Natural Resources Committee on May 29th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today.

We have two witnesses joining us in the first hour. Bill Eggertson, the executive director of the Canadian Association for Renewable Energies, is with us this morning. As well, by video conference, we have Pippa Feinstein, from Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.

The process for the morning is that each of you will be given up to 10 minutes to deliver remarks in French and/or English, and then we'll open the floor to questions from around the table.

We're running a little bit late, so why don't we jump right into it.

Mr. Eggertson, why don't you start us off, sir.

[Bill Eggertson, Executive Director, Canadian Association for Renewable Energies]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, good morning.

Energy data have been a focus of mine since 1985, when I was hired to manage the Solar Energy Society of Canada, Inc. after the federal government terminated funding for renewables at the National Research Council. That political decision was partly due to the fact that most Canadians had no idea then of the potential or the need for renewables. We had barely registered on data charts and joked that when a second photovoltaic panel was installed, Canada had increased its PV capacity by 50%.

You have posed five questions on the current state and future of national energy data. Your mistake was asking for my recommendations from 30 years of promoting emerging renewables.

After SESCI, I worked for the national solar and the national wind associations, served as senior writer or editor for the world's two largest magazines on renewables, was trained by Al Gore in his climate reality initiative, spoke at COP 11, managed the U.K. government's climate security program out of Ottawa, currently manage the Canadian Association for Renewable Energies and the Canadian chapter of the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association, and in my spare time serve on three advisory committees on energy or environment for the city and the province. In addition to my professional obsession, I also renovated my older house into one of Canada's top 20 homes for energy efficiency.

The benefits of energy data go far beyond tidy columns of numbers. We do need to know how many million barrels of bitumen are produced, but we also need to know the end use for that oil. Was it burned one time for heat or did it become plastic that can be recycled? How many billion cubic metres of natural gas make fertilizer and how many are burned to generate sine-wave electricity at half the CO2 emissions of coal?

Energy use is finally linked with climate change, and there is an urgent and growing need for clear interpretation of what happens beyond tracking basic production data.

Most users of energy data are geeks like me who care about market share, potential penetration rates, relative movement, and other statistical cross-tabs. As a registered lobbyist, I cite only government figures. You can argue with my assumptions and question my conclusions, but you cannot dispute the statistics.

Experts will never be satisfied with data collection or distribution, but this committee should consider the needs of non-geek Canadians and how the availability of relevant and actionable data can help us become a greener and more sustainable country.

The largest single gap in current datasets is the lack of the detail on end-use application or the disposition of energy. My associations advocate for low-carbon temperature energy in buildings. I crunched NRCan's comprehensive energy use database to show that each home consumes 30,338 kilowatt hours' equivalent of energy, of which 86% is for space heat and water heating. Only a minority is for electric appliances and lights. I then dug deeper to show that an average household emits 4.6 tonnes of carbon, or six pounds per square foot of floor space. Only when numbers are made relevant will people notice, understand, and take the appropriate action.

There are many ways to manage, acquire, and share data, as evidenced by the complex outputs from the office of energy efficiency, the National Energy Board, Statistics Canada, EIA, IEA, EPA, Ernst and Young, Frost & Sullivan and hundreds of private reports that touch on every aspect of energy. When I worked out of the U.S., I liked the EIA reports that were based on mandatory company filings. When I reported out of Britain, EU energy data were culled from a complex structure that makes Canada's federal and provincial jurisdictions look quite simple. However the data are acquired, numbers must be timely, accurate, and open to scrutiny, and, ideally, in the same ballpark. While retaining confidentiality, they must cascade to the lowest possible level of aggregation so they make sense to me as well as to us.

Before I table my top 400 recommendations, I apologize for their cryptic nature and hope they will make sense—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Bill Eggertson]

—based on my earlier commentary or on testimony that you have heard from prior witnesses.

One, data on energy production or consumption should be accompanied by details on its end use. In other words, how is that energy used? A tabular column with this information would allow easy calculation of emissions for CO2, NOx, particulate matter, and other deleterious impacts, which can be mitigated if a specific application is converted to a cleaner source of energy.

Two, there should be more differentiation between electricity and energy. Too many people think electrons are the only game in town, but electricity is a carrier, not an energy. Most is low-carbon hydro or nuclear, and it is only 20% of our national energy mix. That said, watch out for space cooling. Consumption has doubled since 1990 and, thanks to global warming, will continue to grow.

Last week, the IEA warned that space cooling is a critical blind spot in the energy debate.

Three, when tracking electricity, include time of consumption. In Ontario, the price during peak period is double the off-peak rate. This timing detail can facilitate greater adoption of storage, and better grid planning. My house is classified as all electric, but I use less than 10% in peak periods.

Four, I fully support lower carbon emissions, but what do the data say? If all cars in Ontario converted to Teslas, Volts, Priuses, or LEAFs, at current charging efficiency, and drove 18,000 kilometres per year, the resulting demand for fuel is equal to the output of four nuclear reactors. This type of data interpretation is critical to inform our discussion of future energy use and environment.

Five, we should track or estimate non-mainstream renewable energies. One of our oldest and largest energy sources is biomass. How much propane and oil is not combusted thanks to wood stoves? Solar lights are ubiquitous. Passive solar is real energy. Most swimming pools still use solar thermal to heat their water. Again, how much conventional energy is not being consumed because of non-valorized off-grid renewables? We focus on wind turbines and solar panels, both cost-effective technologies, but do not overlook the 80% of energy use that is still high carbon, and which can be displaced relatively easily by thermal renewables.

The ground source heat pump industry is finally explaining that, yes, we need electricity to operate, but we produce fourfold in dispatchable renewable energy from the ground. NRCan estimates our units produced 1.4 billion kilowatt hours in 2010, about 40% of the output from all wind turbines that year. Although smaller than the deep lake water cooling system in downtown Toronto, both towers of the Museum of History are completely space conditioned from the Ottawa River using heat pumps, which most people here do not know.

Six, it would be very difficult to quantify, but please try to track conservation and energy efficiency. Power utilities have set targets. I'm slightly uncomfortable with their methodology, but tracking megawatts and megatherms would benefit all users, as well as save money and emissions.

Seven, reporting national energy data necessitates big numbers with binary prefixes of, “mega”, or, “giga”, but data must also be available in usable formats and common technology if we want real people to have any real concept of their consumption and the environmental impact of their consumption. I used NRCan data to calculate that the city of Ottawa consumes 178 petajoules across all sectors, which I then converted to 50 billion kilowatt hours, and broke down to each end use. No one knows what a BTU or a decajoule is. To compete with the big boys, we must adopt their terminology so we can be compared on an equal level.

I am not suggesting that SI measures be dropped, just that accompanying charts and graphs also display units that people understand, as grocery stores list the price of tomatoes in pounds, and many thermometers still show degrees Fahrenheit.

In summary, I support many of the suggestions others have made to this committee on fine-tuning the sourcing and sharing of energy data. My objective today is to see if we can inject more colour and more value into any and all numbers that are disseminated. The federal exhortation to limit temperature rise to 2°C is a sexy way to sell that concept, but it could encourage some people to turn up their air conditioners to help keep our planet cool.

As the one-tonne challenge showed, nothing is going to happen until I know what a tonne is, how many tonnes I emit, and how I can reduce my load.

Canada has a lot of energy, so most discussion of energy data is also a discussion of carbon data. If you want me to reduce my carbon footprint, let me see how many kilowatt hours of carbon energy I need to stop burning. If relevant data are provided in an actionable format, a person who wants to change and be part of the solution can and will make the right decisions.

I spend too much time massaging complex big data into manageable packages and interpreting energy issues for concerned individuals. If this committee is setting new guidelines for collection and release of national data, I want you to take over that part of my job.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Eggertson.

I think you'd be glad to know that since this study started, there are a few more data geeks around, some of them around this table.

Before we get going, I have presentations from all three witnesses today, but because we received them late, they haven't been translated. I didn't distribute them because of that, but if there's a consensus to do it, we can pass them around. Does anybody object to that? No? Okay. They will be translated, yes.

Ms. Feinstein, we'll move over to you, please.

[Pippa Feinstein, Counsel, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper]

Thank you.

Swim Drink Fish Canada/Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is a grassroots environmental organization that uses research, education and legal tools to protect and restore the public's right to swim, drink, and fish in Lake Ontario. As a non-political registered charity, Waterkeeper focuses on research and justice issues in the public interest. It works with communities to facilitate the use of environmental laws to protect their rights to swim, drink, and fish, and it participates in a variety of legal and public consultation processes to help ensure environmental decisions are made on the basis of sound and tested scientific evidence by independent decision-makers in the public interest.

Waterkeeper was invited to present before this standing committee, and we thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts on the current state and future of energy data in Canada.

This is an important time for federal energy policy, and it is full of promise for creating a more transparent, accountable, and responsive energy planning and regulatory landscape. Last year, Waterkeeper submitted a written paper to the expert panel of the National Energy Board modernization review process. One of our organization's recommendations addressed the need for an independent body responsible for collecting and disseminating energy data and other information. The expert panel's final report also ultimately proposed the creation of a Canadian energy information agency.

At the same time, if such an agency is created and made responsible for producing energy supply and demand forecasts that are then used to inform federal energy policy and assess the economic and technical merits of new energy infrastructure, it must be accompanied by a robust process in which this information can be tested and supplemented by members of the public and public interest organizations with expertise in these areas. Therefore, the development and provision of this data must be understood and designed with this larger regulatory context in mind.

Waterkeeper also made several other information and data-specific recommendations in our report to the expert panel, which may be worth discussing at this time.

First and foremost, the development and publication of energy data must be guided by the public interest. Here, conceptions of the public interest must include the right to a healthy environment and access to information about how energy production can impact the environment. Therefore, environmental data not limited to that concerning climate change must be included prominently in any future energy data hubs and/or platforms. This should include comprehensive pipeline failure data in line with that currently collected by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. It should also include other environmental impacts of energy production and transportation, such as water use and impacts to local watersheds.

Second, the accessibility and user-friendliness of data is crucial. Waterkeeper advocated for standardized and centralized one-window access to energy data from across the country from federal, territorial, and provincial governments and government agencies, as well as universities, industry, and the non-profit sector. A single data hub or platform in which all information has already been collected can be made compatible for comparison and analysis, and this would be immensely useful.

Third, open data and access to disaggregated data, with provisions in place to protect sensitive information, is crucial for government transparency and accountability. It also leads to higher quality science and greater productivity, not to mention facilitating more meaningful public engagement. Further, open-access disaggregated data does not preclude the continued publication of aggregated data and energy reports that are already being undertaken by government and government agencies. It just makes such reports more transparent and accountable.

Significantly, the federal government has an open data plan that contains several commitments to help guide developments in energy data and information-sharing policies. The plan commits to expanding and improving open data across federal public services with special attention paid to the extracted sector, federal science activities, and geospatial data. The way those commitments are phrased provides a lot of opportunity for very creative thinking in terms of interdisciplinary data sharing in this area.

I'll end my presentation there and look forward to your questions. My speaking notes also contain several citations referencing reports with more specific information on each of the recommendations I've just spoken about.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Harvey.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here this morning.

I'm going to start with you, Mr. Eggertson. How do you feel the best way to disseminate this large amount of data potentially could look? What do you think is the best way forward for the federal government to engage in a process that would allow for more unified collection of data from across the entire country that would be available for all groups to view, recognizing that a huge amount of that data comes from private industry? What are your feelings on that?

[Bill Eggertson]

Collection of data does become a bit problematic in terms of company confidential information. There are ways of doing it. As I mentioned, the EIA in the United States does a fair amount, and industry complains. I was involved with the ground-source heat-pump industry down there, and they bitched about having to fill out the forms, how many units they were shipping. If kept company confidential, then you have a lot of very good data.

How it's collected, I'd prefer to leave to your legal experts in terms of how to do that. It's a burden, and people will complain that government is interfering again. My focus is more on the dissemination, distribution, publication, and release of this data.

I like the material that comes from the office of energy efficiency. Statistics Canada, in my opinion, is probably the weakest source, because it misses a lot of stuff. I prefer the office of energy efficiency. It has a very large amount of data in downloadable files. I can segment it by which years I want. I can compare year to year. You have to be an expert in Excel to take full advantage, and that's where the geeks will rise to the surface, so to speak.

I would also love to see summary data that is made intelligible for average people, so that they have some idea.... Again, my criticism of the one-tonne challenge was, “Huh? What is a tonne?”

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Do you feel that the most logical way forward is an independent agency that's separate from Statistics Canada and that has a mandate to ensure the data being collected and redistributed in a format—several different formats—is not only relevant but impartial?

[Bill Eggertson]

In speaking from the private sector, yes, being arm's length from government is absolutely crucial.

We've seen what's happening in the United States under the current administration. Data can be massaged, perhaps in the wrong way. It's having an arm's-length, very neutral body—and I won't get into the debate over the National Energy Board and whether it was fulfilling its arm's-length mandate—that has the thumbs-up from the federal government: “We believe this. We think it's good. It's open to scrutiny. Everybody has verified it. Everybody has signed off saying they're happy with the way this is collected and the manner in which it is disseminated.”

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

The system in the United States has veered away from working more collectively with the states. It has basically evolved into a completely independent process that doesn't rely on data from the individual states.

Do you think that's advantageous or disadvantageous for a country like Canada, which has a substantially smaller population base, of course, and smaller resources, to undertake to do something like this without engaging the provinces?

[Bill Eggertson]

To respond to your question, it's disadvantageous. The more people who are involved in the collection, the better the final output will be. How you politically or legally do that becomes a problem.

I have concerns about the U.S. data. It's not quite as solid as I used to suspect it was.

In Canada, you're right: we're smaller. Therefore, we have less data and it should be easier for us to collect. Let's use that to our advantage and show the world that we can become a leader in collection and dissemination of good solid data.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay.

Ms. Feinstein, what do you think would be the three biggest steps the federal government could take going forward in the process of unifying this data and trying to do it in a more robust, transparent manner? What are three key take-homes that we could do in a finite amount of time?

[Pippa Feinstein]

Speaking as a public interest organization, one of the challenges we face is having a limited capacity to access the information that we need to provide the expertise that we can.

One thing to emphasize would definitely be increasing the accessibility of existing data. I think that can be done quite easily through an online portal without necessarily the need for lots of policy or legislative development. That could be done quite easily and quite quickly by links to other websites, that online way of doing things. That's one emphasis.

Another emphasis to increase transparency is to just release more disaggregated, raw data. Right now as an organization, if we want to look at forecasts of energy use and demand, etc., it's often provided in very digested forms. The data isn't separated from the analysis of that data. Sometimes there's a lack of disclosure of the methodologies that are used to interpret the existing data. Just providing the raw data to the public or providing more information about the methodologies used to interpret that data would be very useful for us. We would be able to see the bases of government assumptions about energy use and the future of energy policy. Again, that's something that can be done quite easily.

I would also suggest something that facilitates more real-time data disclosure, when it's just given in a raw format. Again, generally speaking, that is not as labour intensive.

The third take-away could be to remember that data disclosure does exist within a larger regulatory context. Going forward, it will be very important to ensure robust hearing processes in which energy policy is determined and oversight over the way governments use energy data to actually inform the creation of policy through hearing and processes.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Schmale, I believe you're next.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you.

I thank the witnesses for coming today. We do appreciate that.

I want to talk about the energy data for a second. We're talking about data. Mr. Eggertson, you mentioned about people having the information and understanding more about what it is and how they can help, and that type of thing.

When people do have that information—and we're seeing that people are already reducing their energy consumption as it is—what else could they be doing—that you are seeing in the data you have access to—that they're not doing already?

[Bill Eggertson]

I think there are a number of unintended consequences occurring as a result of the people's desire to do the right thing.

I can use a case study of ground-source heat pumps. You can either upgrade the efficiency of your natural gas furnace or you can install a ground-source heat pump. Without burying you in data, one continues to use a combustible fuel that requires pipeline distribution across the country. I'm going to ignore the job creation angle because that's a touchy subject this morning in another setting. You can also install a decentralized ground-source heat pump, which produces.... It literally is the only technology that is net zero, plus it produces more energy than you consume. We automatically win the battle.

My association needs to explain to Canadians that this is a viable option. The payback might take a bit longer but the environmental impact and the impact on your wallet are much lower. People do need to understand a lot more about energy. We need to stop talking about, with respect, 2°C. That doesn't mean anything to a Canadian.

How do you achieve the goal of maintaining 2°C? I think more data in presentable format would convince people to ask, again, if they should be going to electric cars if there is indeed a possibility that doing so will require more nuclear reactors?

I'm not disparaging electric cars, but are we proceeding on the correct path? Should we be having a lot of rebates and incentives? Here in Ontario, you can get a $20,000 rebate for a ground-source heat pump. The last time I was involved, Ontario Hydro gave a rebate of $2,000. The price went up $3,000. People didn't know. They're buying diapers, not because they have a baby but because there was a really great sale on diapers.

I'd like to avoid that type of market-skewing mechanism. The only way that is going to happen is by having an informed populace so they can make the right decisions.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Another point on that would be the price point they are paying, and if they are able to afford such a technology, but I guess with mass production, the more it's available, the more there is competition, the lower the price will be—that type of thing.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Chair, I do apologize to you and to our witnesses. Given what has developed in the news today, I'd like to move my motion, Chair, as follows:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on Natural Resources, in light of the potential cancellation of the Trans Mountain Expansion on May 31, 2018 and the flight of investment in oil and gas leaving Canada, immediately invite Mr. Brian Porter, the CEO of ScotiaBank, to appear before the committee to inform the members of how Trans Mountain’s cancellation may affect future investment in Canada’s oil and gas sector, its supply chain and other resource markets; that the meeting take place no later than May 31, 2018; that the meeting be televised; and that the committee report its findings to the House.

If anyone needs a copy of that motion, I have many in my possession.

You're probably asking why this is so important. I think we all know the deadline that is coming forward very quickly from Kinder Morgan, which is of concern to many, and for those who weren't paying attention to the news this morning, a deal has been announced. The headline from the Financial Post says, “Canada said likely to buy Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline as deadline looms”. It came out about 15 to 20 minutes ago. The article says:

Canada is likely to buy Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd.'s Trans Mountain oil pipeline and its controversial expansion project in a bid to ensure it gets built amid fierce opposition, according to a person familiar with the talks.

Buying the pipeline outright has become increasingly likely and is now the most probable option for the Canadian government, the person said...because the discussions are private.

It went on to say that the deal, a value for which hasn't been publicly reported—but I think this has been updated since; I believe it's $4 billion—will be announced very shortly.

Here we have, Chair, a private company that did not ask for a single penny of taxpayer dollars being bailed out by a government which, since it approved this project, has been asked by the official opposition hundreds of times over a year and a half to come up with a plan to outline the path forward for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, a pipeline that has been in existence since the 1950s—it would be an expansion of what is there—a project that required private investment only.

Now we get to the point, because we heard for a year and a half that legislation was coming, that there was a plan in place. No matter how many times we asked for a plan, the blame game started, and that's all we heard, over and over again. Frankly, for the opposition, it was quite tiring to hear from a party on the other side that had complained time after time when they were in opposition that they didn't like the answers they were getting, and in the election they promised Canadians they would be different. You heard that over and over again, that it would be different. And thank you to the NDP, which pointed out that they're actually worse than the previous government, and that is actually quite disgusting for those who voted for real change.

We have this project, a $7-billion project, thousands upon thousands of jobs, and the government bungled the file so badly that now we have to nationalize the project in order to push it through. I think that is quite shameful, and I just cannot believe that we are at the point where all sides in this debate have dug in so hard that Canadian taxpayers are now on the hook for this project.

Who are they going to get to build this pipeline? I would like to know. Are they going to get Enbridge? They're probably not too happy, because their last project was cancelled. Are they going to get TransCanada? No—energy east. Petronas? No, they're probably not going to do it. Petronas thought Canada was the next area to invest in. Their number one area outside Malaysia was Canada, where they saw opportunity and hope, environmental standards and regulations that are the envy of the world, and an energy environment that had access, or so they thought, to many markets. We watched how that fell apart.

How many tens of thousands of jobs and how many good-paying jobs have been lost because of these decisions? I've talked about this many times in question period. I've talked about it many times in this committee.

Even next to my riding, in Peterborough, we had General Electric, where there were 300 jobs lost and there are 300 families without a paycheque. They had a contract to build the motors for the energy east project. That project was cancelled because the government continued to change the rules. Why would TransCanada continue to put good money after bad when they knew that there was no light at the end of the tunnel?

That project got cancelled, and General Electric, which has been in Peterborough since the 1800s—it's known as “Electric City”—closed. Now, that wasn't the main reason that it closed, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. As you can imagine, the ridiculous price of electricity in Ontario right now is not helping matters much, along with the increased taxes and regulation. On and on, the pile continues to grow.

Now we have this pipeline needing to be nationalized. In this day and age, nationalized: I cannot believe it. This is why we need Brian Porter here. What does this mean for investment in general in Canada? What does it mean for somebody like my friend Marc? What does it mean in his riding for someone with the mining sector? Do they expand? Is there certainty at the end of this tunnel?

For those of us in Ontario, there's the Ring of Fire with its huge resources in the ground. What does that mean? Does any company think that it might be a good idea nowadays with Bill C-69 and many others, and with what's going on here, to dump some good money and convince their investors that, yes, Canada is a place to do business? You never know; you probably won't get your project built, but if it is approved, well, chances are that the government is going to have to bail it out because you can't get it finished anyway.

I just cannot believe this in a country such as Canada, where we had a regulatory process that is the envy of the world, with years and years of consultations upon consultations and environmental standards that are the highest anywhere, and this is how.... This is just incredible.

These are good-paying jobs that do not require taxpayer dollars. They require private investment that companies secure. Mining companies, oil and gas, you name it: they can secure that financing, and then the taxes they pay on that revenue fund our valuable social programs here in Canada, programs that we all love.

Yet now we have to bail out a project that the government approved, all because the Prime Minister did not go to meet with Premier Horgan when he was sworn in and work out the path forward. That is an unbelievable failure.

That is an unbelievable failure on this file. I feel bad for the tens of thousands of Albertans and anyone else employed in the energy sector who have had to wonder if they will get a job. Well, for the longest time it was, will my job ever come back?

I will read this from the Financial Post—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Just as a courtesy to the witnesses, do you anticipate speaking for more than 15 minutes? If so, then—

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Yes, I think so, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Okay.

Sometimes things change course in the middle of a hearing. As you can see, they have this morning, so unfortunately it looks like we're not going to be in a situation where any more members are going to be asking you questions. You are free to stay and listen, but—

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

It's riveting stuff.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Yes, it is.

You're also free to go, with our gratitude for coming today. I will leave it to you to do what you want to do.