moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should invest in a comprehensive energy efficiency strategy, thus: (a) exploiting the considerable job creation potential of energy efficiency; (b) encouraging the development of high tech expertise and export opportunities; and (c) increasing the number of federally owned buildings (of which there are 50,000) retrofitted for energy efficiency through the Federal Buildings Initiative.
Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion. I have been quite anxious to introduce and to encourage this concept of job creation through energy conservation for quite some time.
I start by saying thank you to the committee for ruling that this motion be deemed votable. I appreciate that very much. I understand that this is the only motion of the current batch of motions in Private Members' Business that was deemed votable in this round.
The concept is job creation through energy conservation. Although the motion could be worded better, I look forward to the opportunity to try to explain what that means.
We believe that the situation does not have to be jobs versus the environment as is so often the case. I would like to demonstrate how the situation can be jobs and the environment. In other words I point to, focus and showcase the enormous job creation opportunities involved in the energy retrofitting of our publicly owned buildings.
As a carpenter by trade I spent much of my working life building megaprojects. I built energy generating stations. For many years of my career it would be heresy to actually advocate harvesting units of energy out of the existing system rather than building new generating systems, whether they were nuclear power plants or hydroelectric dams. Obviously that was the kind of work that we looked forward to as tradespeople. Like many others, I would drive across the country to try to get on one of those megaprojects.
The original research paper on this subject was done in 1993. This idea came to fruition because the province of Ontario cancelled a huge energy purchase from my province of Manitoba. Thus the Conawapa hydro generating station which was about to be started had to be cancelled.
Many tradespeople were anxiously and eagerly awaiting Conawapa. This was something we were looking forward to. Five years of work for skilled tradespeople was nothing to be sneezed at. When the province of Ontario cancelled this project we were devastated.
At that time I was representing the carpenters union in the province of Manitoba. We had 1,200 members who were anxiously waiting to build Conawapa. It was something we wanted to do. When it was cancelled these people literally did not know which way to turn.
That led us to investigate other ideas. How would we put these people to work? We commissioned a study on the idea of job creation through energy conservation. We wanted to find out what kind of job opportunities there would be in harvesting units of energy from the existing system through demand side management techniques rather than building new generating stations.
We were happy to find out that there were as many as seven times the number of jobs per $1 million invested, or per $1 invested, in the demand side management of our energy resources than there were in building new generating stations. This came as a huge relief. We could now advocate a green environment by being good environmental stewards without shooting ourselves in the foot. It would have been heresy not too many years ago for a carpenter to openly promote this demand side management rather than build new generating stations.
This is what led us to this conclusion. For many years we have been pushing this idea. We have been training our people in anticipation of this idea catching on.
In this motion I point to the federal government owning 50,000 buildings. In its literature it is actually 68,000 building that the federal government owns and operates. It does have some measures under way. Nobody is trying to say that the federal government is doing nothing in this regard. There is the federal building initiative program. Its goal is to try and conserve energy within publicly owned buildings.
Of those 68,000 buildings the government owns and operates, the federal building initiative has only done about 100. With my motion, we are hoping to make the argument that we could do as many as a couple of thousand per year and put a whole industry back to work in this new and laudable concept of demand side management.
I do not believe that we are taking full advantage of this opportunity if we are only doing a couple of projects a year. The federal government's web page is almost a brag sheet about the federal building initiative. The savings are unbelievable.
One example I pulled off the web site shows that Public Works and Government Services Canada upgraded a 500,000 square foot building in Calgary. I believe it was the Harry Hays building. It resulted in an energy saving of $300,000 per year. That is for one building. We created a lot of jobs. Obviously the manufacturing sector benefited as well because there was the installation of new lighting fixtures, HVAC systems and smart boilers, et cetera. And we saved $300,000.
We spend over $800 million in energy costs per year to heat, light and cool all those 68,000 buildings.
In the document “A Brighter Future: Job Creation and Energy Efficiency in Manitoba”, research shows that we can achieve an energy savings of as much as 40% by introducing many of the high tech systems that are currently available. Many of the buildings the government owns and operates are old and outdated. They were built in a time when energy was not an issue, when energy was cheap and plentiful.
I remember the time when Ontario Hydro and Manitoba Hydro ran ads on TV advocating more use of energy. They wanted us to do everything electrically, to turn on the lights. We cannot do that any more.
There is another upside to what I am trying to introduce here. First is the job creation aspect. As carpenters, that was our first motivation and the reason we got into this. The second is the cost saving for the owners of the public buildings of up to 40% of that $800 million a year. The third very good argument is that we could help to meet our commitments made at Kyoto and Rio de Janiero to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
The federal building initiatives web page lists not only how much money it is saving by doing these buildings, it also lists how many millions of kilos of harmful greenhouse gas emissions it is saving per year. Some of these buildings are belching out unbelievable amounts of pollution. If we are going to be examples to private sector businesses in asking them to clean up their act and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, surely we have to start with our own buildings. Surely we can demonstrate to the private sector that not only is it a good idea and good environmental stewardship to reduce energy consumption and eliminate waste, but they can also save a fortune by doing it.
This is why I believe that the federal building initiative, the program which is already in place and which I am not critical of at all, should be expanded tenfold. If 100 buildings have been done so far and there are 68,000 buildings to go, what are we waiting for? We could put a whole generation of tradespeople back to work. We could finally get some young people coming into the skilled trades, which is a real problem.
In the trade that I represent, the average age of a tradesman is 48 years. These guys are looking for a way out by the time they hit 50. Their knees and backs are gone. Young people are not choosing the skilled trades as a career option because the work is so spotty. This project could be a decade long program to get our buildings up to world class standards.
Besides job creation, obvious cost savings and environmental stewardship, the fourth benefit is the research and development that goes into this new high tech field. We could show the world. We could be the centre of excellence for environmental stewardship in terms of living in a harsh northern winter climate and show that it is still possible not to be wasteful in our energy use. We could export the engineering and research that we do.
We are already leaders in many aspects. There is the window industry, for instance. I do not think anybody in the world makes better windows than our own companies, such as Loewen windows in Manitoba. They export all over the world. They are leaders.
There are other aspects of energy retrofitting. We embrace this concept but one caution I have is there is a real temptation when one gets involved in energy retrofitting to pick the low hanging fruit, the easy stuff.
For instance, anybody can change the light fixtures to more energy efficient ballasts. That is okay. It is all very well and good and one might get a very quick payback on one's investment. But when one goes to do the building envelope, the much more expensive things, insulation, windows and doors, the payback might take eight years or so. Average the two together and there might be a three or four year payback on one's investment. Most property owners will tolerate that. But if one picks the low hanging fruit and only does the easy stuff and does not do a comprehensive energy retrofit, it renders the other details less economical.
The real clinger here, the real thing I hope to excite people with is that everything I have talked about so far can be done at absolutely no cost to the taxpayer. Free. Revenue neutral. Not a penny. Private sector investors are standing by ready, willing and able to finance all of these retrofits. As many as we can throw at them, they are happy to underwrite, to pay for and to be paid back slowly out of the energy savings.
It is called the ESCO industry, energy services contracting. Many private financial institutions are involved. It is a very high tech field. Some of the best engineering firms in the world are doing the energy audits first of all.
All the federal government would have to do is to let us use its buildings to create jobs, reduce its operating costs and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. What are we waiting for? Instead of doing 100 of these projects over the five years that the federal building initiative has been in place, why are we not doing 10,000 of them? And why are we not doing outreach to show those in the private sector how it can be done and that they should be doing it too?
The whole idea of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions has been viewed in a very negative light. Here we can point to a very positive side of it and we can save a fortune.
The province of Manitoba spends $3.2 billion a year on energy. Every dollar that is not spent on energy can be spent elsewhere in the economy.
The whole concept of demand side management and energy retrofit is almost too good to be true. It is such a win-win situation. Any unit of energy that we harvest from the existing system by demand side management measures is exactly the same as one produced in a generating station, except for a couple of important things. For one thing it is available at one-third the cost. One-third the cost. The American research shows this. It is on line immediately. At the same instant one introduces demand side management measures in a building, the energy is on line immediately instead of waiting five to 10 years for a generating station to be built and to get on line. No additional infrastructure is needed in terms of distribution. And it creates seven times the number of jobs. One would think that would be really smart.
Frankly the Americans are way ahead of us on this. The Bonneville hydro authority has precluded the need to build seven nuclear power plants just by its demand side management program. Seven nuclear power plants at $10 billion each. That means it does not have to borrow that money on the open market. It does not have to pollute the environment with seven more power plants, although it is arguable whether they pollute or not. The hydro authority saw the sense in this and really embraced it wholeheartedly. The Tennessee Valley hydro authority has similar statistics.
I do not know why we are so slow on this. We live in a harsh winter climate where energy costs are a huge issue. Why are we not showing them how it is done instead of the other way around? I believe this is possible.
People ask what the motivation is behind this. Frankly I sound like a broken record. I came to Ottawa in 1993 to pitch this at an energy efficiency conference at the minister's request. I was given the energy innovator's award by the then minister of natural resources. Everybody said that it was fabulous and great, that it was a public-private partnership.
One source of venture capital for this was union pension funds. We pulled together a pool of union pension funds dedicated to this project, $150 million of dedicated capital ready to go. We said “We have H.H. Angus, one of the best engineering companies in the world to do the auditing. We have the financiers in place. Just let us use your buildings”. Nothing. Frankly, it did not really go very far.
Other financiers are in place and are underwriting the 100 projects done by the FBI but at a much greater mark-up. They want a much greater rate of return on their investment. Pension fund investors are happy to have a slow, steady, guaranteed rate of return, which is what makes it such a good investment for them.
The study we did called A Brighter Future is in its fourth printing now. Groups as diverse as the James Bay Cree have been asking for copies of it because they have a vested interest in reducing the number of hydro projects given the impact they have on northern communities. In Manitoba we are still dealing with the flooding of South Indian Lake.
Building a hydro project on a river is radical intervention in an ecosystem. We cannot enter into that kind of project lightly. It is irresponsible not to do everything in our power to look elsewhere for our energy. Building another generating station should only be a last resort. Certainly we will build more generating stations someday, but until we harvest every unit of energy we can out of the existing system it would be crazy to borrow $10 billion to build another dam. It is just irresponsible.
There are many measures in energy retrofitting. Rather than getting into the complicated technical side of things, I would like people to think of their own homes. We have known for years that an energy saving shower head that is worth about $15 can save $75 a year, but how many of us have actually gone down to Canadian Tire, paid the fifteen bucks and screwed the shower head on at home? We are stupid if we do not. We can save $75 a year for a $15 investment. That is how painfully obvious the measures are. The measures that need to be taken in buildings like the Wellington Building are that obvious to engineers. Why do people not do that?
Now we have taken the last obstacle away. What if one does not have the $15 to buy the shower head. We can do it free of charge, at no cost to the government, zippo, free, gratis. There would be hundreds of thousands of jobs with no charge to the taxpayer. We could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save 40% of the $800 million per year that we currently spend on energy to heat and light 68,000 federal government buildings. What are we waiting for?
The whole industry is anxiously waiting to get started. The carpenters union in partnership with contractors across the country are running courses on energy retrofit construction, new vapour barrier and insulation systems. They are eagerly awaiting and anticipating this volume of work. The sheet metal workers union is specializing in various HVAC systems, the heat exchangers, the balancing, et cetera. Electricians are one of the groups that has offered to use some of its union pension funds because it will create jobs for its members. It is an ethical investment and it is good work.
There is another advantage to having the work in demand side management measures rather than in the construction of new generating stations. When a hydro dam is built all the jobs are concentrated in some isolated bush camp in the middle of nowhere. With demand side management measures jobs are spread evenly throughout every community in the country. Everywhere there is a publicly owned building is where the jobs will be. There may be 30 jobs to renovate a post office or 30 jobs to renovate a building on a military base. Those jobs will be more evenly distributed. It would be a far more equitable type of project.
We could view it as a megaproject but it is spread over the country. It would put an industry back to work. It would help us to embrace the idea of public-private partnerships in a very positive light.
Let the industry pay for it. It just wants to use the government buildings. It wants to help the government meet its Kyoto targets and bring down greenhouse gas emissions. Job creation for energy conservation is an idea whose time has come. It is long overdue. I welcome the support of other members in this regard.