Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 8 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Thursday, March 10, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 9 a.m. to study the present state and future of agriculture and forestry in Canada.
Senator Catherine S. Callbeck (Acting Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Acting Chairman: I call the meeting to order. Honourable senators, the topic this morning is biomass and energy and the role that biomass will play in the ongoing debate in respect of the Kyoto Protocol and greenhouse gases.
Our witness this morning is Sir Ben Gill from Wiltshire, England. Sir Gill is leading a one-year task force that will make recommendations to the British government and industry in October 2005 on how to develop biomass energy. In addition to running the family farm business in North Yorkshire, Sir Gill is currently Chairman of the Westbury Dairies in Wiltshire. He is a director of Hawkhills Consulting, a non-executive director of Countrywide Farms and a member of the Carnegie Trust Commission on Rural Community Development. He is also a council member of Food for Britain, a member of the governing body of the John Innis Centre, Norwich; Sir Gill has almost 15 years experience at the National Farmers Union, where he was president from 1998-04. During this time, he was the founder and chairman of the Alternative Crops Technology Interaction Network, which has now been merged into the new National Non-Food Crops Centre in York.
Recently, Sir Gill has been President of the Confederation of European Agriculture, a council member of the Agriculture and Food Research Council, and chairman of the Agriculture Systems Directorate within the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
Sir Gill, you have had and continue to have a busy life. We are delighted to have you here today. Please proceed with your opening comments after which senators will have questions.
Sir Ben Gill, Chairman, Westbury Dairies, Wiltshire, As an individual: Honourable senators, thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee this morning. I should underline that my life blood is as a farmer and I still have a farm in the north of England, although I do not see it often. I spend time doing other things, as you have heard from my CV that was so adequately outlined.
I will detail our activities in the U.K. with respect to the task force that we established last October. The concept for the task force arose out of a discussion that I had with Prime Minister Tony Blair, in January 2004 when we were covering off a variety of topics. The subject of biomass is a potential source of energy. In the United Kingdom it has been discussed frequently over the last decade or more. It has always shown promise tomorrow but, like tomorrow, tomorrow always stays the day after today and never becomes today.
The challenge was to determine the barriers and the real potential, and then to remove those barriers. If that meant knocking heads together, then so be it. I was quite happy to take the challenge on and move forward on it. As you have detailed from my background, I have had an interest in non-food crops, in general, for more than a decade.
I will give you a two-word phrase that you might consider in your general debates. While we have been used to the concept of a refinery — the use of fossil fuels refined into products for society as a whole — we have tended to ignore a ``natural bio-refinery,'' to wit I mean, the plant. The plant performs quite outstanding chemical processes on its own, and at times the process is far more complex than we can artificially replicate as humans and cannot even begin to understand properly at this time. A plant can do that in a way that is pure and non-polluting, as we have come to know pollution with human interference.
The use of the plant as a natural bio-refinery interested me at the outset and I first began looking at the subject of biomass when I was asked to chair this group to look into its role.
What are the main drivers in the U.K. for the interest in biomass? I would say there are two, one of which you may say is not as applicable to Canada as it is to the United Kingdom. The first is that the government has identified energy security as a key issue. While we have had vast resources in the North Sea in the form of gas and oil, those reserves have passed their peak and are dwindling. Recently our major gas companies have had to negotiate significant long- term deals for the import by sea of liquefied gas from as far afield as Malaysia. At the same time, we are facing the prospect of dependency on gas supplies via long pipelines from Russia.
This creates concern about energy security for the U.K. I am well aware that in Canada you do not have that focus because of the availability of energy from hydro power and from the tar sands, which are abundant.
I would ask that you think about, in the committee's deliberations in the coming months, whether that will be the same opinion in five, 10 and 15 years. It is important to point out that the work of the group is not to take a snapshot analysis of the status today. It would be folly to make recommendations on the basis of today's status, which have implications not just for tomorrow but for 10 and 15 years down the road. We have to develop a vision of the needs and pressures of society in 5 to 15 years. That is where the second driver comes in the form of climate change.
The subject of climate change has increasingly attracted my attention as I have travelled around the world and seen the consequences of it.
Two years ago while I was in South America and Argentina I saw, 450 kilometres inland from Buenos Aires, water tables that had risen to only minus one metre with long-term flooding year-in, year-out, with permanent damage. Outside of Guadalajara, I saw water shortages develop in terms of the availability of water. Western Australia is entering its third or fourth year of drought, and in that area of the world they are having political discussions about the need of a 3,000 mile water pipeline from the Northern Territories to Western Australia. With those political discussions, which are being held during an election year, comes the cost implications of such a pipeline.
Closer to home, in the European Union, in the drought year of two years ago, lost food production accounted to over $13 billion euros. That does not count the costs incurred by the closure of river traffic from reduced water flow. I could go on. All these factors give us real concern.
It is for that reason that the Prime Minister and the U.K. government have been forceful in promoting the arguments to address climate change. The U.K. set a target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12.5 per cent by 2012 at the latest and even set a higher target of 20 per cent by that time, although I am not sure that we will achieve it. The Royal Commission on Environment Pollution has set a target of 60 per cent reduction by 2050. These are real and demanding targets that we intend to address, and the role of biomass within crops, the crop portfolio, is a critical part of that element of success.
The current review of the climate change program in the U.K. is real and will lead on to more targets being delivered. Our biomass task force is perhaps charged with objectives slightly different from what you might expect when the chairman is a past president of the National Farmers Union. It is not about finding short-term solutions to the use of surplus land at this time. It can never be something about artificial fixes. U.K. and European farmers have become fed up and frustrated with a subsidy junkie approach and have just moved away or are in the process of moving away from that with the significant reforms in the common agriculture policy. They do not want to become hooked into a subsidy approach of a new system of farming that is so heavily dependent on support.
It is critically important that if biomass is to be successful it needs to be economically sustainable within a broad portfolio.
The task force is about identifying the real barriers that have so far prevented an effective take-up as an energy source. It is in that context that we have already made some comments that we have made public and that I might make to you to reflect upon.
First, when establishing a new technology, there is a problem when there is no effective supply chain. If a customer or a company want to consider future energy supply chains at the moment, if they want coal, they ring up a coal merchant; if they want gas, they ring up a gas supplier; if they want oil, they ring up an oil supplier. Yellow pages are worldwide. Yellow pages give those answers. There is no section that I am aware of that says ``biomass supplier.'' That is a key issue — not only the lack of it, but the lack of confidence. If businesses or domestic consumers are to be persuaded that biomass is a reasonable supply of alternative fuels in whatever form, then they need to have the confidence that this will not be a Johnny come lately, here today, gone tomorrow. They will want to commit to use of biomass with equipment they put in that will be the source for the life of that equipment.
The second point that we have identified is the lack of realization not just of the potential of biomass as a source of electricity but as a source of heat. Again, these issues may vary somewhat between ourselves in the U.K. and Canada, but we do not properly recognize the efficiency of use of biomass.
If biomass is simply put through a combustion process in parallel with a coal-fired power station, the energy extraction efficiency is possibly sub 30 per cent. That is extremely wasteful. In the U.K., in the methodologies we have, as opposed to yours with a substantial amount of hydro power, we pour out enough heat into the environment that would provide the heating requirements of the entire country more than one and a half times over. That cannot be sensible as we go forward.
As we move ahead with the replacement of the coal-fired power stations which will be coming about because of the need of emission standards, we will be looking at how we can replace those with biomass.
A critical factor when you use biomass is that it tends to be bulky and it is costly to transport. Again, that would have an environmental footprint in any case. It suggests that you move toward more localized coal generation of heat and power. When the energy efficiency moves up from the sub 30 per cent factor with the new technologies of gasification to potentially up to 90 per cent, that is a far more sensible use.
The third element involves the lack of clarity of messages from government authorities, confused messages, a bureaucracy that has not appreciated the elements and the need to drive things forward, and a regulation that has become disproportionate. One of our major generators has made that point very clearly to me. That may or may not apply here, but it is a subject of bureaucracy that I found all too often does apply worldwide.
That leaves me with one key point that I would like to make before I take questions. In the need to take biomass forward as a potential energy source, we need to do it from a basis of how it will fit in to our vision of the future. How can we do that unless we have a proper scientific base on which to assess the benefits and costs of biomass and alternative energy sources?
In particular, there is a worldwide lack of accepted methodologies for full lifecycle analysis of the comparative transformation methodologies for biomass into an end use, be it directly into electricity, be it through combined heat and power, be it into road transport fuels, or be it as a raw material for industry that could possibly subsequently be used as an energy source as a secondary or tertiary life.
We need to have an accepted set of standards globally to stop one camp saying one thing, another camp saying another thing, and those who do not have the expertise saying, ``I am confused; which one do I believe, this or that?'' This is a role that needs to be raised in international forums, be it in G8 or be it in OECD or whichever forum is the most appropriate. It is certainly one that I have determined is already a subject for consideration here in Canada, as it is in the United Kingdom. It is a priority we want to look at, and it is a priority that I believe is necessary here in Canada, and it is something in which we could do far worse than jointly examining how we might progress. Having those tools will then enable us to look at the future, to look at an evaluating scenario development of how we can best go forward given the encroaching demands on land, not just for food production but non-food production as a whole, and try to determine how we will achieve a most equitable, sensible and appropriate balance between the two.
Thank you for the opportunity to address you.
The Acting Chairman: Thank you very much, Sir Gill, for your very interesting and straightforward presentation.
Senator Mercer: Welcome, Sir Gill. It is a pleasure to have you here. This is a discussion that Canadians need to have, although many do not want to have it. We in Canada, as a northern country, understand the change in the environment more than most. There is open water in the Arctic at times of the year when there should not be. We see it in our massive forests. The effect is everywhere. We really do not want to talk about this; we prefer to ignore it. We are fortunate to have vast territories and vast resources, but if we do not talk about it, we will find ourselves on the short end of the stick. The rest of the world seems to be much closer to that short end of the stick than we are.
Will we be ready for what appears will be a crisis of catastrophic proportions?
Mr. Gill: I sincerely fear that the selfish approach of certain word-wide sectors of our society will try to impede us from being prepared for it. The key issue of water availability that I have touched on is critical to the future. You have extreme temperatures here in Ottawa, which I certainly felt yesterday, whereas the United Kingdom, with similar latitude has a more temperate climate as we benefit from the regular warmth of the Gulf Stream. That is to say, one can survive with lower supplies of oil, but humans cannot survive without water.
There was a work of fiction on television recently that hypothecated the scenario of a takeover by another country of Canada simply to obtain its water resources. Although that was a work of fiction, it does raise the point that water has become an all-defining issue.
In 1999, the People's Republic of China was a net exporter of wheat at the rate of 30 million tonnes on the world market. More recently, they have been net importers of wheat, largely because of lack of water availability in their northern lands that has caused pressures on their productive capability.
We are facing a double pincher effect, not only because of the effects of climate change, on what we do and the things you have mentioned such as ice flows and rising sea levels. That will happen all around the world.
With rising sea levels, what will happen not only here in Canada or the U.K. but in Bangladesh which is so close to sea level and where the people are already very poor? There will be coastal areas of India the size of Wales that will be permanently below sea level. What will be the effect of that and how do we address it?
In the scenario planning of climate change that I have seen, on the assumption the Gulf Stream does not move in Europe, the best estimate is that southern Europe will become increasingly arid. The Iberian Peninsula, Greece, Italy and southern France will have their ability to produce food much reduced.
It is not only the problems of climate change per se; it is the consequences of the ability to produce food and how much land we will have, given that water constraint, to produce food. That suggests to me that we need to look very carefully at how we use our land resource on a much broader perspective than would otherwise be the case, otherwise we will face, as you suggest, a very real and serious problem of conflict in the future. We need to raise this profile today to do something about it.
Senator Mercer: Britain is to be commended for having you do this work; however, I am concerned that you are doing this in isolation. It is something that needs to be discussed at the world level and at the level of not only the G8 but the G20, which involves some of the larger developing countries because, as you say, Bangladesh and India, for example, will be affected.
This does affect us. If Canadians think this does not affect us, they are not paying attention. In my Province of Nova Scotia and in Prince Edward Island we had a tidal surge this winter that eroded a fair amount of our shores. In the case of Nova Scotia, it affected only cottage land, but that was farm land at one time, and that has a dramatic effect.
We have had a number of discussions around this table about farm subsidies and the fact that the subsidy level in Europe is significantly high, as it is in the United States. In Canada, we are out of the subsidy business and want to stay out. We would like everyone else to get out.
How close is Europe to getting out of the subsidy business?
Are European and British farmers ready for that change?
I know this will be discussed at the WTO meetings that are coming up soon. I have been told that at this round of the WTO meetings that agriculture is supposed to be the big prize at the end of the discussions.
Mr. Gill: That question could require a very lengthy answer, which I do not suppose you want me to go into.
It is important that I put on the record formally that the reform of the Common Agriculture Policy agreed to in Luxembourg in June 2003 has not been properly understood around the world. It is of major importance. It is only just been implemented this year, but the reality is that in Europe the support mechanisms have increasingly been the major driver to promote production. If you have had a dairy quota, a suckler cow or sheep quota, you have always sought to fill that quota, irrespective of what the market wants. With the decoupling that has been introduced, which was a step that I actively promoted, at times as a lone voice in Europe that will no longer be the case. The marketplace becomes centre stage, which allows supply to match demand much more adequately.
Counter to what many so-called experts have been saying, this does not mean that prices must necessarily fall, because with the way we are moving through transition with the decoupled aid that will exist, although it will reduce significantly over the years, you have the ability to say, ``If you are not going to pay me the price, I will not produce it.'' This will be a short interval as more focus develops on non-food crops in Europe and the potential to take up there.
In many ways, when the commission thought they were doing a good thing with non-food crops by allowing their growing on set-aside, they were actually creating an artificiality about it that has not helped them. I think the move to the future has been much more positive in looking at the potential of non-food crops as a generality, as a source of energy in the future, and as a source of replacing fossil fuels either directly in energy or as a raw material for industry.
Yesterday, while I was at your National Research Council facility, I saw a fascinating piece of work. The researchers were converting a derivative of maize starch into polylactic acid and then blending it with other agents to create a product that they ultimately intend should be able to replace the steel in motor cars. This will mean that when the motor car comes to the end of its life, it will be reusable. You can create chains of utility, all plant based. You can go on using the product until you cannot use it again, and then you can use it as a carbon-neutral basis to produce energy.
This is something that I think will come much more into focus.
Senator Mercer: You mentioned that as the North Sea resources dwindle, Britain is bringing in liquefied gas from as far away as Malaysia. You should not have to go that far. We have large fields of natural gas off of the coast of Nova Scotia that we would happy to sell you, as would, I am sure, our friends in Newfoundland and Labrador. That is by way of advertisement, if you want to take that back with you.
Concerning the production of alternate fuels, our very vast lands are producing grain that we are selling at one dollar a bushel and losing money on.
Should we be converting that grain to corn and use the corn to produce alternate fuels at a higher return?
Mr. Gill: One of the reasons I suggested to you that you need to have proper life cycle analysis is to understand the real analysis and the implications of everything we do in major changes of this nature, in terms of the environmental footprint, of energy efficiency, and of carbon dioxide use, from start to finish.
There is no real point of thinking that non-food crops, be they for energy or anything else, can just be grown as an afterthought on the poorer land. The economics of the whole equation will be central to that; if you can grow better crops on better land to derive better revenue that will become a driver.
Already in the United Kingdom we see an interface developing in that our power generators, because of requirements by government to source biomass as part of their fuel stock, are importing large quantities of palm olive kernels, olive pulp and other such products to put through the power stations. These products previously would have been used in animal feed. You begin to see the interface. As prices drive up, they have an effect on the feedstuffs and food production costs as well. Thus, the two will become integrated and the farmer must use his intelligence to determine the best economic driver.
Senator Hubley: Our agriculture committee looked at climate change several years ago. One of the models that we had the pleasure of visiting was a Hutterite pig farm in Alberta. This community collected all of the waste, the manure, small animal parts and their household waste, and produced a natural gas that eventually produced electricity, from which they were able to supply all of their own energy needs. They were also able to sell the electricity to the Alberta grid, and smartly so. They would use their electricity at different hours, and when the need and the grid was high, that is when they chose to sell it. It seemed to us to be a very smart operation.
I wonder if you might first comment on those small operations and how that situation will help us when we look to the larger picture.
Mr. Gill: You illustrate admirably what I believe will become an increasingly important part of the future picture. My scenario is that by 2020 we will have to use every potential resource for energy creation. I could orchestrate an argument that as a society at present we are terribly wasteful in the resources we use. We produce far too much waste without considering how we might usefully reuse it. Animal waste is one such point, as indeed, may I say, is human waste. Sewage sludge is also a potential energy source by biodigestion. You can produce way biogas, but certainly you can use it for heat or electricity production.
I think that because biomass is a bulky product, the way ahead will be to use it locally, for local communities. I think its use would be more appropriate for rural communities. It will create jobs in those rural communities and create an alternative energy source that is more sustainable. You can use any surplus energy generated to bolster the energy within the grid systems, if connected to the grids, in a way that will reinforce the grid rather than compete with the grid.
The potential for using biodigestion is substantial, as is the potential for integrated farms for using their woodlands.
There are significant amounts of what is known as ``forestry waste'' that could be used as an energy source. In the United Kingdom, the best estimates are that there are nearly one-half a million tonnes of arboricultural arisings. I think a civil servant dreamed that word up. That refers to when the tree surgeons go round and chop branches off to do their pruning every year and put the branches into wood chips. Those wood chips in combination with other elements can be used as an energy source.
To underline the point you have made, I had a similar experience when I revisited Uganda, a country I used to work in many years ago, and went to a farm with 10 cows. The cows produced all the heat and gas that they needed from their own biodigestion on the farm, where all the cattle slurry went into. It is very simple technology, but it works. We have perhaps become a little too sophisticated in some of our needs, but I think these practices are an integral part and a very critical part of our future society.
Senator Hubley: You mentioned the forests and the pruning and the thinning. We had a hurricane that came through the Atlantic region and we are still trying to decide with what to do with some of the fallen trees. While you cannot depend on such crises for your energy source, when a situation like that happens it would be somewhat comforting to know that there is a use for the wood and it will not be wasted.
Mr. Gill: That is right. We see this as something that can fit in with the energy crop scenario that we developed in the U.K., where we are looking at the use of principally short rotation willow and also various grasses, particularly myscanthus or elephant grass. A short rotation crop is willow. I am growing some on my own farm. It has a harvest cycle of three years. There is a similar dry matter yield of myscanthus in a steady state of potentially 12 dry matter tonnes per hectare per annum.
How that interfaces with the point you make is this: If you are into willow, the time from planting to the first real harvest is four years down the road. You can integrate in the intervening period the forest residues, or the hurricane damage in the case you referred to, in the short-term. Once you have created the industry based on biomass or woody biomass, should that ever happen again — and with climate change, the likelihood is always greater — that can sustain and complement the source you are working with from your energy crop base in a more coordinated and effective manner.
Senator Hubley: We have just come through a BSE crisis in our cattle industry. We are now removing what is called specified risk materials from each of the cattle that are going to be slaughtered. We understand the amount is great.
Would it be possible, or can it be possible, or is this an opportunity to use that as a biomass to produce something of value?
Mr. Gill: Madam Chairman, I share with you my utmost sympathy for the problems that you faced with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, another word that has difficulty rolling off the tongue. I think there has been a dramatic overreaction by those who sought to ban the export of your animals. I have a degree of expertise built up over the years with my involvement as an officer of the National Farmers Union and I have had my disagreements with other European countries over the issue of beef. I have the utmost sympathy and I know what you have been through.
Specifically to your question, following the BSE crisis in the United Kingdom in 1996 we were forced into a position to restore public confidence. We introduced measures that removed any animals in excess of 30 months of age from the food chain. That was in addition to the specified risk material to which you refer. All of these older animals, which were cows and bulls that had come to the end of their breeding life, were sent for rendering into meat and bone meal. That meat and bone meal had been stored for a considerable length of time until an outlet could be found. One of our most profitable generators of electricity on the national grid is an old coal-fired power station which has managed to secure the contract to burn all the meat and bone meal for electricity generation. It is doing it at a negative cost, which makes it very profitable for the generator involved.
The answer to your question is that should be possible, as long as the SRM has gone through a proper process to sanitize and secure the control procedures that need to be there to constrain the disease spread.
The Acting Chairman: Senator Mercer asked you about growing corn. I want to ask you about growing canola. In my province, Prince Edward Island, the government is looking at having farmers grow canola to mix with diesel. Are you doing that kind of growing in the U.K.?
Mr. Gill: The British government has been reluctant to grow biodiesel from canola, particularly so when compared to other European countries, notably France and Germany, who have invested significant amounts in the development of biodiesel facilities for blending with fossil fuel biodiesel.
Other countries within Europe have been much more progressive than the U.K. government. The Czech Republic, up until the time they joined the European Union, had a system whereby the government agreed to buy up amounts of oilseed rape off the food market and sell it as a loss into the processing sector to produce biodiesel, which was then mixed with diesel and sold at the pumps.
The current market on biodiesel in the United Kingdom focuses almost exclusively on the recycling of waste vegetable oils or mineral oils, which have used say chip fat, for example, that is then purified and sold on. The problem is that the government of today has chosen only to offer a tax rebate of the order of 20 pence per litre. The current tax level is 46 pence per litre which does not really stack up.
One of the decisions we all need to make — if you accept the scenario I have described, where land availability in five and 10 years down the road becomes a serious issue again — is how we best use that land in terms of mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and improving the efficiency of energy production and use.
The energy balance in producing a crop of canola for biodiesel is very different to the energy balance in growing a crop myscanthus or short rotation copies, which can be as much as 10 times greater in terms of energy gain, one compared with the other. That is the short rotation copies of miscanthus compared with biodiesel.
It is a matter of the government determining within their own portfolios, which is their priority for the land use that we have within the needs falling into road transport, electricity and heat needs and raw material needs generally, as a whole.
Senator Mercer: To go on with the discussion about biodiesel and other fuels that use by-products from other production. I was at the fisheries committee the other evening and I was fascinated to learn they are now using fish oil as a supplement to the diesel being used in public transit.
Is this another direction that you think perhaps we should be going?
Mr. Gill: I have not really thought about fish oil as a potential energy source. There is a need to be innovative in every aspect of what we do in the future, which we are moving toward, given the drivers to which we referred, to ensure that we are using every potential opportunity to maximize the use of resources available in a way that minimizes the ultimate waste that is put to ground. Fish oil is an option. I would guess that might be a little smellier than the meat and bone meal powered generation facilities.
Senator Mercer: I grew up in a generation where we were marched off to the school fountain every day and handed a cod liver oil tablet. It tasted awful; I still take cod liver oil today. It is another option.
I am fascinated by this discussion because it reminds me of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome movie where they were finding alternate fuels that were even smellier than the fish oil.
It seems to me that we need to be thinking outside the box or at least outside the coal mine or the gas and oil fields, in our generation, to conservation which is also part of the mix.
As you know, Canada has signed the Kyoto accord and we are struggling to implement our commitment to it.
Do you think we are really whistling in the wind when we do not have the major player in the Americans at the table on Kyoto?
We have had leaders of the greatest waster of energy in the world deny that there is such a thing as acid rain and pollution; not the current president, but several presidents past felt that way.
Mr. Gill: I find it regrettable to say the least that the world's largest economic power fails to take into account the real problems of climate change.
I found the arguments that they cannot afford the cost in terms of GDP reduction quite incredibly simplistic and selfish. They store up problems for our children and I do not believe they are accurate in any case.
I believe that as a society we need to drive innovation forward and there are solutions there for us to find. I know there are solutions there for us to find given technology. I believe those countries that lead it will ultimately benefit because they will have driven it through. Of one thing I am absolutely clear, that we will have to change as an industry, as a society, as governments, to face climate change.
I am totally clear that it is the much preferred option that we do so voluntarily and ahead of the need rather than waiting for the legislation to be put into place to force us to do it.
With the greatest of respect to all the politicians involved, I think perhaps there you would agree it is better that commerce does it than to have costly and complex bureaucratic regulations to drive it through when you will have an effect on the productivity of the country.
There is a real dichotomy in the United States; you cannot ignore the fact that they are pouring vast amounts of U.S. dollars into a U.S. ethanol program, which is substituting for fuel. Neither can you ignore the fact that California, which is the world's fourth biggest economy, under Governor Schwarzenegger, is introducing a whole set of technologies, to wit, hydrogen cell technologies, and is acutely aware of the problems of climate change. I think it is also interesting that, from what I read, in the U.S. Senate, there is increasingly dialogue and recognition that climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed and there are potential coalitions across party, Republican and Democrat, that would suggest that this position of ignoring climate change will become increasingly difficult to sustain.
I do agree with your prime assumption that it is very difficult when America refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol. The recent signing by Russia has been a major step forward in allowing the accord to be ratified now as something that requires us all really to look at it.
Senator Mercer: I am heartened by Russia signing the accord as well, but signing the accord and complying with the accord are two different things, as we are discovering in Canada. Are you familiar with the Government of Canada's One-Tonne Challenge campaign?
Mr. Gill: I have been made aware of it while I have been here, and this strikes me as a sensible attempt to try to raise public awareness. At the moment, I do believe the lack of public awareness is because climate change, when it happens, is creeping. Yes, we have a hurricane, but we just put that down to another hurricane. We do not see the totality. We do not see the global impact. We prefer to ignore it because we go on getting up every morning, doing the same things and going to bed at night, every day. At least I would hope we do.
We need to increase the awareness and the understanding not just of climate change but of the very real implications that we have talked about and that you have so correctly highlighted, Senator Mercer, for the world as a whole, both in the developed and the developing worlds.
I have real concerns about the developing world, whichever part you are in, and where we are going. To me, sustainability and self-sustainability is an issue that we would do well to focus on very clearly, articulately and much more forcibly.
Senator Mercer: You raised the question of water and water management. We are blessed in this country with having vast supplies of fresh water that we have not tapped ourselves.
The fictional made-for-television movie H2O should be required viewing for young Canadians in order to see the potential danger if we do not manage our water resources properly, or not properly managing our government that ultimately is responsible for that resource. The other side of it is the technology of finding sources usable water.
Are you familiar with how far technology is advancing in the ability to remove salt from salt water to enable the use of that water for agriculture in areas that are fairly arid but are close to large bodies of salt water?
Mr. Gill: I am aware of the technology; I am not familiar with the new technology. Significant improvements can be made in the way we use water, both in farming and in society as a whole. We use clean water in areas where we could perhaps use dirty water. If we look at irrigation methodologies and water resource use, we could use that water all far more effectively. We could look at winter water storage as opposed to summer use of it. We need to look at that holistically. We can look at the use of floodplains. Much can be done to improve our use before it becomes an issue.
You mentioned that you are blessed with water supplies. As I mentioned earlier, and I am sorry if I get the presentations confused because I have already done one today and I sometimes get confused whether I said it here or the previous presentation, the point that was made when I looked at the weather channel when I came into Ottawa on Tuesday night were the reduced snow falls in the western part and the Rockies and the consequences that has for your water supplies for the coming year. Last week, we were visiting Finland. If you look at the electricity supply in Finland and the cost of electricity that varies with the rainfall, which is actually the snowfall that they have had in Norway for the winter. If they have had a dry or a low snowfall winter, the price of electricity is materially higher than the year when they have had plenty of precipitation in whatever form.
While you are blessed at the moment, you should not assume you will be blessed forever. It would be prudent to plan a scenario based on eventualities of one type or another that do not rely on that as a God-given right. As others have said, do not become complacent. Actually look to be always challenging what is a given today.
As a final comment about thinking outside the box, there is a tendency too much in today's society for us to be risk- adverse. We need to take more risks in determining what is possible for the future.
I understand Bill Gates, who I am sure will be known to you, in a recent meeting of his research staff about a year and a half ago berated them for not taking enough risks. It is only by taking risks that you actually push the frontiers of science forward and evaluate what is possible and not possible. That is something that is not new.
If you look back to some of the exhortations of the great scientist Albert Einstein, he similarly made exhortations about thinking outside the box. The lateral review of issues is critical to take our society forward to solve these very problems that you have articulated.
Senator Mercer: I would like to thank you. As I am listening to you, I am happy that you are here before our committee, but I am cannot help but think that you would be an excellent witness before Senator Banks' committee as well.
I do not know how long you are in Canada, but perhaps we should recommend that Senator Banks ask you to come back next week and talk to his committee.
With respect to thinking outside the box, I find it interesting that a technology as simple as wind power has not caught on a world-wide basis and particularly in parts of this country where the wind is just howling. That is an inexpensive energy source as we would just have to pay to build the generators. Wind power would help produce electricity and take us off our coal and oil and gas addiction.
Are we alone in not taking advantage of our resources of wind?
Mr. Gill: You are not alone, but there are issues with wind that have been very strongly articulated in the United Kingdom, in many cases through ignorance. There is a degree of what we call ``NIMBYism'' in the United Kingdom, not in my backyard, which I am sure you do not have in Canada.
Senator Mercer: No, we just have bigger backyards.
Mr. Gill: It is pretty destructive. An element of our population that has become wealthy in urban society has a visionary dream of owning a, ``country estate,'' which may amount to a property of 10 or 20 hectares of land. Once they have that land they do not want it spoiled or besmirched in any way, shape or form. They will not condone the erection of a windmill in close proximity to their dream estate. They do not want to discuss the niceties of sustainable electricity supplies. They become hooked on many out-of-date comments about noise levels, et cetera. They become absorbed, almost, in a world of their own.
We have a degree of wind use in the United Kingdom. It has been constrained by rabid campaigns of certain pressure or interest groups and by some TV personalities, which I find difficult to comprehend.
I can look at some wind farms that we have put in the Pennines and see them not as intrusions but rather as something that creates a kind of diversity. After all, man has been modifying the landscape since man became part of the environment when Adam and Eve were created. It is a matter of how it is done with sensitivity.
The compromise between onshore wind power and offshore wind power is an ongoing argument. The problem with offshore wind power is that the capital expenditure per megawatt hour of generation capacity is approximately twice as much as it is for onshore wind power. In any case, it is being shoved into someone else's area.
At the end of the day, wind power has its other problems. Winds may blow strongly in Canada, but they may not blow on the days when you need it to blow. Winds are intermittent in supply and you need that bedrock of fuel supply that will go with it. I do not believe that wind will form more than a small part of the total energy supply, but it will be significant.
Senator Mercer: Sir Gill, my last question is in respect of energy sources sitting next to agricultural land. In my province we have a small tidal power generating station in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. Does that hold potential for development to provide the cheap energy that is required?
Mr. Gill: There are two power elements: wave and tidal power, which are two different technologies. In the United Kingdom we have had long-term concepts of tidal barriers on the Severn Estuary, the Humber Estuary and The Wash. The one that is perhaps most attractive is the Severn Estuary in the southwest where there is a substantial flow known as the Severn Bore, quite often at extremes that could create energy.
Wave power relies on the simple up and down motion of the waves as another potential source of energy. Interestingly, some research in the United Kingdom has been done out in the islands off the Scottish mainland where energy is normally more expensive. They are trying to create holistically a self-sustaining island by generating all their energy from a combination of wind, wave or potential biomass solutions with biogas, which you mentioned earlier.
I do believe that the solution in the future will be that biomass will form a part of our energy sources, but only a part. It will not be the majority source but it will be a significant part. It will be a majority part, I believe, in rural areas where the product can be utilized closer to the base, minimizing transport costs and the environmental imprint of that transport cost, hence being a sensible holistic approach of biomass within the national framework of any country.
Senator Hubley: If you travel to the North in Canada, you can see quite clearly the effects of climate change, such as the erosion of the glaciers and the thawing of the permafrost. It affects some species of animals that live in those areas. We learned of the history of the region from native people and that was as illuminating as any information gathered when discussing climate change and its effects. We may look at one hurricane and pass it off. There certainly is evidence in Canada that we are facing climate change, and we will have to address that issue.
I come from Prince Edward Island, as does Senator Callbeck. We are always concerned about how to keep our small farms viable, and how to encourage our young people to take up farming in order to maintain the agricultural industry in Canada. There are many small farms across the country and yet, we are looking at a global issue.
Do we have to consider global solutions or can it begin on a much smaller scale in the communities and on cooperatives. Can it begin with solutions for farmers to adopt that could benefit their activities?
Perhaps some of the biomass from their farms could be used to produce energy rather than be disposed of in some other way.
Mr. Gill: The question of climate change as you describe it is totally correct. I would add that there is a real threat to species in that respect. People focus on the effects of the melting polar cap; however, they tend to forget that, while it adds significantly to the sea level, the 1o centigrade warming of the earth in the last century, principally concentrated in the last decade, is significant in itself. If the predictions of a 5o temperature rise by 2070 become a reality, people should not ignore the fact that when you heat water, it expands. The simple expansion of the water will lead to a material rise in sea level irrespective of the consequences of the polar ice cap melt. That is particularly relevant when considering countries in Europe such as Holland. It is particularly relevant in the southeast of England; the Thames flood barrier has been used more in one year than it has ever been used before.
The costs of protecting London, about which some of my colleagues in the northeast of England would say ``Why bother,'' I could not possibly comment on, Madam Chair.
Senator Mercer: I think you just did.
Mr. Gill: With respect, senator, I merely quoted what others had said, not what I had said, and I could not possibly comment otherwise.
With regard to your specific comment about how we could help community farms, I will make a statement that may shock you. There has been a tendency to say that we must protect, above all odds, small community farms, almost to the extent that we condemn them to a life of penury; and that would be wrong.
One of the key reasons we have had difficulty retaining people in the farming industry is that they can earn more money outside the farming industry. I have four sons, not one of whom has indicated a desire to farm. The two eldest are in other industries, earning more money in their 20s than I ever earned from farming in my life. Quality of life comes into that, but I cannot begrudge them their decision. I think it is great that they are doing that.
What we have to do to get young people into farming is to ensure that they earn a reasonable rate of pay for the work they perform. The key is in the last part of your question.
The clever part, if you are small, is not just to produce a raw commodity, it is to add value. This is particularly relevant to biomass. Rather than sell wood to your local community, why not sell heat or power? You are adding value. That way, you are not passing on the potential benefit that quite often eludes the primary producer.
I will give another example to illustrate what I mean about how the rewards in any chain quite often end up disproportionately allocated. A couple of years ago my eldest son was married. Much to my wife's annoyance, I agreed to purchase the wine for the wedding reception. When I looked at the wine list at the hotel where it was to be held, aside from the fact that it was French and we had the dispute with France over the beef, the wine list was not of sufficient quality. I agreed with the hotel I would buy the wine and bring it in myself.
I bought the wine from a wine wholesaler. I bought New Zealand and Chilean wines; wines that were produced half- way around the world. Think about what went into growing that wine: the choice of the land and selection of the vines, the planting, nurturing and pruning, the crop protection, the harvesting, the processing, the maturing time, the blending, the storage, the bottling, the promotion and marketing, and the transportation of the wine half-way around the world. Once the wine arrives in the U.K. customs takes 1£ off it straight away before they have done anything. The local merchant then has to promote the wine and deliver it to the hotel. He charged me, for a very good wine, £4.50 Sterling. He paid £1 in customs tax, so it was £3.50 to do all those jobs.
I got a good deal on corkage from the hotel. They only charged me, for taking the cork out of the bottle, pouring the wine into the glass and washing the glass up, £8.50. Did that seem equitable? To me, it seemed a little skewed the wrong way.
What farmers need to do is move down that chain. They cannot do it individually, which comes back to your point exactly. What they need to do, not just small farmers but all the farming community is do it cooperatively, by working together in groups; and that applies just as much in biomass as it has always done in food production.
Senator Mercer: At your next wedding, you might want to consider Canadian wine.
Senator Hubley: The corkage might be the same.
The Acting Chairman: Thank you for your presentation. We wish you well in the important work you are doing in your recommendations to the U.K. government on how to develop biomass energy.
I have to tell you that in my province of Prince Edward Island we have one of the first biomass energy systems in the country. It started back in 1984 or 1985. It heats and cools approximately 80 buildings.
You mentioned that you and your wife might come to Prince Edward Island this summer. If you do, Senator Hubley and I would be pleased to show you that system.
Thank you very much.
The committee adjourned.