Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue No. 30 - Evidence - September 19, 2017
OTTAWA, Tuesday, September 19, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 6:09 p.m. to study the effects of transitioning to a low carbon economy.
Senator Richard Neufeld (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening, colleagues, and welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. I'm delighted to be back and I look forward to continuing our committee's important work.
My name is Richard Neufeld. I'm honoured to chair this committee. I'm a senator from British Columbia. I wish to welcome all those with us in the room and viewers across the country who may be watching on television or online. As a reminder to those watching, these committee meetings are open to the public and also available online on the new Senate website at sencanada.ca. All other committee-related business can be found online including past reports, bills, studies and lists of witnesses.
I would now ask senators around the table to introduce themselves. I will start by introducing the deputy chair, Senator Paul Massicotte from Quebec.
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman from Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Patterson: I'm Dennis Patterson, senator from Nunavut.
Senator Wetston: Howard Wetston, Toronto.
Senator Griffin: Diane Griffin, Prince Edward Island.
The Chair: I'd like to also introduce our staff, beginning with our clerk on my left, Maxime Fortin, and our Library of Parliament analysts Sam Banks and Marc LeBlanc. It's great to see you all, Marc in particular.
I hope you had a good summer, Marc. We're glad you're back.
Colleagues, as you know, in March 2016 the Senate mandated our committee to embark on an in-depth study on the effects, challenges and costs of transitioning to a lower carbon economy. The Government of Canada has pledged to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is a big undertaking.
Our committee has taken a sector-by-sector approach to this study. We will study five sectors of the Canadian economy that are responsible for over 80 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. They are electricity, transportation, oil and gas, emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries, and buildings.
Our first interim report on the electricity sector was released in March and our second one on the transportation sector was released in June.
Before introducing our three witnesses, I want to take a few minutes to provide committee members with an update on our study. As of today, we have heard from all our scheduled witnesses representing the emissions-intensive trade- exposed industries. We only have one more panel remaining from the oil and gas sector. Experts from the LNG industry will be appearing before us in early October. Having said that, the Library of Parliament analysts have been working on draft reports for both sectors. The steering committee hopes to review these reports in October, and I'm hopeful we should be able to release both reports before the Christmas break.
So today we are starting our study into the building sector with government officials. The steering committee has approved a list of witnesses from this sector, most of which have already been invited. These witnesses will likely keep us busy for the next couple of months. As always, any future legislation may alter our plans. Furthermore, the steering committee has also agreed to have two or three meetings as part of this study on carbon pricing. So far witnesses from each of the sectors we've studied have addressed this hot-topic issue, and we thought it would be wise to have a couple of meetings on the matter. These meetings will be held in the coming weeks.
For today's meeting, our forty-sixth as part of our current study, I'm pleased to welcome from Natural Resources Canada, Dean Haslip, Director General, CanmetENERGY-Ottawa, Innovation and Energy Technology Sector; Sarah Stinson, Director, Buildings and Industry Division, Office of Energy Efficiency, Energy Sector; and Martin Gaudet, Deputy Director, Housing Division, Office of Energy Efficiency, Energy Sector.
Thank you for joining us. Sorry that we're starting a bit late, but the chamber went a bit longer than we thought. The floor is yours. After you've made your presentations, we'll have some questions.
Dean Haslip, Director General, CanmetENERGY-Ottawa, Innovation and Energy Technology Sector, Natural Resources Canada: Thank you very much. As you said, my name is Dean Haslip. I'm the director of CanmetENERGY-Ottawa, but I'm speaking this evening more generally about energy research and development for the building sector.
If you follow along in my presentation, on slide 2, two of the main themes I'm going to be visiting and revisiting through my opening remarks are new technologies and the development and testing of new technologies for energy efficiency in buildings. Underlying that are the modelling and simulation tools that get used to analyze options and identify cost-effective opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Slide 3 has a graphic which gives us a sense of where we are with respect to buildings. Essentially, it identifies the fact that approximately one quarter of Canada's GHG emissions are attributable to buildings. About 60 per cent of those emissions are from residential buildings and 40 per cent from commercial and institutional buildings. Then you can see a breakdown within those categories of where the energy expenditures take place. The bottom line is that space heating dominates the energy use in both of those areas.
I wanted to talk a bit, on slide 4, about the role of simulation, specifically the role of simulation to drive decision making. From a research and development perspective, it's important to understand how energy is used in a building, what the factors are that contribute to energy use and how these factors interrelate. Modelling and simulation is an important tool to help us establish this level of understanding. It can be used to estimate the energy and GHG reductions associated with energy-efficiency improvements and the cost of making those improvements to identify the most promising directions for future technology development and also to support the development of policies, programs and new building codes.
There are two things I wanted to flag at this point. One is that the calculations that you do and the results of those calculations can vary considerably as you go from coast to coast in Canada because of different climatic conditions and also because of the dramatically different energy mixes and costs of energy in different parts of the country.
The second thing I wanted to flag is that while it is always attractive and perhaps easier to think about new buildings, it's also very important to remember that there are a bunch of buildings that are already standing. In fact, with reference to the year 2030, we estimate that 75 per cent of the buildings that will be standing in Canada in 2030 have already been built. It's therefore very important to consider the concept of retrofit.
On slide 5, I highlight a few of the technology priorities for both existing buildings and new construction. I already talked about the fact that space heating in buildings is the dominant energy use. So if you're trying to reduce energy use for heating in the winter, there are really only two things that you have to do. The first is to make sure that the building itself is well insulated so that you're not losing a lot of heat to the outside. The second is when you're looking at the equipment that's producing the heat inside the building to make sure it works as efficiently as possible.
On slide 6, I talk about the building envelope, that insulation that's going to keep that heat from getting to the outside or in the summertime to keep the heat on the outside and not let it get to the inside. You can look at this either from a new building or from a retrofit perspective. From a retrofit perspective, it can be very difficult. Obviously you can blow insulation into the walls of buildings if they're not already insulated, but depending on the thickness of those walls, there's only so much you can do.
One of the things we have been looking at is the retrofit of existing buildings using panelized, prefabricated wall assemblies that can be measured beforehand, assembled in a factory and then brought to a house or a building and assembled around the building like a jacket.
From the standpoint of new construction, we are also looking and consulting with industry on the production of high-performance building envelope assemblies for new construction, including the use of next generation insulating materials that might be produced in a factory and brought in a panelized form to a new building site.
On slide 7, I give a specific example of the kind of thing you can do in a new construction with high performance panelized wall assemblies. A little over two years ago I spoke to this committee about the work that we've done on the so-called Rapidly Deployable Northern House. The Northern House is a technology that we developed at CanmetENERGY-Ottawa as an attempt to address many of the concerns with northern housing, such as the expense, the short building season, the lack of skilled tradespeople, the cost of energy, the difficulty and cost of repairs and water damage due to burst pipes.
The design that we have put together is for an ultra energy-efficient home that is designed to be assembled by the people in the community without requiring the use of skilled tradespeople. In fact, our structure can be assembled by an unskilled crew with fewer than 150 person hours of labour, which amounts to less than a week for a crew of only three to four people. The design does not require specialty tools or fasteners. All of the parts arrive flat packed, as if you would get them from IKEA, and they're interchangeable, so damaged components can be replaced from a stock of spares. Our cost target is approximately half that of an equivalent conventionally built home.
I'm happy to say that we are now in the process of working with Public Services and Procurement Canada to select a builder for a unit that we're going to be assembling in the North, at the same time issuing a licence to that company that will allow them to build a larger number of units for use of the federal government as we continue to develop our understanding and get the necessary approvals to build in the larger commercial market outside of the federal government.
On slide 8, I put down a couple of considerations around limiting the energy use of either heating or cooling systems. As I said, what you want to do is make sure that you are using that equipment as efficiently as possible and have the most energy-efficient equipment possible. There are obviously new technology elements to that, such as the use of, say, cold-climate air-source heat pumps or micro co-generation systems to provide heating and cooling more efficiently inside buildings. The other thing you can do, of course, is to improve what I would call the operation of those heating and cooling systems through the use of smart homes and intelligent building systems. That's the topic of slide 9.
I know that you are familiar with the concept of smart homes, starting with a smart thermostat that is designed to use energy only when it's required, to use the right amount of energy and to use it where it's required in the house or in the building, and to maintain comfort conditions at lower energy and cost compared to a conventional home with a conventional control system.
One thing I wanted to underline for you is that every advantage that that obtains for a smart home system is multiplied manyfold for a larger building like a commercial building or an institutional facility because the control systems in those buildings are so much more complicated. An intelligent building system delivers much more in terms of heating and cooling efficiently and effectively.
The last thing I wanted to talk about was the NRCan-developed tool called RETScreen. I start talking about that on slide 10. We're now moving a little bit from the research and development regime into the field of building owners themselves. Building owners require tools to help them to evaluate the viability of new energy projects. That's what RETScreen does. It helps the user to manage and measure their GHG emission reductions, their energy savings and cost savings more quickly and easily. It helps them to plan and identify new energy-efficiency projects, to benchmark their facilities and build a portfolio.
On side 11, I show a few potential users of these tools. RETScreen has been downloaded by more than 550,000 users worldwide, and it's available in some 36 languages. So there's a very large user community. Of course, it's dominated by facility owners and operators, but it also gets used by service providers like engineering companies that are selling energy-efficiency services to building operators. It gets used by product suppliers, people that are trying to supply heating and cooling systems to buildings. It gets used by policymakers and funders to evaluate new policies, and it gets used by educators and facilitators. So over a thousand universities worldwide have incorporated RETScreen into their curricula to help to educate the next generation of building engineers.
To give a concrete example of that, if you look at slide 12, there's the example of Oxford Properties Group, which is a global real estate investment development management company with over $40 billion of assets under management. They have been a RETScreen user for over seven years, and over that time they have avoided approximately 595 million electric kilowatt hours, $50 million in utility costs and 195,000 tonnes of GHG emissions. So I think the impact is evident.
I will wrap up on slide 13 by saying that NRCan is leading research and development activities to meet GHG reduction targets by identifying cost-effective opportunities for building owners, utilities, and provincial, territorial and national governments to reduce GHG emissions, while at the same time developing technologies that use less energy to provide comfortable home and working environments.
I will now turn it over to my colleague Sarah Stinson.
Sarah Stinson, Director, Buildings and Industry Division, Office of Energy Efficiency, Energy Sector, Natural Resources Canada: My name is Sarah Stinson. I'm Director of the Buildings and Industry Division in the Office of Energy Efficiency at Natural Resources Canada. I'm here today to provide information on Natural Resources Canada's energy-efficiency programs for buildings.
On slide 1, according to the International Energy Agency, energy efficiency can deliver almost half of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to limit the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius. Energy savings can be greater than the cost of implementing energy-efficiency solutions, making energy efficiency one of the only climate change mitigation measures that can pay for itself.
Energy efficiency is effective as it delivers long-term results in the transition to a low-carbon economy. It does so by using less energy overall, freeing up energy in the grid to allow for electrification of other sectors, reducing costs for Canadians and making energy affordable, and supporting and incenting innovation to bring next generation, high- efficiency products and practices to market.
On slide 3, I outline some of the savings and benefits for Canadians of energy efficiency. While energy use in Canada increased 31 per cent between 1990 and 2014, it would have increased 55 per cent without energy-efficiency improvements. Over this period of time, Canadians saved over $38 billion on energy as a result of energy-efficiency improvements. Natural Resources Canada's suite of programs from 2011 contributed to these savings, helping Canadian consumers and industry save a billion dollars in energy costs.
Energy-efficiency programs also support job creation in two ways, through program spending and investment in products and services, and when energy users spend their energy savings. The net effect can be significant; 30 to 52 job years are created for every million dollars invested in energy-efficiency programs.
On slide 4, buildings are a key area of opportunity for GHG emission reductions though energy efficiency. Indeed, nearly a quarter of Canada's GHG emissions are from the building sector, and 65 per cent of the energy used in a typical home is attributable to space heating because of our northern climate. This costs Canadians money. Canadians spent $28.5 billion on home energy use in 2013 alone. Spending for commercial buildings was $20.6 billion in that same year.
On slide 5, as indicated, space and water heating are our biggest challenges, and together they account for over 80 per cent of the building sector's GHG emissions. Heating demand can be reduced by making building envelopes and equipment more efficient and by fuel switching where appropriate. Through measures such as more efficient building envelopes and heating equipment, total built-environment GHG emissions have fallen over 12 per cent between 2005 and 2013, despite an almost 17 per cent increase in total floor space.
On slide 6, I outline the key measures within the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, which was announced by Canada's first ministers in December 2016 and is Canada's vision for action to help to meet its climate change objectives. The building strategy within this framework focuses on both new and existing buildings. This includes residential, commercial and institutional buildings and the equipment and technologies they use. The measures within the building strategy are ambitious and require commitment and actions by all orders of government — provincial, territorial and federal.
The impacts of buildings programs by 2030 are outlined on slide 7. The potential GHG emissions reductions from energy-efficiency programs for buildings are significant and ambitious, at over 20 megatonnes. Given jurisdictional authority, outcomes for building codes and mandatory labelling and disclosure will be contingent on provincial and territorial adoption of these codes and implementation of energy-use regulations. Natural Resources Canada is working closely with the provinces and territories to support their adoption of measures to make buildings more energy efficient.
In this context, on slide 8, I outline a summary of the programs that NRCan delivers to promote energy efficiency in homes and buildings. While product regulations and model energy codes promote a minimum standard for energy performance, others, such as EnerGuide and the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, provide Canadians with valuable information about how products, homes and buildings use energy to help them to make decisions about purchases, upgrades and renovations. National programs supported at the federal level are complemented by provincial and territorial measures that include regulated standards, implementation of codes, and incentives and rebates.
The table on slide 8 provides this overview. Regulated minimum energy performance standards reduce energy use across a span of more than 40 product categories. Equipment regulations ensure that high-efficiency equipment is used when an appliance or piece of equipment needs to be replaced. Labels, tools, workshops, information guides, networks and online data build awareness and capacity, and certification and benchmarking systems recognize the highest performers and help drive the market. I'll delve into each of these areas to provide a bit more information on our programs.
Slide 9 outlines the minimum standards for products and buildings that have been used in Canada for more than 20 years. Canada's Energy Efficiency Act passed by Parliament in 1992 provides for the making and enforcement of regulations concerning minimum energy performance levels for energy-using products as well as labelling of energy- using products and collection of data and energy use.
For building codes, in 1997 a consortium of industry stakeholders, provinces, utilities and the National Research Council, alongside Natural Resources Canada, developed the model National Energy Code for Buildings, which provided for the first time ever a national standard for building energy performance that could be adopted by provinces and territories.
Benefits of building to meet national model code standards include cost savings, reduced peak demand, improved indoor environment and sustainability, and of course reduced GHG emissions.
The EnerGuide label on slide 10 compares energy use of products to others in a product class and is applied to major household appliances and room air conditioners, as well as to heating and cooling equipment. More than a million Canadian homes have been rated for their energy performance using the EnerGuide rating system. This has resulted in more than 800,000 energy-efficiency home retrofits. The EnerGuide label also applies to household appliances and heating-cooling equipment to disclose energy use relative to other similar products.
The ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager is the United States Environmental Protection Agency interactive energy management tool that is free to use and allows users to track energy and assess energy and water consumption across a portfolio of buildings in a secure online environment.
On slide 11, I outline our programs that are considered premium standards. Natural Resources Canada's suite of premium standards includes the ENERGY STAR Program Certification, which again is administered under agreement with the United States Environmental Protection Agency and certifies the top performing equipment homes and commercially institutional buildings. A thousand partners make, sell and promote ENERGY STAR certified products in Canada. From 2011 to 2016, ENERGY STAR generated 2 megatonnes of GHG reductions and $1 billion in energy savings for Canadians. More than 74,000 homes in Canada have been certified ENERGY STAR by 700 participating builders.
R-2000 is a premium standard that has been successfully transforming the housing market for 40 years. The leading- edge house now has become the mark of the norm. An R-2000 house built in 2005 is now a typical house built today. R-2000 accounts for 22 per cent of energy-efficiency improvements in the residential sector since 1980.
In conclusion, work to expand and accelerate energy-efficiency action across the building sector is under way and significant achievements are expected in the future. Federal departments are working together and with their provincial and territorial counterparts to transform how houses and buildings are constructed, operated and renovated to make them more energy efficient and reduce GHG emissions. Research development and demonstration projects are providing businesses and professionals with information about the best and most cost-efficient practice and technologies for low-emission buildings that use less energy.
Industry leaders are sharing their experiences and lessons learned in providing valuable information and insights into how we can make high-performance buildings the norm across Canada. The building sector presents significant opportunities for accelerating energy efficiency and GHG emission reductions and transforming Canada to a low carbon economy.
The Chair: Thank you. We will now go to questions and begin with Senator Massicotte.
Senator Massicotte: I have a lot of questions. You've described all the programs we have in place. You've described the programs we intend to have in place. I can certainly appreciate the importance of new building codes; those that force companies, individuals or homes to adhere. But I get the impression we're not making significant progress. You mentioned Oxford as an exception. If you look at the buildings under construction today, it is predominantly glass, more glass than even 15 or 20 years ago. Esthetics are very important. People love sunlight. Glass is an extremely poor insulator. It cuts the wind. You might get 4 per cent, up to 7 per cent, and yet we see a lot of that.
Even with existing homes, there isn't much difference in resale prices versus a very efficient home from one built 15 years ago. It's not technology. Technology has been with us for a long time. So I don't sense there's much rush or much impetus to get people going on this. My question is how do we motivate? How do we get there?
I know the technology is there. If we look at office buildings, commercial or industrial, the tenant pays the operating costs. If you look at the operating costs of those new buildings, which maybe have a slightly lower operating cost, therefore the owner can charge a little bit more rent, but it's not significant. It doesn't change the world. It doesn't get us where we want to go.
Is my analysis wrong? If it's right, how do we get there? What motivation can we incite? You're looking at around half of the CO2 reductions in energy efficiency. It's nice in theory, but how do we get there?
Ms. Stinson: Thank you. The Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, as committed to and endorsed by first ministers, provincial, territorial and federal, outlines the path to establishing net zero, energy- ready codes to be published by 2022 and adopted by the provinces and territories by 2030. That pathway consists of three or four increasingly stringent tiers.
At the federal level, we developed those codes in partnership with the Natural Research Council. Provinces and territories have jurisdiction to adopt those codes. So we're working very closely with provinces and territories and industry to ensure that they have the information and the capacity that they require in order to move forward with adoption of those building codes.
Senator Massicotte: By what year, 2020?
Ms. Stinson: We're working with the Natural Research Council Canada to publish a net zero, energy-ready code by 2022.
Senator Massicotte: That only applies to new buildings I gather?
Ms. Stinson: That would be new buildings.
Senator Massicotte: Where's the 75 per cent of the existing buildings?
Ms. Stinson: We're also working to publish a retrofit code by 2022 that would also be adopted by the provinces and territories.
Senator Massicotte: I know all that. We have done that yet there's not much impetus. Even in downtown Toronto, how many buildings have lights on at night? There's obviously not much incentive.
It's easy for me to complain. It's nice to have a lot of booklets and plans, but you've got to incite the players to get there.
Ms. Stinson: Absolutely. Through Budget 2017, we have program funding to build capacity within industry to be able to build to those standards and, through awareness and information, change behaviour as well so that Canadians can undertake measures themselves to reduce their energy consumption.
Martin Gaudet, Deputy Director, Housing Division, Office of Energy Efficiency, Energy Sector, Natural Resources Canada: If I may add something as well, under the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, we're also looking to work with provinces and territories to implement mandatory labelling of home energy ratings and building energy use to help demonstrate the improved performance of new buildings, so consumers and building owners can see the impact it would have.
Senator Massicotte: That would be very good.
Mr. Gaudet: That's something we're aiming to develop the framework for so regions that want to implement those programs can do so as early as 2019.
Senator Massicotte: I love the plan; I'm just looking for the execution. I know where you're going. Thank you.
Senator Seidman: Thank you for your presentations. I might address my question to you, Ms. Stinson, but if anyone else wants to respond, please do. Ms. Stinson mentioned the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change and said that it was very ambitious and significant and required the commitment by all orders of government. In response to that pan-Canadian framework, Budget 2017 promised $182 million over 11 years to retrofit existing buildings and build new net-zero energy consumption buildings across Canada.
A recent op-ed by the Pembina Institute asked for a transparent mechanism to demonstrate provinces' accountability for the federal funding they will receive under the pan-Canadian framework in order to provide assurances that these funds will be used effectively and in line with Canada's overall objectives for moving to a low- carbon economy and meeting our climate commitments.
I would like to know if you could provide any greater detail on the planned allocation of the funding and whether there will be any reporting requirements put into place and, if so, what they will be.
Ms. Stinson: Certainly.
Budget 2017 did provide $182 million over eight years for new action for energy-efficiency buildings.
Ninety-nine million dollars was earmarked to develop net-zero energy-ready codes for new buildings, and research, development and demonstration to lower costs of high-performance homes and buildings.
Eighty-two million dollars was earmarked to retrofit existing buildings. This includes expanding energy benchmarking, optimization, new standards, and supporting provinces and territories to implement regulation of energy labelling and sharing of energy-use data that my colleague Martin outlined.
With respect to reporting on achievements or progress, energy and mines ministers in August of this year released a document, Build Smart, that outlines the building strategy within the pan-Canadian framework. As a first step in that reporting, included as part of that endorsed package was a critical path for provinces, territories and the federal government to achieve what was committed to in the PCF out to 2030.
So that provides a bit of a guideline as to what needs to be accomplished moving forward. We are working with provinces and territories to, together, ensure those key objectives are met.
Senator Seidman: Are you developing a timeline with reporting requirements along the way so provinces and territories will reconfirm that, indeed, they are meeting the standards and guidelines?
Ms. Stinson: We have established, as part our implementation under the pan-Canadian framework, two federal- provincial-territorial working groups. One is on codes and the other is on the labelling and energy disclosure components. That kind of work will be undertaken by those two working groups going forward.
Senator Seidman: The kind of work which is developing the timeline and the list of requirements that must be met in a transparent and accountable way; is that correct?
Ms. Stinson: Indeed. We're working with provinces and territories to undertake a needs assessment so that we can work with them to ensure that, as much as possible, they have what they need to move forward on these, and that work is being undertaken in that collaborative federal-provincial-territorial working group context.
Senator Patterson: Thanks for the presentation.
I want to get this right. You said, Mr. Haslip — and I think Ms. Stinson as well — that a quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions come from commercial and residential buildings.
Ms. Stinson, you spoke fast, and I'm not sure I picked this up properly, but your first slide said that by 2030 there can be a 49 per cent improvement through energy efficiency. Did I get that right?
Ms. Stinson: I said that according to the International Energy Agency, energy efficiency can deliver almost half of the emissions reductions needed by 2030 to limit global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius.
Mr. Haslip: Perhaps I could add to that.
On a regular basis, the International Energy Agency produces reports that look at trends in energy use and use that 2-degree-Celsius scenario as a benchmark to say this is where we would have to be in 2030 or 2050 to meet the targets that have been set out. They also do some fairly detailed analysis to look at the most cost-effective mechanism to get from a business-as-usual scenario down to the kinds of emissions we would need to be at by, say, 2050 to meet Paris Agreement commitments. When they do that analysis, they come out with the kinds of results that Ms. Stinson was just referring to.
Senator Patterson: We have looked at the trade-intensive industries, like steel, where companies say, "We've done quite a lot, and as much as we could,'' and there are other sectors saying, "It will be difficult for us to go much further.''
You're saying this one is low-hanging fruit, if we adopt these programs; am I right? This is a relatively straightforward yield for new programs and new investments. It can be done. We're inefficient now. It can be improved relatively straightforwardly. Is that right?
Mr. Haslip: Of course, I don't want to make a blanket statement that in every building and every industry and everywhere across the country, energy efficiency is always the first thing you ought to invest in. However, that said, as Ms. Stinson pointed out, energy efficiency is one of the only things that pays for itself, so it does deliver savings. The payback times can vary, depending on your facility and on the technologies available. However, there are definitely lots of opportunities and lots of low-hanging fruit across this country, in a whole bunch of different contexts, to use energy-efficiency solutions to lower your overall energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and expenses.
Senator Patterson: I've heard about your Rapidly Deployable Northern House because we did a study recently in the Aboriginal Committee on First Nations and Inuit housing. You said that you have Public Works Canada partnering with you to deploy this house — there's a builder being identified — and it could be licensed by the feds to provide in-house accommodation or housing needs. However, we're spending $250 million a year on First Nations housing. I might be off by some millions here.
I just have to ask: Are you working with INAC? Another committee has done detailed studies on the poor quality of housing, the poor energy efficiency, mould, et cetera, which you know about. Are you working with INAC? It's great for Public Works to look after its own in-house needs. I'm happy to hear that. But we're spending all this money on reserves and in the North, and I don't see any energy payback or plans for spending that money better.
Mr. Haslip: That's a very good question. There are two things I would want to say.
The first is that we have had discussions with many government departments, including INAC, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Parks Canada, in looking at their interest in partnering with us to bring this technology into the field, if you will.
The second thing I would say is that I don't want to give you the wrong sense based on what I said earlier about working with Public Services and Procurement Canada. So the path from having a research-and-development prototype to having a building that can be bought on the open market and that you can have families living in, it's a straight line, but it has several steps.
The next logical step for us is to get units into the North, to get them with clients so that we're not putting families in an unproven technology. We want to put them in the North with clients that will be resilient to failures so that we can adequately test the house and stand behind the design. We need to work with code officials to make sure that we get the necessary engineering stamps and everything on the building so that it satisfies the building code requirements.
In order to do that, for us the next step is to establish a company that is going to be able to build units for us so that we can deploy them in the North and do all that testing. Because we're a federal government department, we're working with PSBC to do that procurement and establish that supply chain so we can build these structures, put them in the North, test them, and at the same time build units so that they can be tested in a laboratory at the National Resource Council to get all of the necessary approvals for code so that we can license it for commercial sale as well.
The Chair: I have a supplementary to one of Senator Patterson's questions with regard to page 2, Ms. Stinson, of yours. That was the graph that you got from the IEA.
As I understand it — you'll correct me if I'm wrong — to meet 49 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions, every country in the world will have to meet those standards to keep the temperature down by 2 degrees. Just Canada doing it will not affect the temperature in the world one iota. This, coming from the IEA, is for all of the countries that signed on, I would say, to the Paris Agreement, or maybe even more, because it's relatively aggressive. Would I be correct?
Ms. Stinson: It represents a global picture.
The Chair: We don't want to fool ourselves, and I'm not saying you're trying to. I'm just saying to those people out there that are listening, they should understand that every country has to live up to this kind of reduction somehow to actually keep it below 2 degrees.
Senator Massicotte: I recommend in the future you should make a note that it's IEA when you present it.
Having said that, what is the basis of the graph? Is this the potential that could be achieved if the world adapted, or is it the expectation of a 49 per cent reduction based upon efficiency? What's the basis for those numbers? And you used the word "may.'' "May'' means if every human being did it. Is that what you really meant, "may,'' which is hypothetical only, not expected?
Ms. Stinson: The purpose of the graph was to demonstrate the potential that energy efficiency has in terms of contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Senator Massicotte: So the hypothetical maximum that could be achieved, which doesn't have much to bear, frankly.
Mr. Haslip: It's not a hypothetical maximum. In this case, they're saying there's a business-as-usual scenario that will result in 2050 of having a certain number of greenhouse gas emissions, but if we want to meet the Paris commitments globally, we need to be at this level. Then they do a bunch of analyses which say the most cost-effective way to get that is by this percentage, or this percentage of that can be reached by more renewables, this percentage by energy efficiency, this percentage by carbon capture and storage and so on.
It's not a maximum, because they could also produce the same graph for a 1.5-degree scenario.
Senator Massicotte: It's a hypothetical possibility.
Mr. Haslip: If you want to get to a 2-degree-Celsius scenario, a world where the global temperature rise doesn't exceed 2 degrees, this is the best way to get there.
Senator Griffin: I have a few short questions.
The Canadian building code for buildings, have all provinces adopted that?
Ms. Stinson: There's a building code for residential buildings and a building code for commercial.
Five provinces and territories and two cities have adopted codes covering about 70 per cent of new commercial space or floor space in Canada. Those are for the commercial building code 2015, Ontario and Nova Scotia. For the commercial building code 2011, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Yukon and then the cities of Whitehorse and Vancouver.
Senator Griffin: Let's take the residential building code, for instance. What percentage of Canada would not be covered?
I'm from Prince Edward Island. Our three largest municipalities do have the Canadian building code, but the rest of the province does not, all the smaller municipalities and all the rural areas. That's a fairly big area of the province that has still not adopted the National Building Code.
If you were to look across Canada, what percentage would not be covered by either the commercial or residential building code?
Ms. Stinson: For the residential code, 9 out of 13 provinces and territories have adopted that. Prince Edward Island is not among them.
For commercial, 30 per cent of the new floor space in Canada would not be covered by the current commercial building code.
Senator Griffin: Is the amount of floor space in commercial buildings increasing? Also, is the amount of floor space in housing increasing? It seems to me that a lot of people are building larger houses.
Ms. Stinson: I don't have the specific percentage increase in floor space for commercial or residential, but we can get back to you with estimates of what that increase is and is expected to be.
Senator Griffin: That would be great, because we can talk about efficiency, but if everybody builds a bigger space, that starts to neutralize the effect of the efficiency. That's why I'm curious.
Mr. Haslip: To add to your answer, the Office of Energy Efficiency can provide that data. I don't have the numbers at the tips of my fingers, but definitely the floor space per person in the residential sector has increased fairly consistently over a long period of time. As you point out, it does obviously have the effect of counteracting, at some level, the energy-efficiency improvements which have also been continuous over a long period of time in the residential sector.
Mr. Gaudet: If I can add one thing. At the same time, we're seeing fewer people in each of those larger homes as well.
Senator Griffin: Yes. I came from a family with eight children; I have one.
Senator Wetston: Can you help me with a very basic issue here of energy efficiency? I recognize the mandate that you're seeking and the fragmentation that exists in this country to implement something like you're attempting to implement is very difficult. Senator Patterson and I were glancing at each other and saying, "You have a number of cities and provinces, but you don't have the country, obviously.''
I think you indicated 30 per cent of the commercial space? I don't think Ontario is in the commercial code, or just the residential. Is that correct? Am I putting words in your mouth? If I am, please forgive me.
Ms. Stinson: Ontario has adopted the 2015. In fact, Ontario is one of the leading provinces with respect to those standards.
Senator Wetston: I only ask it because there's so much construction going on. Every corner in the City of Toronto has a 30- or 40-storey highrise building. Frankly, I'm a little tired of it, because everywhere you go, everything is narrowed, and there's congestion and all that other stuff. It's not of your concern, but just to clarify that issue, help me with what you mean by "energy efficiency.'' At this committee, we have heard about many of the sources for greenhouse gases. We've also heard a lot about energy efficiency and the desire to reduce GHG, but you have another mandate here. Fit energy efficiency and GHG reduction together for me and tell me what you mean by that.
Ms. Stinson: What we mean by "energy efficiency'' is reducing energy consumption and using energy that we do use in a more efficient way. When we link that to GHGs, there are a number of benefits to energy efficiency. There are also cost savings because as you use less energy, you don't have to pay for it. There are also the environmental benefits which can include, depending on how that energy is produced, GHGs.
Senator Wetston: Are you only focused on natural gas from the point of view of heating and cooling? What are you focused on? We can look at different sources such as boiler sources, radiant heat systems, photovoltaic systems and heating systems with natural gas, which I think is the main source still.
Let me ask you a question which I know you won't answer and say, "Yes, we should do that.'' Why don't you just ban all forced air gas furnaces in the country?
I take it you're not going to answer that question. Would it help your energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction? Would it help that? This isn't hypothetical. I want you to be careful answering that question. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Mr. Haslip: I can provide you a partial answer to that question.
Senator Wetston: I'm sure you can. I'm sure you've thought about it before.
Mr. Haslip: Absolutely. The answer is that whenever you propose changes, there are environmental considerations and economic considerations. For example, in a jurisdiction like Quebec, where you have a very clean electricity system, moving people from a natural gas heating system to an electricity heating system like a heat pump of some sort — and I mentioned cold-climate air-source heat pumps in my presentation — will definitely deliver cost savings. In a jurisdiction like Quebec where the electricity is pretty cheap, it will probably deliver economic savings also.
Senator Wetston: Don't rub it in, please.
Mr. Haslip: I'm sorry. I live in Ontario, too.
However, if you are in the province of Alberta today and you switch out somebody's gas-fired furnace for an electrical system, it will cost considerably more and will result in more greenhouse gas emissions because a lot of coal is being burned in that province.
I don't know if they are the extremes but they are two extremes.
There are a lot of things to consider before you step up and propose a national program of doing anything with people's heating because the electricity systems vary significantly from province to province and the cost of electricity varies significantly from province to province. There are all sorts of variables that you want to pay attention to there.
Senator Wetston: Sure.
I was interested in Senator Patterson's discussion with you about your northern house. How are you going to electrify that? What sorts of energy are you going to use? What's your potential use there?
Mr. Haslip: That's a really good question. The answer is, it depends. Obviously, in northern communities energy is a big issue. Many of the communities are on diesel generators, which is definitely not a clean form of energy or electricity.
Going back to the question about what is energy efficiency, we've tried to make the structure itself as energy efficient as possible to make sure it has high insulating value so you are reducing the overall demand to actually provide heat to that house. On top of that, there's the question of how you provide that heat.
In the demonstration model that we built here in Ottawa as a first proof of concept, along with the house we provided a utilities container. The heating in the house is provided through in-floor heating. We developed our own way of providing in-floor heating so that it's not sunk into concrete and has the ability to be rapidly deployable and all of that, and the thermal fluid that's going through the pipes in the floor is being heated up by a biomass boiler.
The other thing in that utilities module is a generator. You do need electricity to run your lights, or your computers, or whatever else in the structure. You can capture the waste heat from that generator and use that to heat the building as well.
In our own demonstration module, both co-generation — that is, taking the waste heat off an electricity-producing apparatus — or using woodchips in a biomass boiler is what we have proposed. Whether that is a feasible solution everywhere requires analysis, depending on the local availability of biomass and on a whole bunch of other considerations.
Senator Fraser: Mr. Chair, I apologize for getting here late, but those were very interesting presentations.
Like Senator Massicotte, I have been fussing away in my mind about how we actually do it. How do we incentivize people to do what actually needs to be done, because the changes are enormous? I'm going to ask one small question about whether you have data.
For a while now, since Ontario brought in differential pricing according to the time of day, in your home you use your various electrical things, including heating. I am from Quebec, but I also have a small condo in Ontario, so I get to compare not only the prices but my own behaviour. When they brought in differential pricing, given the excruciating level of Ontario hydro prices, my behaviour changed. Really. I look at that magnet every time I'm about to turn on an appliance. I do run my dishwasher at midnight and all those good things. The last time I bought an appliance, I paid a lot of attention to the EnerGuide rating; the last time I bought an appliance in Quebec, not so much. We don't have differential pricing, so it doesn't matter when we do stuff and it doesn't matter nearly so much to my wallet how much of it I do.
This is just me, but are there data to indicate shifts in energy use, particularly peak demand, since Ontario brought in that system? I know you're federal and that's an Ontario program, but it's your field.
Mr. Gaudet: I'm not aware of what those numbers are. It's certainly something we could follow up on and see what's available.
More subjectively, our understanding is that it does have a big impact, as you've described. In a similar way, it's why we've made a recent shift. You've referred to the EnerGuide rating system for appliances and how it's effective. In the last couple of years we've changed the EnerGuide rating system for houses as well.
Senator Fraser: Yes, I noticed that.
Mr. Gaudet: It used to be a dimensional number, with 80 being good like in school and a lower number not being as good. Now it's a consumption-based rating. As new homes, older homes, big homes and small condos are compared, the consumer will be able to see the impact on consumption. We have the same thing in mind.
Senator Fraser: If we're looking for quick hits that the country can actually do now, as distinct from waiting for the final development of what sounds like this wonderful house, the sooner the better, but we're not there yet. I would like to have some practical things to go on.
The Chair: We're ready to go to second round, but I'm going to ask a few questions first.
Mr. Haslip, on page 5 of your presentation, you say, "Limit energy use for heating and cooling.'' Can you explain that to me? I understand heat loss in the winter and gain in the summer. I live in the North so I have a fairly good idea about it. What do you mean by that?
Mr. Haslip: We struggled a lot with how to word this and obviously I failed.
What it comes down to is this: Let's imagine it's the middle of winter and you're trying to provide heat into your home or commercial building; it doesn't really matter. Effectively, the bottom line is that there are maybe two and a half things you can do, if you want to really boil it down.
One is to make sure that the envelope of that building is as insulating as it can be to ensure that whatever heat you provide in that house doesn't end up in your yard. That was point A on that slide.
Point B is that whatever you're using inside that building to produce that heat, make sure it's as efficient as possible. Go from a low-efficiency furnace to a mid-efficiency or high-efficiency furnace, or into a heat pump where you get more than 100 per cent efficiency. At the same time, you could also use things like smart home systems, intelligent building systems to make sure that you don't just have something that works well but that you work it well. You make sure it's turning on when it should, whether it has to do with time of use or other things, to make sure you're using the energy when it's most effective.
The Chair: Actually, as Senator Fraser just said, I think most people do that. I don't think anybody turns their heat on and opens the door and says, "Good, I'm going to heat up my yard.'' I don't think that happens in today's world. I think Fred and Martha do a fairly good job of trying to keep their utility costs down. Do you not think that?
Mr. Haslip: I think a lot of people do pay attention to their utility bills.
If we take a more complicated example than Fred and Martha, in commercial buildings, once you get to a certain size, let's say 50,000 square feet, there are very complicated interactions going on in the heating and cooling systems in those buildings. Even in the middle of winter, there may be cooling provided to parts of that building. The people on the outside, they definitely need heat because they're right next to the window and it's pretty chilly. But by the time you get into the core of that building, the only thing they have around them is other hot people and people with computers, so there's actually some cooling required.
If that overall building heating and cooling system is not properly optimized, those things are fighting against one another. It's very important to understand how the system performs to make sure it has ongoing calibration, diagnostic checks and do all of those things so that your overall energy use to provide comfort to people in that building is delivered as efficiently as possible.
The Chair: I fully understand that, too.
The other thing is the deployable northern house. You said you built a demonstration model.
Mr. Haslip: Yes.
The Chair: Is it complete? Is it finished on the inside? Is it a house that someone could walk into and live in? How complete is it?
Mr. Haslip: It is finished on the inside. We use it at our own lab as what we call a living laboratory. We use it as office space for one of our research groups. They occupy it on a day-to-day basis. That way, they are able to experience what it's like to be in that building with a number of occupants during the day, see how the heating and cooling systems work. So yes, it is finished on the inside and it is occupied but not exactly as a house.
The Chair: It's not finished as a house.
Mr. Haslip: No, it is finished as an open concept office space.
The Chair: How big is it and much did it cost to build?
Mr. Haslip: It is 1,000 square feet and $150,000 — or $150 a square foot.
The Chair: That's great.
I have other questions for you but I'll ask those later.
I have a couple for Sarah, and I'll go to page 3. Perhaps I just don't understand your statements. You say, "Canadians saved $38.5 billion as a result of energy efficiency improvements in 2014.'' Let's see; there are 36 million people in Canada. I'm a little confused by those numbers. Then you say, "Natural Resources Canada's energy efficiency suite of programs (2011-2012 to 2015-2016) achieved $1 billion in cost savings for Canadian consumers and industry." So I don't understand something here.
Ms. Stinson: The savings of $38 billion is in 2014, but from 1990 to 2014.
The Chair: Okay. You've just got to add from 1990 to 2014?
Ms. Stinson: Yes.
The Chair: Because I was thinking if we all saved a billion dollars, I have a lot bigger paycheques coming than what I've seen in the last little while. That helps me.
The other thing is the retrofit code. I don't have problems with a code for the new buildings going forward. Everybody should participate in the new buildings. I want to explore what you mean by a retrofit code by 2022 and when that comes into play. Because further on you say that before a place is sold, it has to have this retrofit. I think of all the people who are buying houses today and 2022 is not very far away. I can relate to that right in the community I live in and my own family. That poor girl is going to be stuck with a house that she's going to have to spend thousands of dollars on to retrofit before she can sell it. What are we doing to people at the end of the day? What do you mean?
Ms. Stinson: Currently, Canada does not have a retrofit code for buildings, which you're aware of.
The Chair: I know that.
Ms. Stinson: There's the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes, which has representatives from industry, from the provinces and territories, for which the National Research Council is the secretariat, and they work together to develop the codes.
So what the retrofit code will look like, what it's stringency will be and when it comes into play — at time of sale, at time of renovation — all still needs to be determined through the existing code development process. That's done very much in engagement and consultation with stakeholders, including the Canadian Home Builders' Association, for example, to represent the interests of your neighbours, and provinces and territories as well.
This is new ground, so a lot of those questions have yet to be answered, but the process is there in order to look to publishing a retrofit code by 2022.
The Chair: I understand that. I'll read from your presentation. On page 9, it says, "Model energy codes for existing buildings. New minimum energy performance requirements at major building life cycle events (e.g., at renovation. . . .)'' — so if somebody's renovating. And at "sale.'' So if somebody wants to sell their house, they can't until they get these codes. You are a long way along. The other example is "change of occupancy.'' So if you have a rental home and the renters change, obviously you have to bring it up to some particular code.
You're already putting those things out and you say nothing has been developed or decided, but this is pretty definitive to me. It might not be to some people if they read it real quick, but to me it's pretty definitive.
Ms. Stinson: It was one of the commitments to ensure retrofitting of existing buildings under the pan-Canadian framework as agreed by provincial and territorial governments and the Prime Minister.
Indeed, it is new. I would also highlight that those codes are developed at the federal level, but the decision to adopt them and implement them is made at the provincial and territorial level where they have that jurisdiction. So the code can be published and made available. It is then adopted and enforced by provinces and territories.
The Chair: And I know it is. We get all this, put it together, but the federal government and the provinces don't have to adopt it. We haven't really gained that much, have we? So we do need to gain some things about energy efficiency in the building sector.
I don't see any costs here either. I worry about Fred and Martha, someone who has a house that's 25 years old and all of a sudden big brother government comes along and says, poof, magic dragon, you better fix it. What's it going to cost? Why wouldn't you take an average house?
You can come to my place, if you want. I have a 98 per cent efficient furnace, 2 by 6 construction and the best insulation I can get, double-glazed windows in the whole house and it's a natural gas fired, efficient boiler. Can you come and tell me what it would cost me, or can you pick a home in different provinces, not one you're building or anything, but stock that's already out there, somebody who has a 25-year-old home? Go in there and do your math and say, "This is what it's going to cost,'' so we can tell the public up front: "This is what it costs.'' Can we think about doing anything like that, some real life stuff instead of stuff drawn out in a boardroom?
Mr. Gaudet: One of the benefits that will come out of developing these retrofit codes is that cost optimization packages will be developed for different types of buildings. From that, whether or not the jurisdiction chooses to implement them as a retrofit code, there is still opportunity to take those lessons learned to provide better information to the public, if they do want to renovate their home, for a particular vintage of home in a certain area, what might be the option for them to do that most cost effectively.
The Chair: Well, you're going around my question. Why don't we start telling Fred and Martha what it will actually cost them? Those are the people who will pick up the bill. Those are the people who own all the housing stock. I shouldn't say all of it. Some is owned by other people and rented out.
You talked about cladding a house with panels. I'm familiar with the panels. Why not pick a house in Ottawa, close to home, one of those brick ones built in 1902 and clad it, and see what it costs so people know what it costs? Those are just some suggestions about how you get this stuff to happen. I don't think we can fool the public.
I've taken far too long. If any of my colleagues were the chair, they would be cutting me off.
Senator Fraser: If the only tool you have is a hammer and you're looking at a building code, the only tool you have is requirements for building standards. But I think the chair is really making some valid points. He says if you're getting right down to change of occupancy and you're saying it's a requirement to meet the code as distinct from incentives to meet the code — of course, the building code doesn't include incentives. That's a government decision probably based on taxes.
Has there been any discussion about integrating a model code for these things with other types of incentives? For some people it will be crippling. If you live in a 100-year-old farmhouse and you want to sell the farm and retire to a little bungalow, the cost of doing that before you sell is going to be staggering, unless there is some form of cost- sharing. I don't know. In order to achieve that, you'd have to have a lot of integration, not just building standards but integration with finance departments, health departments, et cetera. Has that level of discussion been going on?
Ms. Stinson: Those are the kinds of discussions that will be taking place in the context of the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes. Industry and homeowners are represented in those discussions.
In terms of the level of stringency for a potential retrofit code, even that still has to be determined. So the degree to which the improvements need to take place and when they take place, all of that is still going to be discussed, consulted and determined through the code development process and considered in that context.
Senator Fraser: I guess I'll have to live with that answer. Thank you.
Senator Patterson: In that connection, you know that the federal government introduced an ecoENERGY Retrofit- Homes Program between 2007 and 2012, grants up to $5,000, to help homeowners make their homes more energy efficient. Has that program been evaluated? Did it achieve its stated goals? Was it cost-effective? Is that on your radar as well?
Ms. Stinson: Absolutely. That was a program delivered out of the Office of Energy Efficiency. I believe that kind of analysis has been done.
Senator Patterson: Can we get that?
The Chair: Can you provide that to the clerk, please, so we all have it?
Ms. Stinson: Absolutely. We can do that.
Senator Patterson: Thanks.
You asked the question I was going to ask, Mr. Chair. I have a very small one and maybe it's parochial.
I just noted on page 6 of your presentation, Mr. Haslip, that you're providing assistance to Yukon and Northwest Territories to identify cost-effective, high-efficiency solutions for new and existing homes.
Nunavut is the only territory of the three that is solely 100 per cent dependent on diesel, and I can't help noticing that they aren't benefiting from your assistance. I'm being parochial here, but may I ask about that?
Mr. Haslip: You may. I think the point here is that we've been working with the Yukon and the Northwest Territories specifically on these high-performance building envelope assemblies. It's interest-based. We look for partners in the northern housing corporations, for example, and we get what we get.
But we definitely have worked with the Nunavut Housing Corporation on other aspects of new builds and retrofit energy-efficiency improvements, costing those out, looking at the most cost-effective pathways for delivering energy savings. So we definitely have worked with the housing corporation in your territory.
Senator Patterson: That's good. Thank you.
Senator Wetston: Thank you for your answers. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your experience. I think, Mr. Haslip, my office sent you a question about the photovoltaic environment, so I didn't want to surprise you about my question, which is the area I was trying to address with you. Can you tell me what your experience has been? Of course, over the last number of years there has been a decrease in the pricing of photovoltaics, as well as your experience on a project in Alberta, I think. Can you help us with that?
Senator Patterson: Some of us know nothing about this.
Mr. Haslip: The question is about solar energy in general, so I'll talk about a couple of things.
Everybody knows about solar photovoltaic and how you use solar panels on the roof of your house or on solar farms to produce electricity. As you said, senator, the price of those solar panels has dropped consistently and considerably over a fairly long period of time. Depending on what jurisdiction you're in globally, we are at a point where electricity provided through solar panels is cost competitive or beats out other forms of energy.
Canada will never be at the leading edge of that because of our latitude. However, the cost of solar modules has definitely decreased and that is making a difference in the uptake of solar electricity in this country.
You mentioned the project in Alberta. That is not a solar electricity play. It's what we would call a solar thermal play. That is not trying to convert sunlight into electricity but it's trying to capture the heat and be able to do something with that. Lots of people have solar heating systems for their swimming pools, for example, and those work perfectly well.
What we did a little over 10 years ago in Okotoks, Alberta, just south of Calgary, is try something that is now called the Drake Landing Solar Community. That is a community of 50 homes that use solar thermal collectors. When the sun is shining, you're capturing that solar energy and it's then taken and stored in what we call a bore hole field. That warm fluid is taken and essentially runs in a bunch of tubes through the rock underneath the grass in a park in that community. It's quite remarkable the temperatures you can generate in that bedrock by the end of the summer.
Then in the wintertime, we turn that system around and start pulling that heat out of the bedrock and using that warmed up fluid to provide heat into the houses.
We have been able to consistently provide over a period of 10 years, each and every year, 90 per cent of the heat in those homes through the solar energy that was captured and stored. In fact, in the winter before last, the winter of 2015-16, we provided 100 per cent of the heating to those homes that winter through the energy that had been stored. We never had to turn on the backup natural gas to give ourselves a boost on a particularly cold day or at the end of the winter when things start to run down.
To summarize, I think it demonstrates the potential of solar thermal systems in a Canadian context or around the world, frankly.
Senator Wetston: What's your view about that from the point of view of what I think I was asking Ms. Stinson: energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction. Does it meet both requirements?
Mr. Haslip: For example, to back up something that Ms. Stinson said earlier, the houses in the Drake Landing Solar Community are all built to an R-2000 standard. Going back to what I said earlier, if you're going to try to heat a community with solar thermal energy, you want to make sure those houses are as energy efficient as possible before you start.
Senator Wetston: But they all have ERVs, right?
Mr. Haslip: Sure.
It's more than a 10-year-old community now. They have state-of-the-art systems for that period of time. They're built to the R-2000 standard. But then you have to assemble the right technologies to make sure you can deliver that solar thermal energy and do so in a way that is effective and efficient.
Senator Wetston: I like the retrofit code, but I'm not sure about the reason I like it; and I understand the chair's concerns. From my own personal experience and what I've seen in the energy sector, I thought Senator Fraser asked an excellent question about time-of-use pricing. I was at the Ontario Energy Board when we put those in place and it was very difficult. We did regulated price plans, tier pricing, time-of-use pricing, conservation programs, smart metering programs, and we put a lot in place. It would be useful for you to assess the success of those. I've been away from it for a while.
Getting back to the retrofit code, what I have observed in working with industry is two groups in this sector, whether it's commercial — the experience Senator Massicotte would have more than I would — or residential, are HVAC contractors and contractors. There's a great variety of understanding because residential consumers know little. They have to do a lot of research. They have a few questions to ask. There's a huge educational component to this.
Senator Fraser, you learned the hard way when you had your condo in Ontario. I understand that, believe me.
So I wonder whether developing the retrofit code in the way you are has an important educational component to it for contractors and HVAC contractors and building contractors. The suggestion is they might come with a lot of knowledge, but it varies greatly, I would think. That's why I think a retrofit code is important, provided it manages the cost concerns that I think you're very concerned about. Do you have any comments on that?
Ms. Stinson: Absolutely. Capacity building, education and awareness are key, not just for successful implementation and compliance with a retrofit code, but also as the new building codes become increasingly stringent, working toward a net-zero energy code. It is part of our programs, funded through Budget 2017, to continue to build that capacity within industry and create the awareness that's needed for Canadians and also in the commercial sector. It's a key component.
Senator Wetston: Thank you.
Mr. Haslip: I would add a bit of supplementary information there.
Clearly knowledge from the standpoint of consumers is important, but knowledge from the standpoint of the people doing the work, whether the initial home builders or contractors that show up 15 years down the road, is important too. The easiest thing to do is to build the same house you built yesterday because you know how to do it.
One of the things that NRCan has piloted for several years is a program called Local Energy Efficiency Partnerships. That's a program where we go into a community, which can be a variety of different sizes. We did one in Ottawa, one in Winnipeg or in places larger than the Winnipeg area. We've done them in B.C. We're getting together with new home builders and helping a collection of new home builders, as a group, work through the options for building a better new home. They will show up because some of them have been to trade shows and they'll say, "I'm interested in this,'' so they'll have a list of things they're interested in.
We can do some of the simulations and come back and say, "Okay, those are interesting and this is the kind of savings they will deliver, but have you considered this, which maybe you haven't seen a glossy brochure for but will deliver just as much in terms of bang for the buck?''
One of the things we're moving toward is establishing a leap for retrofits as well. That's a harder community to get hold of because there are a lot of contractors out there, much more than there are home builders, but trained to go into cities, municipalities and provinces, backed up by utilities and others, to try to build up the awareness of those companies, those men and women, to let them know about the promising avenues.
I think establishing things like prescriptive guides, which one of my colleagues mentioned earlier around the retrofit code, and the possibility of establishing prescriptive guides that say if you walk into a home built in 1975 and probably has walls this thick, you want to get it to this performance standard, this is likely to be the best way to get it there and you can attach some cost to that as well, speaking to Senator Neufeld's earlier point.
Senator Wetston: Unfortunately, because of the barriers of federal, provincial and municipal authorities, the only way that can be done is that all three authorities need to work together and agree, adopt or delegate some way of adopting it through regulation or legislation. Municipalities have a big role in that. I admire what you want to do and I think you have a big challenge, but keep doing it. Thank you.
The Chair: We have come to the end of the questions but I have one.
On page 7 of your presentation, Ms. Stinson, the headings reads, "Potential Impacts From Buildings Programs by 2030.'' If I understand it correctly, you must have decided that some standard would be used to actually save 21.6 metric tonnes. Is that correct? You must have used some standard to say this has to be applied Canada-wide and used 100 per cent to come up with the 21.6 million.
Ms. Stinson: That number is derived from modelling undertaken by Environment and Climate Change Canada. It represents if the commitments in the building strategy under the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change are implemented at the federal, provincial and territorial levels, the outcome will be 21.6 megatonnes saved.
Senator Fraser: From what basis?
The Chair: It would be 21.6 megatonnes. You would take it off what it happens to be at 2030. This doesn't have to do with the long term. If you applied all of A, B and C, totally across Canada, every place, and they all adopted it, you would save 21.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. So the modelling came up with some plan of what it was going to be, obviously, but I would like to know what the cost is for 21.6 million tonnes saved. Is the cost $300 a tonne, $500 a tonne, $600 a tonne?
You've done the modelling, or someone has. I ought to be able to plug in something that says this is what the cost is and 21.6 million tonnes, to do this program, it's going to cost you $500 a tonne.
Then you have to sit back and say, "What are we doing?'' Can we get that information, please?
Ms. Stinson: We will follow up with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The Chair: All the assumptions that brought the graph forward and the costs would be great. I would appreciate that very much. And tell them to please be realistic in the cost, too. I think the cost will stagger, to be honest.
When I drive around the country and look at the homes and what it costs today to get a plumber in, has anybody tried that lately? It's not cheap.
Senator Wetston: Unfortunately.
Senator Fraser: Us too.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate the work you're doing. It's very good information and we look forward to having further conversations with you later on.
(The committee adjourned.)