Canada West Foundation Blog

By: Shawna Stirrett

Just prior to Environment Minister Peter Kent’s announcement in December 2011 that Canada had decided to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, the Canada West Foundation and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRT) wrapped up a series of meetings in western Canada on developing a low-carbon growth strategy for the country. One of the key themes that emerged from these meetings was the role of national and international emission reduction targets such as those in the Kyoto Protocol.

Interestingly, there was consensus among the participants that Canada should not be overly focused on emission reduction targets. Participants argued that reduction targets have a tendency to send the wrong signals to producers and consumers. A focus on targets that are not accompanied by a clear strategy for meeting them can have a paralyzing effect rooted in uncertainty and fear.

For example, did every province under Kyoto need to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020, or was the target meant to be a national average? If it was a national average, did that mean that if some provinces did not meet the target, other provinces would have to make up the difference?

Another reason participants took issue with an emphasis on targets was that they can have the unintended consequence of promoting competition rather than cooperation. Targets can create the perception of a zero-sum game in which, as long as a province or country is doing better than another, it wins.

A final reason participants argued that there should be less emphasis on emission reduction targets is that they often overshadow other environmental considerations such as land management, water quality, protection of biodiversity and so on.

Instead of relying exclusively on emission reduction targets, participants argued that Canada should be setting environmentally quantifiable goals that are holistic in nature. These goals would ideally foster interprovincial cooperation, account for all aspects of environmental protection, encourage energy efficiency and facilitate the creation of a nationally coordinated plan for dealing with energy and environmental issues.

While the consensus of participants was that emission reduction targets should not be the main focus of environmental management in Canada and it’s path to a low-carbon future, this does not mean that they were in favour of pulling out of Kyoto. Nonetheless, there was a clear sense of the limitations of Kyoto-like targets for achieving our environmental goals.

For the full summary report of the western Canadian roundtables on a low-carbon growth strategy for the country, see the Canada West Foundation report entitled: “Cautious Optimism: Western Perspectives on a Low-Carbon Economy.”

By: John Robinson

If we take sustainability seriously, the magnitude of required change is great. One prominent way of approaching that requirement is to talk in terms of doing less damage, reducing project-specific impact and generally utilizing an overall perspective based on cutting back or sacrifice. It’s not a very motivating approach.

At The University of British Columbia we are interested in exploring a different approach—regenerative sustainability—meaning human activity that actually improves both environmental conditions and human quality of life. We are exploring this at both the building scale and the scale of our whole campus.

On the building scale, our new Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) is designed to be net positive in terms of both its biophysical and human impact. It is designed to be environmentally net positive in four ways: energy, operational carbon, water quality and structural carbon. In adding this 60,000 square-foot building to the UBC campus we will actually reduce the whole campus’ energy use and carbon emissions, improve the quality of the water flowing through our site and sequester more carbon in the CIRS structure than all the carbon emitted in the construction process and in manufacturing all the building’s materials.

We also want CIRS to be net positive in human terms, and are measuring productivity, health and happiness of the building inhabitants with a goal of improvement in all these areas over time. To the extent that we succeed (and of course we expect some things to fail and need to be improved since we are a test-bed), then CIRS will truly be regenerative, and offer a model for sustainability that is positive rather than negative.

I believe that this is a very different sustainability agenda, and brings up many interesting questions: How possible is this new agenda and where? Can all new buildings be regenerative? How scalable is it? Could neighbourhoods be regenerative?

Answering this question is where the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI) comes in, allowing us to extend the regenerative sustainability question to the whole campus. Could UBC be regenerative? This is an extremely exciting research agenda, with potentially huge implications beyond the campus.

The goal of the USI is to deeply integrate operational and academic sustainability across UBC, and make our campus available as a kind of societal test-bed, where we work with partners from the private, public and NGO sectors to prove out the technical, economic and behavioural aspects of sustainability in our simpler institutional environmental.

Our view is that universities have a set of characteristics that make them uniquely qualified to serve in this role for society: we are single owner-occupiers of significant capital stock, with our own energy, water and waste systems (in UBC’s case, the Vancouver campus is about 400 hectares with about 1.5 million square metres of buildings in about 400 buildings); universities are (in some jurisdictions) public institutions that can be a little more forgiving on pay-backs and long-sighted on returns; we teach; and we do research. No other societal institution has this mix of capabilities. Thus universities have a responsibility, but also significant academic and operational opportunity, to be at the forefront of the sustainability transition.

To that end, UBC is putting faculty members on all key operational committees of the University and viewing all operational decisions through a sustainability lens, with the objective of building teaching and research around all our activities. We now have the most ambitious climate change goals of any of the top 40 universities in the world—
starting from our 2007 base, we will reduce emissions on campus by 33 percent by 2015, by 67 percent by 2020 and by 100 percent by 2050.

To reach our 2015 goals, the UBC Board of Governors has approved $150 million in capital projects which include CIRS, a 72-building continuous optimization project, a 6 MW biogas plant and conversion of our district energy system from steam to hot water. All of these projects have a positive business case, and we are building research and teaching around them. To reach our 2020 goals, we know that we will have to develop a fully integrated campus scale smart energy system, and probably add water and waste to the mix.

But it is not all about technology. We want UBC to become a complete sustainable community. To that end we will be doubling our on-campus population from about 16,000 residents today to about 30,000 in 2025 (consider that the population was 10,000 in 2001). The goal is to create a vibrant live-work community that, among other things, significantly reduces car travel to campus. Since 1997, we have tripled transit ridership to campus and have taken about one-half of our surface parking out of service and built housing on it.

The UBC Sustainability Initiative works with two cross-cutting themes: campus as a living lab (internal focus) and university as agent of change (external focus). On the latter front, our main activity is to establish Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with partners, identify areas of synergy between the strategic goals of UBC and our partners and work together to explore these goals on-campus and off. The general idea is that we offer the UBC campus to our partners as a kind of sandbox and they, in turn, act as agents for potential commercialization and policy development in their own markets or jurisdictions. To date we have signed such MOUs with Honeywell, BC Hydro, the National Research Council, the City of Vancouver, Modern Green Development and the University Neighbourhoods Association.

On the curriculum front, our goal is to transform the UBC sustainability curriculum. There are currently about 350 courses with sustainability content at UBC. Our objective is to create curriculum pathways for undergraduate students such that all students, no matter what program they are in, will be able to take up to a minor in sustainability. We are doing work on what these pathways could be, and what sustainability attributes should be common to students taking sustainability across the wide diversity of programs at UBC. We have launched a new inter-disciplinary Sustainability 101 course in January 2012.

On the research front, we are busy identifying research opportunities around the projects described above. We recently established an interdisciplinary Sustainable Building Science Program and the first course started in September 2011. In CIRS we are developing a significant research program around the behavioural aspects of sustainability at the building and community scales. Our partnership with Modern Green Developments from Beijing has resulted in a project in which they will build a 70,000 square-foot sustainable residential building on campus, and a research and demonstration centre to connect with the CIRS research program.

We know there will be roadblocks and failures along the way, but that is one reason universities are natural homes for such experiments. My hope is that other post-secondary institutions will see the opportunity represented by acting as a societal test-bed for sustainability, and that our sector can play an important role in contributing to the very significant transitions required to reach a sustainable future.

John Robinson

John Robinson is the Executive Director of the UBC Sustainability Initiative, responsible for leading the integration of academic and operational sustainability on the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus. He is also a professor with UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability, and the Department of Geography.

John was a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore in 2007.

By: Casey Vander Ploeg, Senior Policy Analyst

ReNew Canada bills itself as the country’s “Infrastructure Magazine.”  That’s not braggadocio.  No matter what aspect of infrastructure you’re involved in—finance, research, engineering, policy, construction, whatever—the magazine is a virtual “must-have.”  The January-February issue has just hit the newstand, and it features a special supplement on the 100 biggest infrastructure projects in Canada.

ReNew’s “Top 100” adds up to $114 billion in infrastructure investment, and the projects on the list are ranked from first to last based on size.  Of course, “size” here is defined as “cost.”  With a price tag of some $8.2 billion, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project in Toronto gets first spot.  The dozen or so projects that follow are just as impressive.  Half of the $114 billion on the list is captured in Canada’s 15 biggest projects.

Mira Shenker is ReNew’s editor.  She recently touched base with me and asked if I would scan through the list and come up with my own personal “Top 10.”  A few others around the country are doing the same.  The results will be published in the March-April issue ofReNew.

When ranking the “biggest” infrastructure projects in the country, cost is probably the only way to go.  However, “cost” does not necessarily equal “best” or most “interesting.”  Neither does it equate to most “innovative.”  In other words, ReNew’s“Top 100” may be the “biggest” projects in Canada, but not necessarily the “best.”

I’m interested in innovative projects, and that’s what my “Top 10” will be all about.  I first thought of picking the most innovative and interesting project in each province, but after toying with that for a while I abandoned the effort.  I decided to create 10 of my own categories, and then choose one project in each that demonstrated the most innovation.  Some innovations were financial, while other innovations were technological.  Here’s my “short-list” of the most innovative projects:

Transportation—Roadways and Bridges

• Autoroute 30 (Quebec)
• Southeast Stony Trail (Alberta)
• Port Mann-Highway 1 (British Columbia)

Transportation—Public Transit

• Evergreen Rapid Transit (British Columbia)
• Spadina Subway Extension (Ontario)
• York VIVA Bus Rapidways (Ontario)

Transportation—Sea and Air Ports

• Maher Melford Terminal (Nova Scotia)
• Calgary Parallel Runway (Alberta)
• Calgary International Airport Terminal (Alberta)

Health, Education, and Social Facilities

• CHUM Redevelopment (Quebec)
• Canadian Museum for Human Rights (Manitoba)
• St. Joseph’s Healthcare Facility (Ontario)

Thermal Electric Energy (Coal, Gas, Nuclear)

• Swan Hills ISCG Power Project (Alberta)
• North Battleford Power Plant (Saskatchewan)
• York Energy Centre (Ontario)

Hydro Electric Energy

• Bipole-III (Manitoba)
• Niagara Tunnel Project (Ontario)
• Eastman 1-A Project (Quebec)

Renewable Electric Energy (Wind or Solar)

• K2 Wind Project (Ontario)
• Blackspring Ridge-1 (Alberta)
• Halkirk-1 Project (Alberta)

Water and Wastewater

• Seymour-Capilano Water Utility (British Columbia)
• Hanlan Feedermain (Ontario)
• Southeast Collector Trunk (Ontario)

Environment and Waste Management

• Durham York Energy Centre (Ontario)
• Sydney Tar Ponds Project (Nova Scotia)
• Port Hope Area Initiative (Ontario)

Top Choice Overall:

• To be Announced

Next week, I’ll reveal the winners in each category, along with the one project that I believe to be the most innovative on ReNew’s “Top 100” list.  So, stay tuned.

In the meantime, readers can access the list by clicking here.  For those wanting more information on the projects, you can purchase a copy of ReNew for $9.00 or subscribe to the magazine for $39.95.

The January-February issue also included a write-up about the “Penny Tax” idea developed by the Canada West Foundation for funding municipal infrastructure. Click here to read the Foundation’s full report.  The same issue also notes the tremendous growth in infrastructure investment over the past few years.  In 2009, Canada’s “Top 100” totaled $61 billion.  With the top 100 in 2012 totaling $114 billion, infrastructure investment in Canada has surged by almost 90% in three years.

Click here to read Part II of “Biggest” vs. “Best”.

3 Responses to ““Biggest” vs. “Best” (Part I)”

By: Robbie Rolfe

I sometimes find myself getting weary of ideologues on environmental issues. One argument I find particularly tiresome is the insistence that there are significant tradeoffs when it comes to the economy and the environment. The conclusion of these extreme viewpoints is that we can be prosperous polluters or penniless hippies. Apparently, there is no middle ground.

These zero-sum views neglect market-based instruments (MBIs for short) that can make us both prosperous and green. The careful deployment of MBIs can address a major difficulty facing governments trying to encourage good environmental practices: people and businesses will not provide enough ecological goods and services because the costs of providing them accrue to individual persons or businesses while the benefits are enjoyed by the wider community. An MBI is a mechanism that shares the costs of environmental protection among its many beneficiaries.

Take a farmer who is nearing retirement and needs cash. If he sells his farm to a developer, he gets the money he needs. If he holds onto the land to ensure that it continues to provide a nearby city’s water system with valuable natural filtration, he takes a direct financial hit. There are significant tradeoffs in that situation: the farmer gives up some of his livelihood to maintain ecological benefits or gives up ecological benefits to enhance his livelihood. An MBI could pay the farmer for the ecological goods and services his land provides. To ensure a fair price, the amount the farmer gets could be set by a market, or at least market-like mechanisms. Taxpayers living in the city who benefit from the natural filtration on the farmer’s land could fund the MBI through their taxes, thereby sharing in the costs associated with the benefits they receive.

The good news is that these kinds of policies are increasingly under consideration in western Canada. The Alberta Land Stewardship Act, for example, urges the use of market-based instruments on a regional or local level to better provide ecological goods and services, particularly when it comes to land use and land management.

Though market-based instruments show great potential, we are only beginning to explore their varied applications. If we can tap that potential, then one day we may be able to have our cake and eat it too.

MBIs are explored in detail in a new Canada West Foundation report entitled The Invisible Hand’s Green Thumb: Market-based Instruments for Environmental Protection in Alberta. To download the report, click here. 

By Dr. Joseph Doucet

While the notion of a Canadian Energy Strategy is attractive to some, and intriguing to many, to date there has been a lot of discussion regarding development of a “strategy” without a lot of detail on what it might actually say. Without more detail, it is difficult to know where one stands on the idea of a broad energy strategy. This may be one reason for the limited uptake so far.

I believe that part of the reason for the lack of detail is the challenge of establishing common ground and articulating energy related objectives in a country as vast as ours. The significant diversity of energy resources, industries and regional views makes it difficult for some to imagine a strategy that would gather and represent, in a meaningful way, Alberta’s oil sands, Newfoundland’s growing offshore industry, Saskatchewan’s uranium development, Québec’s hydroelectricity potential, etc. And what of the heterogeneity of our industrial and economic base across the country?

Could the problem be a needlessly narrow focus on energy?

This question may seem bizarre when writing on a Canadian ENERGY strategy. However, as one who is a firm believer in the need for such a strategy I also believe that we should be thinking more broadly. In some sense, as strange as it may sound, energy should not be the endgame. This is part of the problem with asking how a strategy can be developed that will coherently include and embrace the development of new pipelines for export of bitumen from Alberta and the development of Ontario’s renewable energy sector. A Canadian energy strategy has to look beyond just energy.

So what is the common thread linking all energy questions in Canada? In my mind it is economic and social development and our standard of living. For more than a century Canada’s energy resources have been developed and have contributed significantly to our economic development through investment, jobs and technology. Canada’s geographic location and our proximity to the US market have helped us become not only significant energy producers and exporters, but also important technological innovators. Plainly speaking, energy development has been a significant factor in developing our standard of living.

We need to continue to focus on our ultimate objective, our standard of living, and keep this in mind as we invest in technology, infrastructure and human capital in order to be able to continue to develop all of our resources, including energy resources. We also need to maintain and increase our position as a trading nation, not only with energy, but certainly with energy as a significant piece of the puzzle.

Thus, we should be thinking about how Canadian energy resources and industries offer a tremendous potential for wealth creation, which is a fundamental building block in our quest to continue to improve our standard of living. Successful strategies for developing these resources need to focus on trade and productivity issues that are not only important for the energy sector, but for all sectors of our economy.

So, what I am really saying is that we need to focus on energy issues in a broader economic and social context. A Canadian energy strategy that is viewed by most Canadians as being exclusively a tool for oil sands development will not be successful. On the other hand, a Canadian energy strategy that is understood as a being a broader policy initiative to increase our country’s competitive advantage, to increase our productivity and to increase our standard of living just might “rally the troops”.

So that said, what specifics or details do we need to think about?

Let’s first think about productivity, noting that increases in productivity, i.e. getting more output from our input, are fundamental to increasing our standard of living. While some might argue “we don’t need more” and should be content with our current standard of living, this ignores the benefits, individual and collective, of increased and improved health care, education, technology, etc. Increasing our productivity needs to be seen as a way of improving our standard of living. But if it were easy, we would be doing it already. Productivity increases are a significant challenge for Canada, as many researchers and analysts have documented recently (for a good source see the Centre for Study of Living Standards.)

Productivity is tied to energy in many ways, but let me mention just one important dimension, technology. Technology is one of the enablers of productivity improvement, and this applies equally to production, transportation and consumption of energy. We need to keep focused on technology development and its use in order to improve both on the efficiency of energy through the value chain, as well as on the needed balance of societal and environmental goals. While the production, transportation and consumption of all forms of energy will always have some impact on the environment, technology development can reduce that impact. Further, it is not an accident that environmental conditions generally improve as societies become wealthier. As fundamental needs such as basic health care, nutrition and education get satisfied, societies are able to allocate resources to increasing wellbeing via improving environmental conditions.

And what about trade? The link between energy and trade is clear to most Canadians given our position as a net energy exporter. I believe that we have to embrace our position as a trading nation, recognizing the benefits trade brings, including investment, jobs and technology. But a Canadian energy strategy should be about more than exporting energy. We have to embed our energy development within our trading framework so that we encourage and facilitate productive trade in all sectors. And this is not just about exporting energy. It also applies to energy imports, and trade in other sectors that depend on or leverage energy sectors and technologies.

In summary, a Canadian energy strategy does need to be developed. It is vital to continued wealth creation and increases in Canadians’ standard of living. To be effective and attract the required support, this strategy has to be broad and resonate across Canada and across economic sectors. One way to do this is to build a strategy that leverages and builds on two economic imperatives, improving productivity and enhancing our position as a trading nation.

Dr. Joseph Doucet

Dr. Joseph Doucet assumed the position of Interim Dean of the Alberta School Of Business on January 1, 2012. He joined the School in 2000 and since 2005 had been the Enbridge Professor of Energy Policy. His professional interests are in energy and regulatory economics and policy.

Dr Doucet is a past President of the Canadian affiliate of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE). His research has appeared in journals such as The Energy Journal, Energy Economics, the Journal of Regulatory Economics and the Canadian Journal of Economics. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Regulatory Economics, and between 2000 and 2006 he was Editor of the journal Energy Studies Review. He continues to contribute to public policy in the areas energy markets and environment.

Comments - 2

DEVELOPING A NATIONAL ENERGY STRATEGY
by Matt Palmer

Today I am linking to another article from Canada West Foundation’s Let’s Talk Energy Website. The post is written by Dr Joseph Doucet, Interim Dean at the Alberta School of Business at U of A. In his article he makes a great case about how we should be thinking in developing a National Energy Strategy. His argument is that if the the strategy is only about the justification for the oil sands, then it will not work. I believe this is correct. A strategy needs to include a discussion and examination of all potential sources of energy from across Canada.

http://letstalkenergy.ca/2012/01/24/why-a-canadian-energy-strategy-should-not-be-just-about-energy/

Dr Doucet argues we need to be thinking broadly about energy. “Energy is not the endgame.” He feels we should be thinking about how energy fits into not just the economy, but our social development, and our standard of living. I believe this is true, but I would suggest we can take this even deeper, that we need to look at energy from a philosophical level, being thoughtful and serious about the “why” of energy.

The “why” of energy resource development is important for a number of reasons, and will lead us to a deeper understanding of how our energy systems work. How does resource development enhance our values and beliefs? Are our actions in resource development aligned with our values and beliefs? Certainly economic growth is important in as much as that growth may enable greater social development, and increase our standard of living. But, in the long run we must ask how do these elements fit in with our desire to have a happy and fulfilling life? In the current US election campaign we’ve being hearing the phrase “pursuit of happiness” time and again. I can’t remember who said it, but a wise person’s response to this was “If you are always pursuing happiness, you’ll miss the happiness is in this moment.” In this light, the “why” of energy takes on a different significance.

I also believe the why is important because not all energy resources are equal in terms of the services and commodities that they provide us. The simplest way to undertsand this is to compare wind with oil. Harnessing wind provides us with electricity, That is a great value. Wind is also important to the global ecosystem. Wind patterns impact our climate. Oil and oil sands provide multiple commodities and energy services from gasoline to petrochemical feedstocks. The later component is the gamechanger when it comes to understanding why oil will continue to be important to society for a long time to come.

Fuel sources like wind, solar, nuclear, coal provide us with energy in the form of electricity. The discovery of hydrocracking transformed the course of human history in a profound way. That discovery has come with many unintended consequences positive and negative. The use of oil as a fuel source changed the way we move around the world. The development of plastics, medicines, and technologies from petrochemicals radically inhanced our standard of living, and our quality of life. On the other hand, those products have impacted our environmental footprint on the planet. So the why of different fuel sources (oil, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear) are comparable and different.

Investigating the why of energy resources will take us a long way down the road to a better understanding of how our world works, and what we desire and hope for as a society. In terms of a National Energy Strategy awareness of how the why fits in will then lead us to ensuring that all energy sources are developed with the highest environmental and ethical standards that keep our actions aligned with our values and beliefs.

[...] http://letstalkenergy.ca/2012/01/24/why-a-canadian-energy-strategy-should-not-be-just-about-energy/ [...]

By: Casey Vander Ploeg, Senior Policy Analyst

Last year my little commuter car suffered more than its fair share of scrapes and scratches.  It started with some fancy BMW almost side-swiping me.  A few weeks later a Nissan finished the job in beijing.  For reasons unknown, a Mustang became infatuated with my car’s rear bumper, and then my car got smoked—twice—while it sat innocently parked.  Such things seem to happen frequently and with remarkable regularity.  And that’s why I drive a “beater.”  My little commuter car has absolutely no market value, but it satisfies the safety inspector and is the most effective way I have found to limit the financial liabilities that come with the daily commute.

An accident is pretty much a universal negative.  Yet, more than a few scientific breakthroughs and impressive technological developments have been stumbled upon by accident.  Such discoveries run the gamut—from popsicles, potato chips, and artificial sweeteners to vulcanized rubber, radioactivity, and the Americas.  It’s more than a little humbling to realize that just because he failed to tidy up his workbench one day in 1928 that Alexander Fleming happened upon a strange mold—what he called penicillin—that had turned all of his bacterial cultures to goo.

One of the more interesting lines of inquiry that I have pursued is how the infrastructure funding gap and ongoing efforts at property tax reform can cross paths—collide at the intersection—to produce some beneficial but unintended “innovation by accident.”  Let’s reconstruct the “accident” scene.

First point.  There are only two ways that public infrastructure and government services can be funded—taxation or user pay.  When taxation is used, all of the costs are shared and divided up regardless of how much each taxpayer uses.  There are no direct financial consequences to individual users.  Thus, heavy users of infrastructure and services are, by necessity, subsidized by light users.  This has the effect of artificially increasing the demand for infrastructure and services.  On the other hand, user pay dispels the myth that public infrastructure and services are somehow “free.”  User pay creates a fiscal dynamic where people use only what they need as opposed to what they want.  User pay forces people to internalize the costs of their behaviour and modify that behaviour to avoid wasting their own money.

Tax-based funding of infrastructure and services is the equivalent of the “all-you-can-eat buffet.”  For the same low price, everybody eats as much as they want.  As a result, the “all-you-can-eat buffet” goes through a lot of food.  User fees are the equivalent of the “pay-by-the-ounce” salad bar.  Here, everybody eats according to what they are willing to pay, and less food is consumed.  User pay systems based on rational pricing promote equity and efficiency.  Anything less implies a certain amount of waste.  All taxes, by necessity, result in a certain loss of efficiency and this is unavoidable because some forms of infrastructure cannot be provided through a system of user pay.

Second point.  Property taxes are no exception.  For example, residential properties “closer-in” to the city core are usually more expensive and carry higher assessed values.  Thus, these properties pay more property tax than similar properties in the suburbs. But, the costs of providing municipal services and the attendant infrastructure to suburban properties are arguably higher.  Those living “close-in” help cover the costs for those living “far-out” on the periphery. This breaks the link between the taxes paid and the actual benefits received, and can artificially increase demand and even reinforce sprawl, all of which drives up cost.

Third point.  Such inefficiencies are inherent to the property tax, but they are then compounded by intentional inequities in how the tax is administered and applied.  For example, it is well-known that non-residential properties are usually over-taxed relative to residential properties, multi-family residential properties are typically taxed at higher effective rates than single-family properties, and land values have historically been under-taxed almost everywhere.  What is more, none of this relates to capturing the variable costs of providing municipal services and infrastructure to different properties.
Certain taxpayers are subsidizing other taxpayers who get a “free” ride.  In most large modern cities, the great bulk of people live in single-family homes located in the suburbs. These neighbourhoods are more expensive to service and also require massive amounts of infrastructure to connect them into the civic network.  Yet at the end of the tax day, multi-family properties which are less expensive to service are paying higher effective rates of property tax.  Some assert that if the real nature and effect of such redistribution were known, many would find it completely unacceptable.

Fourth point.  Most proposals to equalize the property tax base or remove discriminatory tax rate differentials typically end up DOA at the doors of City Hall.  It is residents who vote and not businesses, and the vast majority of voting residents are single-family homeowners living in the suburbs.

Fifth point.  Many solutions to the infrastructure funding gap tend to focus on various ways and means to increase supply as opposed to finding effective ways to limit demand.  Supply dominates the discussion.  But, there are various demand management strategies that can be considered.  Maximizing existing capacity is one.  When it comes to transportation, such options include HOV lanes, reverse lanes, corporate transit discounts, corporate van pooling, and Internet-based car pooling.  The problem is that most of these strategies bump up against the lack of rational pricing or bad tax policy, and therefore can only do so much.

Final point.  The higher effective rates of property tax paid by non-residential properties compared to residential properties is a source of growing discontent in cities right across the West.  The good news is that there is some movement to correct the inequities.   For some time now, the City of Saskatoon has been pursuing a policy to limit and cap this differential at 1.75.  Saskatoon’s goal is to have non-residential properties paying 1.75 times the taxes paid by residential properties.  The City has largely achieved this goal.

The rejoinder to this initiative is that businesses can write-off their property taxes while homeowners cannot.  While this is true, the differentials in most cities are still too large.  Depending on the province in view, a differential of about 1.5 would result in an equalized tax base between business and residential properties given the income tax advantage held by business.  With this in mind, Winnipeg does very well.  Its differential is 1.45%. (including the separate business tax).  Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton arguably fair the worst.  The differential is 4.55 in Vancouver, 4.52 in Calgary, and 2.87 in Edmonton (all of which include the separate business tax as well).

Cities across the West would do well to have a conversation with tax administrators in Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg.  Why?  The municipal infrastructure challenge is not just a question about supply—how to get the necessary financing and funding to increase the amount of infrastructure investment. It is also very much a question about demand.  Funding infrastructure through better tax policies and even user fees can help keep the demand for infrastructure in check.  And, the two cities in Saskatchewan, along with Winnipeg, are showing the way.

Winnipeg has the smallest property tax differential between non-residential and residential properties, and of all major cities in the West, Saskatoon and Regina collect the highest percentage of their total property tax revenue from residential properties as opposed to non-residential properties.  In Saskatoon, residential property taxes are 70% of the total municipal property tax take and in Regina they are 63%.  This is much higher than most other large western cities.

Politically, much of the impetus for lowering property tax differentials has come from arguments to improve equity and fairness.  Such arguments are valid.  But another advantage—often overlooked because it is more of a by-product or “accident”—is how removing the differentials results in a more neutral property tax system that can help keep a lid on ever-growing demands for more infrastructure and municipal services.

To be sure, we should not hope to “luck out” and solve the infrastructure challenge by fortunate and beneficial pursuits that are more accidental than intentional.   That’s a pure hit and miss strategy.  When it comes to municipal property tax reform, ending discriminatory tax rate differentials, equalizing the tax base, and shooting for more fairness, equity, transparency, and accountability are reasons enough to pursue change.  But it can also help bring into play a more rational level of demand for municipal services and infrastructure, which in turn helps lower the total cost of operating our cities.

3 Responses to “Innovation by Accident”

1. 3
   Jason Tratch Says: 
   January 30th, 2012 at 11:14 am

   Difficult in SK, in past year have also been looking in Canada for engineers/scientists with more expertise in this area, have found some outside Canada. Sorry to sidetrack this blog but am passionate about this concept and is an easy logical thing to see. I will touch base with those contacts and be in touch with you to see what we can do on that, good idea for a separate blog all together.

2. 2
   Casey G. Vander Ploeg Says: 
   January 27th, 2012 at 3:39 pm

   Interesting thoughts, Jason. I was just wondering whether in your travels you might have some good examples or case studies of particular decentralized solutions in a project area. An article or blog on that would be a good follow-up. What do you think?

3. 1
   Jason Tratch Says: 
   January 26th, 2012 at 3:52 pm

   I am always excited about large infrastructure projects. But to put a twist, could you also come up with the top 10 large projects that “could have become a program full of small projects – and thus could have been decentralized”. For a little extra cost on the project management side, I have seen higher level of redundancies, equal or greater quality, greater change control and budget control, lower engineering costs (more T&M and less percentage base) and also lower risk of drastic changes in project expenses (e.g. a 2 -3 year project could see the price of steel double, price of copper triple, how can one budget this in? etc). On my travels I am seeing more interest in decentralized solutions, which also helps with future infrastructure challenges related to growth. Also for water management, you keep the treated water local and leverage it easier. Just some thoughts……

By: Dr. Roslyn Kunin

For many Canadians, there never seems to be enough time in the day. Taking the long view, time stretches to infinity, but, within the scope of our lives, it is much more limited. It has no substitutes and it cannot be re-used or recycled.

Lack of time is the excuse we give for not doing all the things we would like to do or that we have to do. We each have only 24 hours in a day and, like land, they aren’t making any more of it. Unlike land, unfortunately, you can’t buy it.

We can, however, make much more effective use of the time that we do have, both in our personal and our working lives.  There are lots of suggestions for making better use of time at the individual level, but it is in our collective working lives that the inefficient use of time is doing us the most harm. Not a lot is being said about this and less is being done, it seems.

Productivity is the measure that is used to determine how effective we are in our working lives. There are many yardsticks of productivity, but the most basic one is output per hour worked.

By this measure, Canadian productivity has been lower than that of the United
States, our biggest trading partner, for at least the last three decades. What’s more, the gap is widening. Although productivity has been rising in Canada, it has been creeping up at a rate of about 1% per year for the last decade. Meanwhile, in the United States, productivity has been charging ahead around double the Canadian rate.

Why is it so important for Canadians to be churning out the greatest amount of goods and services each hour that we work? Because the wages we earn and our standard of living depend upon it. No one can afford to pay anyone more than the value of what it is they produce. If our output is just creeping upward, our incomes and our standard of living can do no better.

And how do we improve our productivity to make better use of the working hours that we put in? We make use of a resource that is widely available and often underused—our brainpower. We have the smarts to develop, adapt and implement the technology and systems that will allow us to become more productive and prosperous.

Now all we need to do is to find the time.

By: Michael Cleland and Dr. Roger Gibbins

As the debate about an energy strategy for Canada has unfolded, several core themes have emerged. Carbon pricing needs to be pursued if we ever hope to deal with climate change. Regulatory efficiency is critical to energy development. Energy efficiency and conservation is important for reducing both economic and environmental costs.

In 2009, the Energy Framework Initiative (sponsored by the Canadian hydrocarbon industry associations and supported by a wide spectrum of people interested in energy issues) identified the critical “pillars” of the ongoing conversation about energy in Canada which included the above topics among others [1]. One of the pillars—the question of social license to build and operate [2]—has become lost in the debate. This issue needs to be brought forward because social license may be the most pressing issue facing our energy system in the coming decade.

Canada has a long history, much of it successful, in facing up to social license challenges including those affecting hydro-electric and pipeline developments, mining projects and, perhaps most famously and successfully, forestry practices. The issue is hardly new. But the consequences of ignoring social license or treating it dismissively appear to be piling up and the implications for our energy future are profound. The list of the recent or ongoing controversies is long and growing: wind farms in Ontario, electric transmission in Alberta, BC and Manitoba, gas fired power plants in BC and Ontario and, most recently and notoriously, oil pipelines just about everywhere. It seems that building just about anything may become politically impossible or at the least subject to costly delays, redesign or cancellation. For a variety of reasons these are costs we can ill afford.

Much of the response to this issue is reflected in calls for regulatory reform and increased energy “literacy” or by the invention of new acronyms from NIMBY to NOPE to BANANA. None of these responses gets at the core issue. Regulatory reform is needed, but it will rest on a foundation of sand if the underlying social license is absent. Energy education may be a good idea, but it is unlikely to be sufficient to convince the public, and even less likely to convince affected local communities, to support specific energy projects.  And apart from amusing a few people at conferences, the invention of new acronyms seems only to underscore what appears to be dismissive contemptuousness in the face of real social issues that call for much more serious thinking.

Arguably, the apparent breakdown in societal consensus in support of energy projects reflects deeper social currents—ones reflected in both the US Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements. Elite accommodation, as political scientists characterize it, no longer carries the day. Elites—all of them—are mistrusted, often profoundly. At the same time, an increasingly complex and fractious society makes it harder to achieve consensus on anything.

The energy debate can hardly hope to turn back such deep social currents. But energy is arguably more affected by these currents than any other sector of the economy. All energy infrastructure is implicated, from large to small.  Energy infrastructure is often intrusive on the landscape. It is associated in myth, perception or reality with all manner of health risks. It generates air emissions. It is the center of the climate change issue. It often extends thousands of miles and faces vulnerabilities that almost no other type of development faces. Therefore, if the energy community fails to come to grips with social license, Canada will have difficulty meeting its energy needs, miss out on economic opportunities and struggle to ensure that the energy system achieves environmental goals.

We can start to address this challenge by acknowledging that we are more often than not talking about costs—real costs to the affected communities—and costs that tend to fall disproportionately on some communities while all or most of the benefits fall somewhere else. A cost framework—environmental and social externalities—is something that is familiar and relatively easily incorporated into decision processes. That doesn’t mean the costs are easy to bear. Nor does it mean that they are easy to measure and assess. But these are the sorts of problems that policy processes are designed to address.

We are also talking about benefits and here we have some positive examples where local communities became beneficiaries of projects. Big hydro projects and pipelines have successfully incorporated local communities as equity owners and individuals in those communities as skilled labour and as business partners. Some of these benefits, of course, come at a cost in reduced returns to the projects or higher prices for consumers, but both of these sorts of consequences are manageable in the course of business and less costly than endless uncertainty or late stage cancellations.

Sometimes the problems are more elusive. What do you do about an affluent urban community that will be the direct beneficiary of a power project but chooses to define its interests narrowly and cloak them in specious scientific claims about health impacts? What do you do about purely aesthetic impacts?

Social license problems arise in part because individual projects bear the burden of broader public policy failures. If we fail to come to grips with pricing carbon, then every project with implications for carbon becomes the battle ground in a fight where those wanting to reduce carbon emissions lack other more constructive choices. When citizens perceive that not enough is being done to mitigate demand growth, the need for many individual projects will lack societal support. Where regional land planning and cumulative effects management is deficient or perceived to be so, individual projects bear the consequences of these unresolved policy issues.

These examples, of course, underscore why a Canadian energy strategy matters—because individual parts of the puzzle are intimately linked.  It would be naive to suggest that a carbon pricing policy, sophisticated demand side initiatives and regional planning will magically eliminate opposition to something like the oil sands or wind farms or flooding for new reservoirs. But they would bolster the social legitimacy of individual projects and give regulatory authorities much stronger policy foundations on which to base their decisions. Combined with some creative thinking about costs and benefits, who pays and who doesn’t and how it all can be fairly divided, we might be able to build the framework for more systematically dealing with the social license issue.

Notes

1. See especially Andre Plourde and Ed Whittingham’s paper for the Energy Framework Initiative entitled “Pillar 4 – A Complicated Tale – Developing Energy in Canada is Not a Simple Matter.”

2. Social license is the existence of broadly based societal approval, often at the local community level but also at the level of society as a whole, for a given activity or project.

Originally published in the Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON – Politicians, industry and environmental groups across Canada are bracing for a lengthy battle to define how governments will balance competing demands to exploit national energy resources and protect the environment.

Premier Alison Redford has launched an ambitious bid to secure a pan-Canadian energy strategy, which she will discuss this week when she meets provincial and territorial leaders in Victoria for Council of the Federation meetings.

The idea has deep roots in the province’s most conservative think-tanks and tied to key strategists in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s inner circle.

“We need to get people to come to a set of common values,” Redford said in an interview late last year.

“The first place I’d like to go with it is to get provincial leaders across the country — because we have jurisdiction over energy — to acknowledge that we all need to support each other on our infrastructure objectives, on our goals with respect to greenhouse gas reduction (and) our environmental stewardshipissues.

“I don’t believe that any province anymore can do its work in isolation, because we’re all affected by what other provinces are doing.”

Redford recently met with Quebec Pemier Jean Charest, who expressed his support for developing a national energy strategy. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and British Columbia Premier Christy Clark have also agreed to back the idea, which could involve greater co-ordination in environmental standards, new infrastructure and getting energy resources to new markets.

Redford said environmental groups will play an important role in the process, partly because they can help ensure environmental concerns are addressed to Canadians’ satisfaction. This is crucial to secure the social licence to develop the resources, Redford said.

“I’m not naive. I don’t believe that by putting together a Canadian energy strategy that I’m going to get everyone to buy into … what we’re doing in the oilsands,” Redford said.

“But what I do want to say to thoughtful (environmental groups) that are concerned about environmental outcomes: Please come and work with us, and let’s try to develop a relationship of trust so we can achieve better outcomes than we are now, which is what we all want to do.”

This most recent attempt at a Canadian energy plan comes more than three decades after the introduction of the national energy program, an unpopular policy introduced by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau in 1980, and cancelled six years later.

The province is branding the new plan a “Canadian energy strategy” to distance it from the NEP, though the idea is fundamentally different.

Launched in Alberta

First, it was conceived in Alberta, not Ottawa. The concept was first laid out in a 2007 paper by Canada West Foundation CEO Roger Gibbins, a member of the University of Calgary school of conservative thinkers and a longtime colleague of Alberta Energy Minister Ted Morton.

At the time, Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth had just been released and the public discourse was dominated by talk of climate change. Gibbins said the think-tank didn’t want to see energy production take a back seat.

“What we argued is that the climate change debate is all about how we produce and use energy, that’s really the core,” Gibbins said. “If this is all about energy, then let’s not back into it from the climate-change debate.”

In his 10-page paper he argues that debate must begin in the West because “western Canadians have more skin in the game.” In a recent interview, Gibbins said it makes sense for Alberta to lead the way.

“The Alberta government realizes it needs the protection, or cover, of a Canadian energy strategy. If Alberta is going to go sort of mano-a-mano against opponents in the U.S. and so on, it’s just going to have a lot of trouble,” Gibbins said.

He said the Keystone and Northern Gateway pipeline projects “demonstrate how critically dependent Alberta is on a national strategy that identifies things like market access as matters of national interest.”

The controversial pipelines are crucial to Alberta’s ability to export its oilsands bitumen to the U.S. and Asian markets, Gibbins said, and getting them built will be much easier if the federal and provincial governments are all united behind the effort to do so.

Gibbins published a second paper in September 2008 and made the opening argument for a Canadian energy strategy.

Think-tanks agree

In 2009, a group of western think-tanks met in Winnipeg also agreed on the need for an energy strategy and formed the Winnipeg Consensus Group. That group went on to organize the Banff Clean Energy Dialogue, Gibbins said.

That invitation-only conference was hosted in April 2010 by the Canada School of Energy and Environment. The new school was headed at the time by Conservative political fixer Bruce Carson, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Carson is now embroiled in a sex and corruption scandal. The school’s report on the conference lists him as co-host; he is also a member of the Winnipeg Consensus Group.

Roughly 60 organizations took part in the Banff conference, and though the convention was heavily dominated by industry representatives and affiliates, some environmental groups were also invited, including the Pembina Institute and Pollution Probe.

The keynote speaker was David Emerson, a federal Liberal-turned-Conservative and former minister of international trade and foreign affairs under Harper. Emerson had by then become the chair of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada, or EPIC, a key industry think-tank established in the fall of 2009 with the single goal of shaping the Canadian energy strategy.

EPIC’s founding president is Alberta Senate candidate Doug Black, an energy lawyer and provincial Tory insider who co-chaired the Alberta Progressive Conservatives’ election campaign in 2008.

Black was also steering chairman and spokesman for the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions. The anti-Kyoto business coalition made national headlines in 2002 after drafting a letter that suggested Canada’s leading investment dealers had secretly warned the prime minister’s office of a powerful Wall Street backlash against Canada’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

It was later discovered the coalition’s letter had been leaked but never sent, and had been attributed to a leading investment dealers association without its permission. Black told the Toronto Star at the time: “We thought the (other group) would be a more credible source for it to come from.” The coalition subsequently went dormant.

David Collyer is the president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, a member of EPIC that represents companies that produce about 90 per cent of Canada’s natural gas and crude oil. He believes a Canadian energy strategy will help energy producers at home and abroad.

“It helps us internally to get aligned and arrive at some common understandings and it helps us represent our views more effectively internationally,” Collyer said.

Reconciling varied interests

“If we can step above our differing interests – whether that’s between provinces, or between industrial sectors, or consumers versus producers or environmentalists versus the oil and gas industry – then I think we’ve got an opportunity to do what’s best for Canada.”

The Ottawa-based Council for Canadians has been lobbying for a Canadian energy strategy since 2009 and wants the government to put citizens’ interests first.

“A primary goal of an effective plan must look at how we can transition off of fossil fuels dependency,” energy campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue said.

“We feel this is a responsibility we have to ourselves and future generations in the face of climate crisis, and it’s really planning that should have started years ago.”

Harden-Donahue said she believes Redford’s push for a national strategy is designed to legitimize the oilsands.

“When you have the premier of Alberta pushing for this sort of a strategy, it’s a way to have the oilsands formally accepted as legitimate. Alberta and the federal government have been arguing at the European Union and in the U.S. that the oilsands are no different than any other energy source, when the reality is quite starkly different.”

By: Casey Vander Ploeg, Senior Policy Analyst

Every now and then I’m asked—in public, mind you—for a little “crystal-balling.”  What’s going to happen with this issue?  Who’s going to win that campaign?  What’ll happen here?  How’s it going to shake out there?  If there’s one Q&A or media query that I hate, it’s being asked to make “the prediction.”  I’m not very good at it and have a pretty lousy track record.  That’s also why I’m a “policy wonk” and not a “political pundit.”

One vision of the future that I’ve heard—not made but heard—is that water will be the biggest global policy issue of the 21st century.  Hyperbole?  Maybe.  Perhaps.  I don’t really know.

What I do know is that parts of western Canada certainly have their fair share of water stresses and strains, and more threats are floating our way.  I also know that the West is not alone here, whether one points to the decade-long drought in Australia or chronic water shortages in the American southwest.  And, I also know that the historical policy response—the large-scale supply option or water “mega” project—has to paddle a lot harder these days given both the cost and the potential environmental impact.

But while there is growing suspicion about the benefits of large-scale water supply solutions, the same does not hold when considering small-scale innovations, many of which are highly dependent on new research and technology only now emerging.  What’s more, a lot of this ground-breaking technology is being developed, produced, tested, and installed right in the West’s own backyard.

What follows is a list of some of the more interesting innovations that I’ve run across in the West—technologies and products that are designed to develop alternative sources of fresh water, purify water on a small-scale, and treat, recycle, and reuse wastewater and effluents.  While the list is quite diverse, they all share at least one similarity—foregoing the “big centralized” option with the “small decentralized” solution fueled by technology.

Small-Scale Self-Supply and Alternative Sources

Alternative water sources replace traditional surface water, groundwater, and municipal supply with water of a lower quality or water from a different source, oftentimes on a small-scale or individualized basis.  One such practice—and one growing in popularity—is “rainwater harvesting.”  The idea is already quite popular in parts of Europe, Hawaii, and Japan, and even mandatory in places like Bermuda, parts of Australia, and New Zealand. There are over 250,000 known users in the US alone.

Rainwater Connection out of Thetis Island, BC is adding western Canadian ingenuity to an already thriving industry.  The company spends about 350 hours of research and development annually to adapt and test existing technologies for use in local conditions, and to design integrated systems that are cost effective, produce high quality water, and are easy to maintain.  The Rainwater Connection specializes in designing, constructing, installing, and maintaining rainwater harvesting systems for residential, commercial and agricultural applications, as well as monitoring, maintaining, and evaluating those systems in a drive for continual improvement.  Rainwater Connection has been involved with hundreds of rainwater projects, from small residential garden water systems to commercial nurseries.  Some Rainwater Connection systems have integrated rainwater into well water systems that provide up to 100,000 gallons of potable water annually.  Such systems go well beyond simply capturing rain in a barrel, and are complex enough to require input from architects, engineers, and filtration and treatment specialists.

The Aquascape RainXchange system was created for capturing, filtering, and storing rainwater, but does so with aesthetic and artistic flair by combining re-circulating decorative water features with a below ground rainwater harvesting and storage system.  According to Aquascape RainXchange, the water potential of harvesting locally is significant.  A home with a 2,000 square foot roof can yield 1,250 gallons of water with just one inch of rain.  The RainXchange system is available and has been adapted for use in western Canada through Nature’s Corner Store, located in Edmonton, Alberta.

ECOShift also provides a line of diversified products to gather and store supplemental water supplies, primarily for irrigation and better grey water management.  One of the key areas of focus for this company is education, information, and consultation.  With the continual evolution of environmental solutions and technologies, it can be hard to keep on top of what is out there and what they really do.  ECOShift offers tools and services to help individuals and business learn about the environmental technologies and solutions available, particularly grey water recycling and rainwater harvesting.  ECOShift offers workshops, advanced seminars, technology evaluations, consultation and assessment services designed to evaluate specific needs and identify what technologies and products would be most suitable.  The company asserts that many people simply do not have the luxury to research new technologies on a regular basis, so they do the leg work for you.

Small-Scale Water Treatment

To be sure, many alternative water supply systems have their genesis outside western Canada, and they are being adopted and adapted to local conditions.  What is more, managing water woes is not just about water quantity.  It is also about water quality.  The two are highly interconnected.  You may have all the water in the world but if that water is of poor quality, of what use is it?  When it comes to water quality issues, the West is producing its own leaders, trend-setters, and industry champions.

Mainstream Water Solutions is a Saskatchewan-based company that took 200 year-old technology—slow sand filtration—and applied it in a new way to secure pure water for small water systems across western Canada. Chicken farmer David Keet rediscovered the process when confronted with the challenge of purifying water for the 130,000 birds in his operation.  The results were more than impressive, and resulted in a new start-up company that has designed and installed water filtration systems for farms, small municipalities, commercial water users, and now, larger municipalities. The Mainstream process uses naturally occurring microbes in raw water, sand, and carbon filters to remove unwanted contaminants without the use of chemicals.  From that start, the Mainstream system has evolved to include additional filters that remove arsenic and uranium, two toxins that could be impacting over 400 communities across western Canada.  With support from Communities of Tomorrow, Mainstream has leveraged some $400,000 in research and development, and moved their systems from design, to the lab, to pilot projects, and now to market. The company believes that their system is the most affordable, efficient, and environmentally friendly option for any small water system serving up to 1,000 people and is poised to double its annual revenues of $3.5 million in the next few years.

Tec-Water Supplies is a company based in Tisdale, Saskatchewan that has its sights set on helping small communities solve their water treatment challenges.  Treating water to potable standards through a centralized treatment facility is costly—often too costly for many small communities.  Yet, there are more than 2,500 small communities in western Canada and some 42,000 in the US.  Across Canada, some 7,000 communities will need to upgrade or replace their current water systems in the near future. Tec-Water has designed and patented a new technology, the Floc System 100TM, that can reduce the cost of water treatment by more than 50%.  The technology eliminates turbidity, which normally makes treatment of the water impossible, and it does this in small batches and only when it is needed.  Tec-Water has gathered over $1 million in investment, with the help of Communities of Tomorrow, to prove out the system through an installation at the new Sun Dale resort on Last Mountain Lake.  The company is confident that its processes will allow it to enter and capture what is sure to be a growing market right across North America.

Small-Scale Wastewater Treatment and Recycling

Some of the more impressive innovations in western Canada revolve around new technologies for small-scale wastewater treatment, and developing new alternative supplies through water recycling and reuse.  Some of these technologies are specifically targeted to industry sectors that are active across the West.

ElectroPure is a new mobile water treatment system designed and patented by Saskatchewan-based Ground Effects Environmental (GEE) Services.  The system is housed in three 53 foot refrigerated vans that can be moved directly onsite. The three trailers are completely “plug-and-play”, and can be set up and running in less than two hours.  The ElectroPure water system has applications across many industry sectors including oil and gas, mining, industry, and agriculture.  A specific application for mobile treatment is flowback water from fraccing in the oil and gas industry.  The system can dramatically reduce levels of polymers, total suspended solids, guar gum, iron, bacteria, scaling agents, hydrogen sulfide, silica, and almost any other material resulting from the fraccing process to levels safe for reuse.  The mobile ElectroPure system ranges in capacity from 500 m3 to 1,500 m3 per day, and a fixed stationary plant can process upwards of 3,000 m3 per day.  All systems can be remotely accessed, controlled, and optimized from anywhere in the world via satellite or cellular link.  The technology is completely scalable and mobile—treatment can be done at the well head or at a location central to multiple drilling sites.

EcoLibra systems of Saskatoon was created to commercialize a new wastewater treatment and recovery technology that is drawing attention on a global scale. The new technology is called the Resource Recovery System or R2S, and employs mechanical processes and the use of safe, non-toxic, soil-friendly additives that can convert agricultural livestock effluent and human sewage back to clean water that can be re-used or returned to the environment.  The system is fully automated and easy to use, whether employed to treat sewage from people or hogs.  The process can be easily customized to work for towns or farms.  EcoLibra estimates that the quality of treatment is ten times better than lagoon-based processes and most other traditional systems, but with a cost that is 30% to 50% lower.  EcoLibra reported sales of $3.5 million in its first two years of operations, and is projecting significant new growth over the next two years.  The company recently opened new offices in Europe and Alaska. The company is “going global” and is eager to show communities that wastewater is valuable and can be easily managed.

Livestock Water Recycling (LWR) systems of Calgary is an interesting on-farm example of water recycling and reuse.  The company has refined and patented a mechanical and chemical processing technology that removes manure contaminants from livestock effluent, including solids, phosphorous, potassium, ammonia, and nitrogen.  Again, the result is water that is quite suitable for other uses, and the removed contaminants can also be re-used in processing fertilizer.  One of the company’s newest products is its “Swinewater System”.  The water discharged from this system meets Canadian drinking water standards and is suitable for use back in the barn or for irrigation.  LWR did extensive testing at a live site in southern Manitoba in 2008 and is currently in the process of installing systems at various dairy and hog operations in the West.

The Grey Water Recycling Research Program at the University of Regina is working to develop and perfect infrastructure systems for grey water recycling.  Recycled grey water is ideal for non-potable use such as flushing toilets and landscape irrigation.  The research program, with support from Communities of Tomorrow, has successfully levered over $1 million in research support, and is working with the University of Regina’s Industry Liaison Office to find commercialization opportunities and partnerships.  The project has already generated six new patents for grey water recycling, and is now pursuing new research to extend those recycling systems so that grey water can eventually be turned back into potable water for safe consumption.

Integrating and Merging Innovations

Western Canada is also home to some exciting developments where new innovations, technologies, approaches, and systems have been merged into larger pilot projects.

The Vento Windmill Development is a very unique home-grown example of integrating new technologies and approaches.  The Vento residential development, located in Calgary, is a mixed-use commercial and residential condominium infill project located in the inner city beltline on the former General Hospital site.  The project was developed and constructed by the Windmill Development Group.  The Vento was designed up-front with water conservation in mind.  For example, a rainwater collection system is used for flushing toilets and watering plants.  The Vento also uses a number of low-flow water fixtures.  As a result of these technologies, water use in the Vento is expected to be about 60% lower than that of traditional buildings, and industry innovators and leaders are taking notice.  The Vento project was the first multi-family residential development in North America to earn the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum Certification offered through the US Green Building Council.

Onwards and Upwards

When it comes to environmental issues and concerns, we are all familiar with the bromide of “Think global but act local.”  The story of water in western Canada certainly reflects that idea, but could also be described as “Inventing local and exporting global.”  The West certainly has water challenges, and out of those challenges has come opportunity—a “lab” of necessity.

Click here to read Part I of “Big-scale” Problem Meets “Small-scale” Solution”.

6 Responses to ““Big-scale” Problem Meets “Small-scale” Solution (Part II)”