Government Operations committee  I’ll point out that certainly in the way we assess energy efficiency activities, LEED tends to be more in the construction of a building. Once you're achieved that standard through all aspects of the construction process, at whatever level, that's where it begins and ends. BOMA BESt then takes over as a measuring device for ongoing building maintenance.

Government Operations committee  That's the way we use it, correct.

Government Operations committee  I have one last quick point, if I may, just to wrap up this conversation. Neither LEED nor BOMA BESt deals exclusively with energy efficiency. There are broader measures that involve a number of other aspects of both building construction and the use and maintenance of the building.

Government Operations committee  Let me try to complement what John said. From an NRCan perspective, when it comes down to the accountability associated with actual energy efficiency in buildings, we are really only accountable for our own. We have 18 major labs across the country, a number of different ownership and occupancy arrangements, and we work within that milieu to drive the energy efficiency agenda.

Government Operations committee  We'll use the single presentation. I'll do the intro part and then Carol will take over on the retrofit piece. I understand that's of specific interest to the committee.

Government Operations committee  That was part of our design in doing this. Thank you. I appreciate being here today. As introduced, Geoff Munro is my name and Carol Buckley is my colleague. Carol is the director general of our Office of Energy Efficiency. I thought I'd start very quickly with a couple of context statements, because they certainly drive the way we work.

Government Operations committee  Geothermal takes a number of different forms. There's the true geothermal, which I think you're talking about, where you actually use the heat from below the ground as your heat source.

Government Operations committee  There's also the storage of heat in the ground, which may be obtained in other ways. That's where I was talking about boreholes in Hamilton. There's another perfect example in southern Alberta, in the Okotoks community. We are looking at all energy sources, from the investigative, the scientific, perspective, as to what's available and the cost effectiveness.

Government Operations committee  I have two responses, if I may. The first is to clarify that NRCan does not have responsibility for government buildings beyond those that we occupy and/or own. However, we work very closely with PWGSC and others. We have partnerships with DND, with Environment Canada, and others, to try to use the energy expertise that we have to let them apply the same kinds of program improvements to their responsibilities.

Government Operations committee  I can complement that from the scientific side of what the Government of Canada does. I mentioned earlier the move of the laboratory to Hamilton. There we've actually put one of these large screens up in the entranceway of the building. It shows you the minute-by-minute energy usage of the building.

Government Operations committee  It is, although in the low carbon initiative within the department we are tracking the energy costs building by building. As I said earlier, we've diverted a copy of the energy bills from each and every facility to a central location so that we can track a correlation between the efforts we're making and the cost reductions we're achieving.

Government Operations committee  The simple answer to that is yes. When we work with the FBI program, the savings are guaranteed by the energy company. There's no question that you are going to get your money back. It's more a question of the time element associated with the payback period. Depending on what approach is used in which building, that could be as low as two to three years, or it could be a 10- or 12-year investment.

Government Operations committee  There is also continual improvement in technology. You may have seen in the rural parts of the country places where the panels actually move with the sun, so that they get the maximum expression of the panel surface to the sun. On the actual panel itself, we're now seeing that micro-reflectors can concentrate the sun's rays before they actually hit the panel surface, in a way that improves the performance.

Government Operations committee  Part of the FBI program demands that there first be a feasibility study of the facility. Within the same parameters John is talking about, in terms of how a solar panel array might fit into the possibilities for that building, the energy company would make that recommendation. Then, based on the cost and the potential return dates of the finances, the building owner would decide whether it was an appropriate decision to proceed with.

Government Operations committee  Yes, very quickly. First of all, thank you for catching the mistake on slides 3 and 4. The actual target is listed at the top of slide 2, which does confirm the 2020 target. I don't know how the 2017 slipped into those other two, and I thank you for catching it. On your emission reduction question, I can report that our low carbon initiative has generated a 6.3% emission reduction from the reference level of 2005-06.