Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. My name is Evan Walz. I'm the acting assistant deputy minister for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources with the Government of the NWT. As you noted, I'm joined today by Mr. Frank Lepine, the director of forest management;

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the question. As we outlined in our presentation, we have had some good success working with the federal government. There's been a significant amount of money invested but we see that continued investment is really needed. In the presenta

Natural Resources committee  We recently had, in the summer of 2014, one of the worst fire seasons that we've had on record. We had drought conditions that proceeded right into the fall and at last count we had less snowfall, particularly in the Yellowknife region, than we did in an average year. With that a

Natural Resources committee  I can tell you that we in the government of the NWT certainly see the use of biomass fuels eventually throughout the Northwest Territories. We see the possibility to use this fuel source wherever we can. Right now the emphasis has been placed on the southern part of the territori

Natural Resources committee  I guess I should have clarified that it's for the winter of 2015-16, if we could make that clarification. Again, with the chair's indulgence, I will ask Mr. Lepine to speak to the issue of capacity.

Natural Resources committee  I'll ask Bill Mawdsley, the associate director of forest management, to address that.

Natural Resources committee  As Mr. Mawdsley mentioned, the work that FPInnovations did considered all those options, and at the end of it we landed on using biomass for pellets. As far as ethanol goes, we simply don't have the volumes here in the Northwest Territories to make that work.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I may ask for some assistance from Frank and Bill with this. You asked what worked. Clearly, the support from the federal government was instrumental—CanNor and NRCan. That really helped us move this forward. I think I would also be comfortable in saying t

Natural Resources committee  I'll ask Frank Lepine to provide a little bit more detail on the CanNor funding.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, that has been an important element, as we mentioned in our presentation. As a government we've tried to take steps to move public buildings to biomass fuel, and others seem to have followed suit. We have a number of industrial clients, school boards, and schools that are mov

Natural Resources committee  I'll ask Bill Mawdsley to provide some comment.

Natural Resources committee  I think that's fair to say. The infrastructure right now is slightly more expensive. One of the other issues that we've noticed is that people are a little concerned about supply. The fuel oil has a regular well-established supply chain. I think people are a little unfamiliar wi

Natural Resources committee  That is certainly one of the things we look forward to, yes. We can address the issues associated with supply chain by having a plant and a supply that's built here in the NWT.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, you're correct. The plan that's in place right now with this pellet mill in the southern part of the NWT would and could not only feed the demand in the north, but as things ramp up, it could provide to southern Canada. There is demand in southern Canada. We are on the high

Natural Resources committee  We're shaking our heads here. We know that the territorial government has taken steps to convert a number of its buildings—schools—but none of us around the table has first-hand knowledge of any federal buildings that have moved to biomass fuel.