Transport committee  I don't know the upstream side of it terribly well. That would be best posed to someone in the production side of biogas. For example, Gaz Métro, FortisBC, and some of the other gas utilities are involved in that. I do know that there are some challenges around reinjection of biogas into the existing natural gas pipeline infrastructure, but I think that's being resolved for the most part at the provincial level, under the utilities commissions in each province.

Transport committee  At the end-user side, I can't speak to what the end product will be going into the vehicle. That's a bit of a challenge, although unconventional gases, be it shale, tight gas, or other unconventional gases, are starting to represent a larger share of the market. I can't speak to what the end-user share or proportion of the market would be, because we have natural gas coming into North America from several different streams.

Transport committee  No, not at this point. On a semi-annual basis we do an evaluation of the upstream footprint of natural gas, because there's a lot of research and there's a lot of stuff in the news around the greenhouse gas footprint around unconventional gas. In collaboration with the U.S. DOE and with NRCan, we do a scientific study that goes into their models for actually determining the greenhouse gas footprint of the fuel as it goes into the vehicle.

Transport committee  Biogas?

Transport committee  We've looked at power generation in the past. We had a project that actually ran a very large engine in Manitoba doing power generation exploration, looking at the possibilities of running our technology. It was very successful. It was at a time when there were many energy people who thought North America was running out of natural gas, so we shut down that project at the time.

Transport committee  I think the question around the Honda Civic would have to be addressed directly to Honda. That's my understanding from a number of gas utilities that have brought these vehicles in what they call the grey market.

Transport committee  Exactly.

Transport committee  I think it would be a very significant help to the industry.

Transport committee  No. The majority of our R and D investment and the majority of our research and development employees are actually here in Canada.

Transport committee  But we do research and development jointly with our partners in other jurisdictions, whether it's with Volvo in Sweden or with Weichai in China. So there is research and development per se going on in those jurisdictions as well as in the U.S., but the bulk of it is still done here in Canada.

Transport committee  Given the fact that we are selling this product both on its economic merits and on its environmental merits, we've put a lot of effort into making sure that all of our engines meet the minimum requirements or limits set by biogas producers as well. So all of our engines are biogas-compliant, in that so long as the fuel at the nozzle meets certain minimum standards, we can use biogas in our vehicles.

Transport committee  It depends. For example, in some jurisdictions, it may be less costly to use biogas because of the alternative cost of the fugitive methane emissions and what they need to pay for those. It depends on what the total value proposition is for that particular project. For example, if you operate a large landfill in California, you're going to be paying some cost for your methane emissions.

Transport committee  They would take it out of the pipeline, so long as they were situated on a pipeline with enough capacity to serve, and that's the challenge. Many of the pipelines that run underground aren't large enough to supply the demand of a fuelling station. That's not to say that, for example, here in Ottawa all the stations aren't situated on sufficient-capacity pipelines.

Transport committee  It's a Honda Civic manufactured at the factory as a natural gas vehicle; it's called the Honda Civic GX

Transport committee  It is not available in Canada.