Natural Resources Committee on May 14th, 2021

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Artibise.

[Robert Artibise]

I think I'll start with my personal example.

We set up our company in Burnaby, British Columbia, because that's where the talent is. We generate our own hydrogen on site from electricity from B.C. Hydro. It is an enormous cost to make our own boutique hydrogen. Real estate is not cheap in my city. It has to be indoors. We're not allowed to make our hydrogen outdoors for regulation purposes, things like this. I think there's something like 30 fuel cell companies in Burnaby. They would love a security of supply of cheap, renewable green or clean hydrogen. It would bring their costs down, which would then drive more and more sector usage with filling stations. Where are they getting their hydrogen from? How do they guarantee that they can have hydrogen at the pump when a customer shows up?

These hubs spawn these kinds of other investments from the private sector, and then the dollars from those private sectors are going to services that are actually going to customers, instead of like my own case, where we're investing in our generation. It's such a small scale.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Goyette, my colleague Mr. Simard often talks about grey hydrogen.

If I understand correctly, the Canadian hydrogen strategy that we introduced in December 2020 doesn't talk about grey hydrogen. It focuses on hydrogen.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on our strategy. What do you like about the strategy? What could the government do to enrich this strategy that we launched in December 2020?

[Normand Goyette]

I believe that green hydrogen and blue hydrogen are complementary. Importing countries have needs, and Europe and California have announced theirs.

Let's talk about transporting hydrogen to those importing countries. It takes 46 days to get from Saudi Arabia to the port of Rotterdam by ship. That's 46 days there and back, plus the time to unload.

We were talking earlier about Canadian leadership.

If you go from Eastern Canada or British Columbia to Asia, the trip takes about 21 days, with nine days there, nine days back and three days to unload.

The cost of transporting hydrogen is said to be higher. Obviously, if we reduce the transportation time required for exports, this will allow Canada to make gains. To do that, we need to put infrastructure in place.

There are systems, such as the LOHC solution, which is also available in Asia with the Chiyoda Corporation. These systems use toluene-based solutions. We know we can't transport large quantities of hydrogen if we don't have an alternative.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

[Normand Goyette]

Mass transportation of hydrogen will reduce costs and put us in a strategic export position.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Goyette.

Thank you, Mr. Serré.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're going to move into our last round, and we'll have time for one person from each party.

We'll start with Mr. McLean for five minutes.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everybody, for being here today.

My first question goes to Mr. Egan of the Canadian Gas Association.

Mr. Egan, we had some of your members here. They talked about the incremental electricity that would be required in two provinces, Ontario and Quebec, if we switched from carbon-based natural gas towards electricity. They were very explicit in saying that it was 15,000 megawatts in Quebec and 90,000 megawatts in Ontario, so one Grande Baleine hydroelectricity project in Quebec and six in Ontario. Do you have the numbers for us for the rest of the country if we switch from natural gas to electricity?

[Timothy Egan]

I don't have them at my fingertips, but we can pull those numbers for you, yes.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

What percentage of natural gas is consumed in Ontario and Quebec versus the rest of the country?

[Timothy Egan]

What percentage of the national consumption? Again, I'm afraid I don't have those numbers at my fingertips. As I've mentioned, globally across the country, about 35% of the energy consumed is natural gas.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay, let's move on then.

As far as power to heat a home is concerned, can you give us a relative power input from natural gas power versus electricity power?

[Timothy Egan]

Well, in the home heating market, we have roughly two-thirds of the market in the country with natural gas heating.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

As far as megawatts to heat a home via natural gas versus electricity is concerned, are you familiar with that number?

[Timothy Egan]

I can certainly get that for you.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to push you a little more, Mr. Egan, because you are part of a carbon-intensive industry, being natural gas, although it's less carbon intensive than oil. Does the issue with enhanced oil recovery benefit the gas industry in relation to the United States, which has an enhanced oil recovery regime that we seem to be ignoring going forward in Canada?

[Timothy Egan]

Does it benefit us? As I said in my previous response to Mr. Lloyd, we have to assess on a case-by-case basis. If there's natural gas involved in the exercise, then it could very much be beneficial. At the end of the day, if the goal is to reduce emissions and if using CO2 produced from natural gas in enhanced oil recovery can help reduce emissions, then federal support for that is something we would welcome.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay, thank you.

I'll turn now to Ms. Green.

Ms. Green, thank you very much for all you've given us here today. I'm really interested in your numbers, the 196 megawatts of untapped clean electricity that you'd be able to provide. That's carbon right now that you would say if we captured it.... It's currently going into the atmosphere from decaying material. If we captured it with your projects, we'd be able to get it clean into the grid. Is that correct?

[Jennifer Green]

Yes, and I'll just clarify that's 196 megawatts of capacity that's already deployed and actually installed today. Therefore, that's making up part of those 279 projects that are already installed in Canada, and those projects are actively working, yes.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay.

We asked one of the witnesses at another meeting, Cynthia Hansen at Enbridge, about the cost of acquiring renewable gas, if you will, collecting it and everything else. She said in an active landfill, obviously, it's a cost.

Can you tell us what your costs are to turn that renewable natural gas into a form that can be collected and moved into productive use at the end of the day? What is that cost per gigajoule?

[Jennifer Green]

Certainly, and I'm going to answer it in a roundabout way and say that the types of projects that can actually produce RNG are very vast in type and size, so as you can imagine, that price would vary as well. For example, if you're looking at a large landfill, your price can significantly vary and be much less than if you're looking at an agricultural facility that's much smaller in size.

As Mr. Egan noted, there's a variance between the conventional price versus the renewable price of natural gas. Again, we can see anything varying from $10 to $40 per gigajoule. A lot of those numbers are very much indicative of programs that are currently active today in B.C. and Quebec in terms of their purchasing of RNG, so there's a correlation there.

I hope that answers your question.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you. That's $10 to $40 per gigajoule, whereas natural gas is $2 or $3.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're out of time. Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Lefebvre for five minutes.