carrying the Olympic torch.
I have to say, I'm happy to tell you that the University of Victoria, Bryson's team in Victoria, has been a major source of employees for us. I think almost all the new engineers that we've hired have come from UVic. I'm heading into town in a few days to spend the day with one of our new people.
Canada is really very fortunate. We have about more than 80% of our electrical generation in renewables. That may change because, as we shift from fossil fuels to electrical use, for example, use of electric cars, then I expect that there's going to be a lot of pressure on that number. We're going to have to take some steps.
I'm taking a slightly different approach on this because I see Canada as being divided into three significant areas. B.C. has huge hydro storage and hydro generation, Manitoba has large hydro storage and large generation, and Quebec has large hydro storage. In between, these provinces need very badly to access the storage that's available. The idea of putting tie-lines in between the provinces that lie between B.C., Manitoba, and Quebec would be very valuable to them to allow them to improve their carbon emissions.
The problem of actually integrating solar and wind is not quite as easy as a lot of people seem to want to think it is. I'm doing a Ph.D. right now—even at my advanced age—on a novel method of integrating solar and wind into the grid. One of the things that's interesting is that we found that the grid as it exists, because generation follows the load, is only used to 50% of its capacity. If we turn the grid upside down and manage from the bottom, manage loads, manage storage locally, manage distribution, distributed generation, and distributed storage, we can actually deliver much more power through the grid.
There's been a lot of effort put into the system to minimize and optimize the uses of electricity. For example, for electric lights and electric motors, which are the two largest loads on the electric system, the efficiency has dramatically changed in recent years.
In fact, there are opportunities now, I believe, to optimize the source because in actual fact we have line losses of about 10%. But when you run generators up and down as we're currently doing to follow the load every day, the average efficiency is down well below 90% for hydro generation, and below that for some of the others. In fact, some of the fossil fuel generation runs at about 30% efficiency. There's a huge opportunity to work together to integrate the storage that some of the utilities have, specifically B.C., Manitoba, and Quebec, with Canadian provinces to gain.
Just to put this in perspective, B.C. Hydro over recent years has been selling power to California. We actually have not been selling energy. We sell power during the afternoon and buy it back at night because they're unable to shut down some of their plants. We've made as much as $3 billion on buying and selling. Yet the actual amount of energy has been negative. We've actually imported energy, yet still made $3 billion.
That money could actually be used in Canada by strategic interties between B.C. and Alberta, and perhaps between Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario.
Manitoba, I know from discussions with them, has done very well by supporting wind energy in the U.S. Quebec, we all know, has done extremely well doing the same thing in New York that BC Hydro did in California.
I believe, then, that there is a real value, but there's a need for a strong plan that will look at the whole system.
To carry this a step further, we're having some degree of difficulty because the utilities are all sitting.... I would argue that they have done a very good job of supplying reliable power, but they are out to make their share of the money. They are regulated as to what they can make, and they will collect that amount of money regardless of how much energy they sell.