Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Honourable members of Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to be here today, along with my colleague from Natural Resources Canada, Graham Campbell, who, as was mentioned earlier, is the director general of the Office of Energy Res

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. The feasibility of retrofitting was one of the first things we looked at. In all cases of all these major technologies we described, it would require a major change in how the plant works--major changes in equipment, of space that was never conceived

Natural Resources committee  I think the plants today can be retrofitted to capture, say, SOx and NOx particulates--all these things that are in relatively small quantities in the gas. If you're asking them to also capture carbon dioxide, it would really be very difficult to do.

Natural Resources committee  I didn't understand the first part of your question.

Natural Resources committee  If I understand correctly, you're talking about polygeneration.

Natural Resources committee  Okay. We believe that this will be possible around 2015. That is what the clean coal technology road map indicates.

Natural Resources committee  First, typically, the decision is made between five and seven years prior to construction. They are now well placed to make such decisions. At last two companies have decided to test two different types of technologies that will be in place around 2012. It can't go much quicker t

Natural Resources committee  Starting in 2020, yes.

Natural Resources committee  I want to point out that when we invest $5 million, that's just the federal share. In fact, we do a lot of this work with industry, and typically we never fund more than 50% of the cost. Sometimes it's one-third, sometimes it's up to 50%. It's deceptive to just look at the $5 mil

Natural Resources committee  Maybe I could just start by saying this is a relatively new field of research. Anybody who has coal is interested in it, so lots of countries are doing work right now in oxy-fuel and gasification and so on. For instance, if this feed study from SaskPower allows them to go forwa

Natural Resources committee  It would be the provinces and the federal government setting standards as to what the emissions ought to be. In my case, what I was referring to is zero emissions, so that should meet standards.

Natural Resources committee  Around 2012 to 2015.

Natural Resources committee  Up until the end of their useful lives. They typically have a 40-year useful life. Some of them will come due before that date, so utilities will have to make some decisions as to what they would like to use then.

Natural Resources committee  If they're going to be on, then they will continue operating as they are now.

Natural Resources committee  It's hard for me to comment on a specific plant, except to say that for all pollutants other than carbon dioxide it is possible to bring down the emissions. It is something each jurisdiction would have to look at. It's a trade-off. It would probably increase their rates; are th