Transport Committee on Feb. 28th, 2012

[Geoff Munro]

No, that's not in my sphere of responsibility. I do know that GE has developed an electric train engine, largely for the demonstration of the capacity to do it. They've got it on their research campus in Albany, New York. You can actually see an electric train do its job as a full-size engine, but I'm not involved in any research that would take that forward. Is the NRC?

[Dr. Ian Potter]

Actually, yes, we are. I'll give you an example of looking at integrating a fuel cell into a light rail transit train that would generate electricity that would then feed motors to drive the wheelset.

There are similar sorts of areas with fuel cells in airplanes. In some work we just completed with Boeing, we put in a fuel cell to drive the auxiliary electrical load for a plane. It fits into a plane like a cargo container. The fuel cell sits in there with the self-contained fuel and provides auxiliary power. Again, that's electrical generation.

Much of the work in shipping is moving more towards what I would call the hybrid electrical system, in which you have internal combustion engines and battery sets in parallel, or some form of storage. That way they can put the power system higher up in the ship and they can remove the ducting for the exhaust and the air supply systems that have to go all the way through to the bottom of the ship.

There are a lot of crossovers of this technology into other transportation modes. Electrical drives are becoming fairly common in most transportation vehicles. The prime mover for that is still a question. It may be internal combustion, fuel cell, or battery, but the electrical motor seems to be becoming a more common method of driving the actual wheel itself.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I really liked the expression you used when you answered my colleague emphasizing the fact that electrification has been popular for a few years.

Just this morning, I received an invitation from a Montreal group holding a seminar on the electrification of mass transit in Quebec and on how quickly that transition will happen. This is really something people are talking about. In my riding, we have the western train, which is a very important project for my constituents' public transit needs.

The Direction de la santé publique recently published a report stating that train noise was more detrimental to health than airplane noise. That is really something we have been hearing a lot. In addition, I was wondering, Mr. Munro, whether you think you should conduct more research on developing electric rail transport. We know that it is more environmentally friendly. As for the issue of health and the noise study, R & D on that would be worthwhile.

I am wondering whether the private sector is not doing too much research in that area, when yours is an organization that should be conducting that research.

[Geoff Munro]

We're all involved in many potential avenues to varying degrees. As I said in my introductory remarks, to date the work that we're involved in is driven largely by the GHGs and the energy usage factor, so given the impact of automobiles and on-road transportation, that's where we focused.

I certainly accept your premise that there's more to do. NRC has work going on in many of those areas, so we've not overlapped. We try to collaborate whenever we can and wherever we can, and to date we've not been involved in the other modes. As I said, there is certainly potential there, but we can't spread it too thin or we'll end up a mile wide and half an inch deep; then we wouldn't be effective in bringing innovation forward, so to date, we've stayed on the road.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, of course, to our witnesses.

Would you characterize the focus of your priorities, the three you laid out, as tackling climate change? I hear that seems to be some of the focus here.

I'm going to back up, though, first. We're talking about research and development. Can you give us a sense, first of all, of where Canada ranks with respect to public research and development investment globally, and where it ranks with respect to private research and development dollars? Can you give the committee a sense of those two barometers?

[Geoff Munro]

Let me start by giving you a vague answer, which I apologize for. I can certainly follow up with more specifics. I'm happy to do that, and I'll work through the clerk's office, just to be clear.

I would suggest Canada ranks higher in public investment research than we do in industrial, if you use the OECD country yardstick, but I don't have the numbers as to where we rank, although we can certainly access those and make sure the committee is made aware of them.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

What challenges or obstacles exist to more private research and development in Canada?

[Geoff Munro]

At the bottom line, there are a number of obstacles, including the economics of how quickly and how competitively we can introduce new technology to the private sector and the access the private sector has to the work we do and the work the academics do.

I would argue that we have a somewhat fragmented innovation system in this country. It is getter better and better every day in terms of developing collaborations to make sure we are making the knowledge we are creating available. As Ian has said a couple of times now, having an innovation driver coming from industry is the way that balance can be improved. If they see an opportunity to remain competitive or enhance their competitiveness, whether it's keeping up with someone else or whether it's taking the edge so they can export a technology, a product, a service domestically and internationally, certainly they're going to do that. To sum up, I think it's access to the knowledge combined with maintaining the competitive edge of a given company.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Is government itself a hindrance to private research and development, either through high-level policy decisions or through compelling changes in research and development that otherwise might have been conducted? Is there an argument to be made that government, at times, can be a hindrance to where private companies are going with their own research and development?

[Geoff Munro]

That's an interesting question—

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

For example, let's talk about climate change. Perhaps companies are not necessarily trending in a direction where they're concerned about fuel efficiency. I'm just throwing some ideas out and doing thinking-in-progress, but does the imposition of high-level policy directives aimed at climate change boring down into industrial sectors change the focus of where innovation goes? Now you're playing a pragmatic game against a timetable, for example, to become more fuel efficient. What drives that? This is why lightweighting becomes a key focus of research and development: it's lower-hanging fruit than real breakthrough innovations, if you will.

That's where I'm going here. I'm asking whether—

[Geoff Munro]

I think I didn't really get the context until your supplementary question, and now I'm beginning to understand.

There is no question that the work we're obligated to do has competitive focus, in that we work with industry to have things brought to commercial use to maintain competitiveness. There's also another whole side to the work we do, which is driving public good. That public good does get characterized by government in the context of the directions we're going to take as a society.

I operate on the premise of a fairly simple formula: the science and technology we do helps to drive innovation, innovation can drive both competitiveness and the public good, and the combination of those two maintains the wealth and health of Canadians, the quality of the life we live.

Is there ever conflict between the public good and competitiveness? I would argue that we could probably ferret out examples, yes, but I don't think the general trend is towards an increase; we see it working hard to decrease.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Ms. Young, welcome.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you so much to the panel today. I sure learned a lot, so I appreciate your presentations and this discussion.

I noticed that this document you handed out, which gives excellent information, has no date on it. Do you have a sense as to what year it was produced or when the research was done?

[Geoff Munro]

Now you're going to test my memory. This document was actually released at the annual conference in Montreal. That would have been about 18 months ago, so the document was published about 18 months ago.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

That's very interesting to me.

I'm actually a member of Parliament from Vancouver South, and I believe Vancouver is one of the leading cities in this whole movement. I was very pleased and proud to make an announcement last week: through the green municipal fund, from which the federal government provides $550 million to FCM, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, we actually funded the City of Vancouver for $330,000 to put in 67 electrical charge public sites throughout the city, forming our first grid. In addition to that, in our city it's now part of the building code that you have to put in an electrical charging outlet for cars whenever you build a new home.

I think we are at the forefront of a lot of what is being presented in this document, which is why I was interested in the year it was produced. I'm wondering if we're a little ahead of the game, or a little behind the game, or where we are with this.

Maybe that would be my first question, in fact. Maybe I can just turn that into a question for you.

Thank you.

[Geoff Munro]

Well, let me respond.

I would concur with your assessment that Vancouver is one of the leading cities in terms of the utilization of electric vehicles, with things like the charging infrastructure. BC Hydro does sit on our implementation committee as one of the utilities represented there, and it has been progressive in trying to see the use of electric vehicles. It doesn't escape my notice that the temperatures in Vancouver are different from those in some of the other Canadian cities. As I said earlier, there is a cold weather challenge in some parts of this country, but that said, it doesn't take away for a moment from the fact that Vancouver is doing all you say.

Part of that is a function of the document you have in front of you, because it has been such a key player in this process right from the beginning. The document was published a year and a half ago, but the work was done prior to that, obviously, and some of the institutional contributions have been there from the beginning.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

That brings me to page 34 of this document. Obviously the document was produced and the research done a number of years ago now. I'm wondering if these projections have been attained or where they are in that process. I draw your attention to table 4 on page 33, “Present comparison of the consumer costs of an ICE-based vehicle and an EV”, compared to the future comparison, which is on page 34. I found this comparison really interesting, because we're obviously a consumer-driven society and this lays out quite clearly some of the choices available to people. Given that we're building the grid in Vancouver and that we're quite far ahead, I think that is certainly a plus here. Where are we in terms of these two tables?

[Geoff Munro]

I would say that we are still working towards the objective. We're not there yet.

As you may know, the commercial uptake—the public purchase of electric vehicles—is still quite nascent in the country. Volume, as in many consumer products, will have an impact on price. There is no question that a premium is still associated with an electric vehicle in terms of initial purchase; however, when you compare the initial purchase and then compare the fuelling costs, you start to get your money back. I can't tell you at the moment what the payback period is, other than to say that it's becoming shorter as the price for the individual purchase goes down and as cities such as Vancouver put charging infrastructure in place to make it easier and simpler to charge your vehicle.

It doesn't escape my notice, when I go to the gasoline pump with my own vehicle, what it costs me to fill up. A high-volume charge for an electric vehicle can cost as little as $4 or $5. If you compare filling up your tank to $4 or $5, you see the payback over time.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Well, that's—

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I have to stop you there. I'm sorry. Thank you.

Mr. Sullivan, go ahead, please.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Poilievre suggested that governments don't have a lot to do with innovation, but my recollection is that in fact it's government regulation that drives a lot of innovation. In New York City in 1908, trains burning fossil fuel were banned and only electric trains were allowed, so electric trains had to be built and had to be made reliable. That happened over a period of about two years as a result of regulation. The U.S. has led us in terms of electric trains ever since. We're the poor cousin of the world, I think, when it comes to electric vehicles.

We have a situation now in which 440 diesel trains a day will be going past homes, schools, and hospitals in Toronto because there's no regulation preventing it. There's no drive from a federal perspective or from a provincial perspective to put in electric trains to replace those vehicles. They are going to be diesel, and they are going to pollute.

The regulation concerning Tier 4 in the diesel world—I'm sure you're aware of it—is driving innovation, because the industry has to build diesel engines that are capable of scrubbing themselves almost clean of nitrous oxides and particulates to a huge extent. That innovation, of course, is now going to be carried on in the U.S. because the Canadian manufacturer, EMD, has moved. I'm not sure whether the folks in the National Research Council are actually working on any of this, but I'd like to know.

The other regulation that drives innovation is greenhouse gas reduction. You've mentioned several times that it's part of what drives you, but it's not just government money that's driving that innovation; in fact, it's the government regulation driving the overall reduction. Could you comment further on how, for example, electric trains were driven in the U.S. by regulation?

The other emerging technology that nobody has said anything about is the contactless electric trains that are being used in Europe. Perhaps they would be ideal in Canada as light rapid transit vehicles without overhead wires. Are we anywhere with those kinds of things? Is there any need for those? Is there any innovation coming from industry and/or you folks?

[Paul Treboutat]

Mr. Sullivan, thank you for your question.

I don't think I could speak for the purchasing decisions on a local level that municipalities or transit commissions or transit authorities undertake, but I too share your concern about the impacts of emissions from diesel engines, particularly in dense urban environments.

Within my organization we're working to get a project afoot with a Canadian company that manufactures light rail railcars for high-density urban applications globally, as well as in Canada. We're looking at getting them partnered with a fuel cell company and to look at the prospects for leading a shift in the way hydrogen is viewed in the context of a people-mover solution in densely populated areas. The hope here is that potentially that could help to drive the creation of a more localized hydrogen infrastructure at the municipal level as well, which then creates other opportunities, but, again, the basis for all of this is the electric drive system. The hydrogen is just the energy source; the drive system is still electric.

There is some work, and we're going in that direction. I have to remind people that my organization is full cost recovery, so as we have resources and bandwidth, we try to work towards that agenda.

The other thing you mentioned was the contactless electrification of passenger rail. I believe it's a Canadian company that owns that technology.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

They don't get to deploy it in Canada.