Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be giving the presentation. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about innovation and energy today, with a focus on energy supply. It's an area where Canada does a lot of very good work and work we can be proud of. For opening remarks I'd like to t

Natural Resources committee  It's an area where there is a lot of investment by private industry, which looks to increasing the supply and being efficient about how resources are used. Industry will tend to concentrate on production. It's in their best interests to do so. Federal investments are often in min

Natural Resources committee  On the renewable side, there is an opportunity for an export market that is growing, that is nascent in some of the technology areas. It's being able to identify which ones are the right areas for Canada to invest in. One of the contexts that we work in, whether it's fossil fuel

Natural Resources committee  Every program we have has a set of benchmarks and performance indicators right from the onset. The ones that are more focused on R and D have benchmarks, including what you would see as a bibliometric type of benchmark: the number of publications, the number of codes that we've i

Natural Resources committee  Perhaps I could turn to my colleague Martin Aubé on this matter.

Natural Resources committee  We could look up that information; we don't have it with us. I could answer the one on geothermal: Canada's not producing electricity from geothermal at this point.

Natural Resources committee  The IEA does produce gross expenditures by governments, and we can secure those and provide them to the clerk.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I understand.

Natural Resources committee  Again, I'm not a finance person. I work on the R and D side, so I don't have the numbers on tax credits or other incentives that might be in place and directed to renewable or non-renewable energy.

Natural Resources committee  I think the Department of Finance would probably be the right department to provide these types of figures.

Natural Resources committee  It's in the clean energy sum; of the $795 million, approximately $600 million was for CCS and $150 million for small-scale demonstration of renewable energy. Then the balance was for R and D and administrative costs.

Natural Resources committee  On carbon capture and storage, the demonstrations, such as they are right now, are early days. It's an early investment. The IEA expects that by 2050 CCS could account for a reduction of 20% of the reduction required in global GHG emissions. In Canada and Alberta, it could be muc

Natural Resources committee  I think every country is looking at its own resources and the best way to manage resources and use them effectively. From that point of view, countries are looking at how they'll use their resources and water. Canada is well endowed. It has 20% of the water resources in the world

Natural Resources committee  Innovation is, as well, sustainable development. There's an economic side to it and there's an environmental side to it, while respecting the social side of the development. It's really a balance of things. From my perspective, when you invest in innovation, you have different pu

Natural Resources committee  Using less energy also means emitting fewer pollutants and producing fewer tailings, so again they're very much linked.