Natural Resources committee  I would agree with Don, and perhaps even less on the R and D side, in that coming back to my opening comments, injecting gas into the ground is something we've been doing for 30 years very safely. If you look at Weyburn, Sleipner, or Norway, different projects, we have a tremendo

Natural Resources committee  As I said, the risks of any kind of leak, and ultimately of any kind of threat to human health from putting the CO2 back into the atmosphere is very low. Still, as with any known conventional gas project, you need to figure out the various forms of liability. So in the unlikely e

Natural Resources committee  Certainly with two of the projects that received funding, like Don's project...he talked about Keephills TransAlta, Scotford Upgrader, proven technology on proven sites, where there's good storage capability. Swan Hills—in situ coal gasification capture there. I'd say it's specul

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. Selectively, yes, and we have demonstration projects going. I'm most excited about projects like Keephills and that we're moving forward; the project is commercial scale. That will result in large reductions of CO2 on the order of a megatonne per year

Natural Resources committee  Certainly, and I've seen a variety of price estimates, let's say on the order of $200 per tonne, or at least north of $150 per tonne. Let me first state that CCS is most financially viable on things like coal-fired electricity, and certainly we have enough coal-fired electricity

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for your question. I think if we had a price on carbon of $40 a tonne by next year, 2011, and that were to increase, in a phased way, to $100 per tonne by 2020, our own economic modelling shows the government could reach its greenhouse gas reduction targets. And in fac

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. To your first point, I think Canada absolutely needs a strict regulatory system to manage its greenhouse gas emissions. I think we've been close. Waiting for the United States to make up its mind could be a lengthy process, whereas I feel that we could move forward ve

Natural Resources committee  In our own modelling work we've shown that it would be applied in the oil sands. We have technical challenges around the purity of CO2 streams; we don't think those challenges are insurmountable. And a tremendous amount of research and development is happening right now so that e

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. It certainly is right now; there is a large amount going toward CCS. In clean energy I would argue that we need more than a billion dollars so that we can continue comparable investments in CCS during these early stages when these investments are nee

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. To your first question, looking at the role of energy efficiency and renewable energy investments, the answer is absolutely. Our belief is that in order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions we need a portfolio approach. Of course, a group like the P

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Chair Benoit. Good morning, members of the committee. My name is Ed Whittingham, and I'm very happy to have been invited to present to you today. The Pembina Institute is a sustainable energy think tank originally based in Alberta. We have offices nationally now. Pe