Natural Resources Committee on May 9th, 2024

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay.

The next point I would like you guys to talk about here—and I'm hoping there's been some research into this—is that there have been multi-million-dollar investments by the federal government into solar farms across the country.

How much insurance is there on those farms? Has the government insured those investments?

[Debbie Scharf]

In principle, no. The government supports capital investments in those projects—we'll call them contracts—but the risk of those projects, the ownership of those projects and the implementation of those projects are all within the purview of the project developer. The federal government would not be insuring them.

We're not the owners of them. We are simply contributing to making them economically and financially viable.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay. Let's say somebody builds a solar farm. The government pours $20 million or $25 million into it. In year three, it gets hailed out, completely destroyed and written off. What happens then?

[Debbie Scharf]

I would presume that the project developer would do what it needs to do to manage its own projects. The federal government is not an owner in those projects.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Right, but what happens if the proponent walks away from it? Then the taxpayers have spent $20 million on one little project and there's no cleanup. It has left a vast area of panels just sitting there.

I've heard reports before of solar panels just being chucked in the landfill after they've been hailed out. If we're spending huge amounts of public dollars to achieve a regulation, I'm just concerned that this is something that could happen there.

One area where SaskPower, for example, has—

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mr. Patzer, our time is up.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

I gave you a few extra seconds.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

That's okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We'll now go to Mr. Aldag for our last five minutes.

Mr. Aldag, go ahead.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you for being here and for the insights you have shared so far.

I'm a member of Parliament from British Columbia. We've recently gone through the commissioning of the Site C dam. We've seen how expensive it is to build a project at that kind of scale.

I have a lot of conversations in B.C. about the potential for geothermal power. I'd like it if you could share some thoughts on what you see in British Columbia—and perhaps beyond—on geothermal cost comparisons and reliability. If we have anything on geothermal, I'm happy to hear a bit of information on it and what role it might play within Canada's energy mix.

[Michael Paunescu]

Thank you for your question.

Geothermal is a very interesting renewable energy source. It has a very high capacity factor—like nuclear energy—of 95%. Because we don't yet have a geothermal plant in operation in Canada, the cost may be a bit higher than other renewable energy technologies, but that cost would be offset over the life of the plant because of the very high capacity factor.

We have a number of plants under construction in Saskatchewan and Alberta. B.C. is also known for having very good geothermal resources, both high temperature and low temperature.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

There are some possibilities there with geothermal and projects that are under way, with more opportunities to come.

We also had talked earlier in our discussion about large-scale projects, and I don't think we fully explored the offshore potential. At this committee, we spent a lot of time on Bill C-49. We talked about how the Atlantic Loop will benefit. However, can you speak a bit more on the unrealized potential that we have for offshore energy production, and what that may mean to providing the power that we need as a nation?

[Debbie Scharf]

I don't have any direct figures around megawatts of offshore potential. My colleagues might know.

There is a great amount of potential in the offshore. One of the interesting, unique features of offshore wind is that the wind blows more in the winter and in the cold, which is not what you expect from the onshore wind farms, so there are some unique considerations around offshore wind. It could provide that kind of balance with what's happening onshore with renewables in the wintertime. There's tremendous potential in the offshore in the Atlantic region, which is why, of course, you had the bill in front of you not that long ago.

We're doing quite a number of other pieces of work to try to accelerate that development. The provinces are very keen on it. Nova Scotia has already set a target—I think it's by 2025—for a call for bids and is wanting to advance that.

The legislation is only one piece of the framework, though, that needs to be put together. We have two regional assessments under way so that we can get a clear picture of where the impacts might be, where the best places are for these wind farms, so that when these projects do come to fruition, we can move much faster through the regulatory process to get these projects built.

We have $50 million that we're spending on studies to collect baseline data that we're going to need to feed into those project assessments to look at wind integration into grids that are going to be onshore, to talk about how those projects will integrate with existing systems.

All of those are happening as the corollary around the legislative pieces that are moving forward so that we can get those wind resources built as quickly as we can.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Lastly, what's happening on the international front, and how is Canada poised to take advantage of what's going on internationally that would be applicable here, as we try to scale up the amount of energy we have over the next number of years?

[Drew Leyburne]

Canada is a very active participant in all the major multilateral fora that talk about energy. The International Energy Agency is obviously pre-eminent among those, but we also have IRENA, which is exclusively focused on renewable energy.

Canada, I would say, punches well above its weight in lots of these organizations. That's on the energy RD and D and the energy policy side. I think even on the energy regulation side, Environment Canada is quite active internationally as well.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

My colleague wanted to know if there's any opportunity for geothermal from abandoned oil wells.

[Drew Leyburne]

There are a few companies active in this space. The Eavor project takes advantage of oil and gas assets.

There's another one. I've forgotten the name, but we can certainly send it. There's a second project at least that is using abandoned oil sites or oil infrastructure to do geothermal energy.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

That's the end of our rounds of questioning for today.

Thank you for your testimony.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Chair, I have a suggestion to make the analyst's life easier.

Our briefing materials should certainly include all the tax breaks available for the deployment of clean energy. However, I would not want us to focus solely on what was announced in the budget.

I don't know whether the departments could provide us with a list of the programs that support research and development, meaning all the programs that give those who develop clean energy technologies access to funding.

Could they provide that list to the committee? That would certainly make life easier for our analyst, not to mention for us, because it would help us formulate questions for the witnesses who will be appearing later.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

I see heads nodding from officials.

Could you provide that information to the clerk and the analyst?

Thank you, Mr. Simard.

Thank you, colleagues, for your hard work today.

To the witnesses, thank you for providing your time and your testimony to this important study. We look forward to having you again.

That concludes our meeting.

Is it the will of the committee to adjourn?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Have a great constituency week. We'll see you in about a week and a half. Take care.

The meeting is adjourned.