Transport Committee on Feb. 28th, 2012

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Is this technology actually being used on a broad scale?

[Paul Treboutat]

It's currently at a TRL 6 level, so it's still in a demonstration stage. We're hoping that DND will be able to invest more money into developing that opportunity further as we see inroads for silent watch capability into idle reduction for specialized fleets of vehicles such as police vehicles, ambulances, and command posts, as well as on construction sites for generators and so on.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

We're getting a little bit too specific for the question.

One of the concerns I have about these programs is that often they fund pilot projects and demonstration projects, but because they are not commercially viable, they never take root or become broadly used anywhere. I think, for example, of the enormous resources the federal government invested in hydrogen fuel cell technology. The latest reading I've done on that technology said that isolating the hydrogen fuel consumes more electricity than the fuel itself produces. I'm not aware of anywhere in the world where hydrogen fuel cell technology is commercially viable on its own, even after all of those massive public investments.

When we have these distortions of government spending of other people's money on ideas, that money goes to things that lack commercial viability and therefore never become widely used. How do you respond to that?

[Geoff Munro]

I'll take the first response and let my colleagues add to it.

That's why I am such a champion of the road map approach: because it involves—as in the case of electric vehicles, for example, or in the case of natural gas, the two I've left for your consideration today—the OEMS, the original equipment manufacturers.

The electric vehicle one involves the utilities, so we know they are thinking about what the electricity draw is and whether they are going to be able to meet it if in fact there are electric vehicles in every garage. The full value chain of the economic sector is involved in the discussion. If we're talking about an OEM like GM or Ford, they're not going to spend money working on the introduction of electric vehicles unless they're going to introduce electric vehicles.

By taking that approach, you focus the Canadian government investment on the gap that may exist, whether it be codes and standards or whatever the actual specific might be that comes out of that road map area, and you look at the federal role in the innovation system so that Government of Canada dollars are invested only in a Government of Canada role but within the context of something that will be used.

I take your question very seriously in the context of whether we should be investing and where. When we respond in that fashion, there is a much higher likelihood that the technology that gets developed will be implemented in the marketplace.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Ms. Chow is next.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Potter, I saw in your National Research Council report on side guards that there would be a reduction in fuel consumption of at least 5%, and that the benefit for Canada, if these aerodynamic side guards were in place for all the tractor-trailers, would mean a saving of 401 million litres. I just calculated, and for 401 million litres, that would be savings of $561 million. That's a lot of money.

Then I looked into it even more. Of course, your report also said there would be an annual reduction of 1.1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, meaning they would not only save money but would also be good for the environment. Because they're relatively lightweight, they would reduce the 10% wind-tunnel drag.

I looked at other reports from other countries. Krone, in Germany, has aerodynamic side guards that have 7% lower fuel consumption. They did another study, a long-distance trial, that showed fuel savings of 20%, and a British design leads to an average reduction in fuel consumption of 10%, so the 5% is fairly conservative, given all the other figures from European countries as 20%, 10%, etc.

I assume the lifespan is about 20 years for these things, give or take, and that “light weight”, because they are pretty advanced, means around 220 kilograms, so I would imagine that if they saved fuel, even at 5%, the installation of these side guards would have around a two-year payback, because they're about $1,000 or so.

Am I right in all that? You had this big report. I went through it and then I looked at other European studies, and those seem to be the findings. Am I correct? I've shared that information with the trucking alliance, the trucking association. They were looking at side skirts, and they didn't realize that side guards—the closed side guards, not the rail type—would save even more money. They seem to have fuel reductions that are even higher than those for side skirts, which are 4%.

Am I correct in the reading of the NRC report?

[Dr. Ian Potter]

The short answer is yes, without getting into the numbers exactly. I don't have all the numbers in my head. I can check on them if you like, but yes, the numbers sound reasonable.

The differences come about for a couple of different reasons. The main one is the drive cycle that you would undertake in Europe, as opposed to that in Canada, for example. Canada has long stretches of highway; in Europe, a long stretch of highway without a traffic jam doesn't really exist, so those trucks actually have to tolerate different drive cycles in the way they operate.

As a result, we use different drive cycles for testing. There are standard drive cycles, and the tests are based on them. You can apply different drive cycles to the testing technique. Those tests were actually done in our facilities here in Ottawa. We can actually get a whole semi and drop it into a wind tunnel and look at what the drag is on the vehicle. We can actually do that research and help the companies. A lot of the work around the trucking cycle was actually done also within Paul's group in terms of how thick and how heavy those skirts have to be and where the cost savings are.

Other technologies go even beyond that, such as mudguards on the wheels. There's this big flap of plastic that stands behind the wheel that keeps stones and chips from coming up. New designs have aerodynamic louvres in them. This is a Canadian-based technology whereby you can actually reduce the drag and improve fuel efficiency while safeguarding against stone chips coming up.

There are a lot of innovations going on within the trucking fleets in Canada, and I think some of those will be transportable—no pun intended—to the European market.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Were the side guards I was talking about, which you used to do the test, the state-of-the-art European ones? They keep coming out with new styles. We don't seem to manufacture them in Canada, and if we end up using them, we'll have to bring them from Germany or other countries.

Do you see a possibility...? Were the ones you were using manufactured in Canada, or were they brought in from elsewhere?

[Dr. Ian Potter]

That was prior to my time at the National Research Council. If my colleague knows....

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I would appreciate it if you could look at my figures to make sure they are correct, because I got them from the report and extrapolated.

[Dr. Ian Potter]

It would be my pleasure.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you.

[Paul Treboutat]

Regarding the side guards that were used for the tests, unfortunately I don't recall exactly where we sourced those from, but I can definitely follow up with that information after the meeting.

The work we did in this regard was, again, in response to a direct request we received from the regulator that holds the responsibility for the Canadian motor vehicle safety standards, Transport Canada. This was in response to their desire to understand if these side guards would meet a variety of different questions they were looking to answer.

If I recall, there was a slight issue in that we observed an increased temperature on the braking system, though. The reduction of airflow over the brakes had to be looked at as well, as part of the overall possible implementation of side guards on trailers. I can follow up on that if you would like.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Would you please present any documents you have through the clerk? We'll distribute them to the committee.

Just for the committee's reference, I went back to Ms. Chow before I recognized Mr. Holder, so I will go to two questions on this side.

First is Mr. Holder.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Good morning.

I'd like to welcome our guests this morning. I appreciate your testimony in front of the committee. I think it's very helpful for me to better understand emerging technologies in transportation.

Mr. Munro, if I might start with you, please, I think the deck was helpful in giving us some sense of priorities and the road map you've discussed.

This is not intended as an obvious question. I heard you say in your testimony that cold weather in Canada causes different challenges, but you didn't elaborate. For the purposes of the committee, could you just explain what you meant by that comment, please?

[Geoff Munro]

Yes, I will, happily. The cold weather in Canada has a number of impacts on a conventional vehicle, but the specific reference I was making was to batteries and battery life—battery durability—in the context of an electric vehicle. There is a testing centre in northern Ontario where vehicles are left out in the miserably cold winter weather and then tested according to standard. It's not done by us.

I'm not sure if NRC is involved in that. It's being indicated that they are, along with Transport Canada.

A lot of the facilities to do the testing exist in that colder northern climate, but that reference was specific to the electric vehicle battery situation.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Okay.

You did reference three things as being the three leading technological issues that are currently being developed. One was the electric car. The second was changes in industrial policy, such as polymers and those sorts of things—

[Geoff Munro]

That

That's the lightweighting. Yes.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Yes, lightweighting is in my note here.

The third was the legacy fleet. You made reference to tires and aerodynamics and all of that. Of those three, which do you think is the most significant factor? Are they equally weighted, do you think?

[Geoff Munro]

That's a bit of a tough question. I'm not sure I can put a quantification on it.

Part of it has to do with how long the existing fleet is going to stay on the road and how far ahead the equipment manufacturers are in things that are already in queue, such as the direct injection technology for gasoline, for instance. I think we are all familiar with fuel injection, but fuel injection has been improved to the point where the fuel is going to be injected directly into the cylinder head, compared to going through an injection process. Well, that's going to increase efficiency yet again.

That technology, to my understanding, is already in stream in terms of the planning. I'm not sure in which model year it will come out as an operational thing, but my example is that those things are already in play. Of course, we don't have the inside knowledge as to which technology what company already has in their planning cycle.

I identified three categories. The first was the game changers, as I called them. Electric vehicles are going to change the game. If we actually do have electric vehicles, even with the range challenges we have in them today, and if they are used as local commuting vehicles in town, that potential game changer will be significant in terms of energy use and emissions.

Then there was the planning that's going on now by the OEMs, the equipment manufacturers, in their existing plans. Then there's the legacy fleet.

All three have different parameters associated with them. I suppose I identified all three because to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automotive transportation, we need to look at all three, but I'm afraid I can't give you a quantification on which one is more or less important.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

You know, I come from London, Ontario,—

[A voice]

It's the tenth-largest.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

—the tenth-largest city in Canada; that's actually quite correct.

Our university, Western, is arguably the greatest university in this country. I say that with a bit of bias, but one thing I really appreciate about what they do is that their research and development initiatives are geared toward commercialization. We work with NRC; they happen to have a shop in London.

Western has recognized the whole issue of lightweighting as one of those game changers you've discussed. Through our university we've made a significant investment with a company to put in a Dieffenbacher press from Germany, aimed toward having lighter weight in auto manufacturing, aerospace, and so on. The potential is quite significant, so your reference to lightweighting is rather interesting, since it's one of the game changers they agree with.

I want to come back to something you referenced in your presentation about clean energy investment. Obviously we all know the importance of clean energy. I sit on the Standing Committee on International Trade, and I happened to be in Brussels and France in November. German representatives there gave us a great presentation on how they're moving towards clean energy, but I was shocked and quite surprised when they said that as they move away from nuclear, they're going to coal.

Frankly, every one of us on our committee, from all parties, just stopped and said, “What do you mean, you're going to coal?” That was their transition piece between solar and all these other things. It was because it's clean coal, whatever that means. I must admit that our whole committee was shocked by that piece of information.

We're not going to create an international incident and ask you to comment on their approach, but do you see coal coming back into Canada as a response to the need for clean energy? Do you have any thoughts about that?

[Geoff Munro]

Canada has an awful lot of coal—

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Sure we do.