Natural Resources committee  Today you have the technology, through advanced metering infrastructure for electricity and gas, to report in a much more detailed, granular form. If you do it in a standardized way, you could meld that information quite easily. You'd need to fill a few gaps on things like oil. If you plug that in, in the same standard, and you do it over time, you'll then get your energy picture from the bottom up instead of the top down.

Natural Resources committee  Let me put a few more nuances on that. If I sit in Halifax, there are a whole lot of people who would be heating with home heating oil and who might have supplementary wood. I'd certainly have an electricity bill, and I might have a bit of propane. The oil company that delivered it understands exactly how much energy I use, but do they report it back to me in a form that I can use very well?

Natural Resources committee  I think the data from all those suppliers should go to a public body.

Natural Resources committee  You could have 14 public bodies across the country. If they're all wired and connected, and they're using information and the same standard, then they can share amongst themselves very easily. You don't necessarily have to have every electron movement reported directly to Stats Canada.

Natural Resources committee  One thing the Atlantic Canada energy data road map looks at is where technology is going. What are the opportunities to have this reported by the energy provider in a fairly simple, straightforward way if you evolve it over a decade? Instead of putting the burden on the consumer to report....

Natural Resources committee  I hope whoever you asked that question gave you an interesting answer.

Natural Resources committee  It wasn't me. Number one, the private sector is collecting a whole lot of energy information today. We gave the example of ecobee and the 30,000 volunteers. Nest thermostat, in parts of the United States, is actually collecting that information and offering it back to the utilities.

Natural Resources committee  Of course not.

Natural Resources committee  Part of it is, what is the model for the private sector to actually go in and act as an efficiency agency inside a home? They would much rather go into institutions and large residentials. They would like to go to CAPREIT and cut a deal for tens of thousands of apartments, rather than coming to my home and spending the time.

Natural Resources committee  You're actually touching on a subject that I am trying to learn a little bit about, as well. Let me give a small example in Nova Scotia. Normally, on small solar installations, photovoltaics installations, it reports back on the net. It's reported back that my installation sold 100 kilowatts of electricity into the grid more than it used from the grid, so it's a net.

Natural Resources committee  In a lot of ways, again, it comes back to the data, which is there. The biomass—out in the woods, somebody cutting their own wood and making their own energy for their home—is going to be a very difficult one because they don't fully understand what the cost, the volume, or anything else was.

Natural Resources committee  I think it is possible, through the standardization, to reduce the cost on business. We've discussed a number of kinds of intuitive senses; if I'm reporting one way to one place at one time, then that will be a whole lot better than telling five people almost the same thing in a slightly different way.

Natural Resources committee  I would say that if you don't have a lot of money, you'd do a couple of things. One, you would begin to get more timely information from Statistics Canada, and so you would invest there. I think there should be investment somewhere in a central place. Whether it's Stats Canada or NRCan, I do not know.

Natural Resources committee  I would say that in theory, it's absolutely the right thing to do. In theory, it would be a really good foundational accountability kind of thing. In practice, it's going to be a real challenge, partly for the reasons I alluded to earlier. It's hard to get political capital and attention on these kinds of fairly boring things.

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely.