Industry committee  In fact Xantrex, which is a Canadian company here, specializes in the equipment that does that.

Industry committee  It would depend on who has the constitutional responsibility, I suppose. You guys know more about that than I do. It's basically legislation that makes the utilities do certain things, and I described it. Ontario, as I say, has this so-called standard offer program, which is in fact a feed-in tariff structure.

Industry committee  You're number six in six years.

Industry committee  Yes, we have a little thing going. Until about ten seconds ago there were only five people who've known that since 2002. Now there are six.

Industry committee  I taught at universities for 12 years. These are the places where knowledge is discovered. I think the idea of coupling it into the industry provides a mechanism to get it applied--for example, the sponsoring of research chairs and that type of thing. The mandates that the team that's working on whatever project it is be both industrial and academic are very positive things.

Industry committee  Of course it does, and we have ways that we think we can creep up on cost parity. We have a long way to go.

Industry committee  Is that 100 megawatts?

Industry committee  That's pretty big. It's about 200 acres, roughly. With the technology at the moment, it's about 6,000 panels per megawatt, and the panels are roughly a little more than one metre square.

Industry committee  At the moment, you can just multiply by somewhere between $7 million and $8 million. So for 99 megawatts—call it 100 megawatts—it would cost $700 million or $800 million.

Industry committee  It's substantially more, but like all the renewables—or most of them, anyway—when you purchase the system, what you are really doing is buying future kilowatt-hours. So you have to amortize it over a length of time, and it gets fairly complicated.

Industry committee  You know what I'd do? I'd start using renewable energy. This is the energy of the future. I'd do an analysis. We don't have time to talk about it here, but take the Bay of Fundy project. Do it. It's very simple. Governments can't pick winners or pick companies or even technologies for that matter.

Industry committee  When you pick a project, it fulfills a need. I'm not saying we can't find good things to do and open the door to Canadians to respond. We're going to have to have clean energy in this country. Let's get on with building it and open the door. Put in policies that make it possible for skilled Canadians to respond.

Industry committee  I think the question was about good ones and bad ones. I mentioned the unsolicited proposal program. In those days, the purchasing agent was DSS, the Department of Supply and Services. You could make a proposal to DSS and they would shop it around the departments, asking, “Does somebody want to buy one of these things?”

Industry committee  Germany has become the world leader, and there's a very simple reason for that. When I first entered this industry in 2002, the Japanese were the leader. Then the Germans invented something called the feed-in tariff. Almost all the renewable energies--with the exception of big hydro, which has been with us for a long time--are supported by subsidies these days.

Industry committee  Absolutely.