Natural Resources committee  In British Columbia we have this regulation that requires that the forest residues be slash-burned. That burning does not happen very efficiently. We get fairly significant methane and N2O emissions from burning that slash. If we can take those forest residues and use them in a c

Natural Resources committee  From forest residues, it would be negative.

Natural Resources committee  We use an awful lot of natural gas, so it would take us quite some time to switch from forest residues to supply all of our fossil and natural gas. There's been a request for proposals to do a study in B.C. to look at the market potential of RNG from all sources. I don't believe

Natural Resources committee  It's not really true that we're using more fertilizer per tonne of product. We actually see increases in nitrogen-use efficiency in most crops across Canada, but we also have things like new varieties being developed. Tractors are getting more efficient. Implementation of innovat

Natural Resources committee  There have been a number of studies done in various locations looking at natural gas versus coal, and there have been a few done looking at exported LNG displacing coal. That information is available. I think the push-back you get from people is, well, how can we be 100% sure tha

Natural Resources committee  There is some information in the public domain that I could share. Of course, a lot of the information I have from companies is confidential. I can't share individual company information, but I do know that there is some information in the public domain.

Natural Resources committee  Generally speaking the emissions that are associated with building plants tend to be a very small portion of what ends up being the total life cycle. They are not usually included in most life-cycle analyses because we run into questions like over how long a period of time we sho

Natural Resources committee  If you go back 30 or 40 years, that might be true, but there have been tremendous improvements in the efficiency of really all aspects of the biofuel production process.

Natural Resources committee  This could still be some pretty old data.

Natural Resources committee  I have data from existing plants, operating today, that use about 25% of the energy that they did 20 years ago.

Natural Resources committee  What's been said is all true, but it's also true that we can build soil carbon, particularly in agriculture. Canada has an excellent track record of doing this, in that every year we have more than 10 million tonnes of CO2 being added to the soils across Alberta, Saskatchewan and

Natural Resources committee  Certainly. When you look at the life cycle of gasoline or diesel fuel, you go back right to the beginning of the extraction and production of crude oil, through the refining and then through the use. The use contributes about 75% of the total life-cycle emissions, and the other

Natural Resources committee  I think there are two. The first is ethanol, where you can capture the CO2 that comes off the fermentation and inject it underground, so it's carbon capture and storage. That's worth 30 g/MJ. We have ethanol plants today in the low 40 g/MJ on a full life-cycle basis. The other ma

Natural Resources committee  Sure. I think there's no question that agriculture in Canada is quite sustainable. Canada has been tracking a number of sustainability metrics related to agriculture since the 1980s, and every five years Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada puts out a comprehensive report on the env

Natural Resources committee  The information that Canada has and reports in its national inventory report shows no change in grasslands. However, they do admit that Canada does not have a perfect system for monitoring changes in grasslands. However, overall, the cropland in Canada has been declining for the