Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on the statement by the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I’d like to briefly start by saying that this is like a breath of fresh air. I think our public is totally ready for this sort of thing. I’ve had a lot of feedback that people do listen to us in the House. They’re interested in what we say. I’d like to pull a little bit more information from the Minister.
I notice in the second paragraph that there were almost 550 applications for new home heating appliances, mostly that they’re more efficient and so on. Has the Minister estimated what the greenhouse gas savings are from these 550? I notice he did that for the ten mentioned below. What was the payback time for these appliances? I think the public would be interested in knowing that.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. All good questions of a fairly specific and technical nature. I will commit to the Member that I will get that information and share it with him and members of the committee that he’s a member of.
Thank you to the Minister for that commitment. I hope he shares it publicly in the House with us, because, again, I know the public would be very interested indeed.
Another question I had. One of the bottlenecks I think our public experiences is the installation and services for these new appliances. It’s often very difficult to find somebody in a timely way. We don’t have homegrown expertise here. Is the Minister working with Aurora College and other arms of government to try to get some progressive educational programs going to ensure that we have in all our communities expert renewable energy and energy efficiency technicians to help our public?
The Member is correct that there is an economic opportunity here as we look at moving to alternative energies. The whole support, installation and monitoring was raised in the House last week — the need, for example, for simple things like having qualified local people to be able to do inspections of pellet stoves and wood fired woodstoves.
Yes, there is an interest, as we move forward and start planning the value-added to this whole operation, in building the economy and being able to sustain, implement and repair and upgrade this whole type of new industry we’re going to be creating in the North.
Thank you again to the Minister for those comments. I think the Minister mentioned the economy. That’s an important part of what we’re about, I think, trying to build and strengthen our local economies. Having the local expertise available will really assist that.
A huge one for me is that we’ve started to see the light and moved into the new Medium Renewable Energy Fund. Now we’re starting to get into some of the bigger projects where some of the biggest gains are to be had. I’m wondering: is the Minister establishing the concomitant level of expertise within this department to enable us to be efficient with this? In this case I’m thinking we’re so far behind in North America. Europe and other countries are really the standard. Are we getting some European level expertise for staff to deal with this sort of situation?
We have some knowledgeable staff who are thoroughly engrossed and up to speed in this area. As well, we’re making use of local resources like Arctic Green Energy and the other folks who have developed their own expertise.
We recognize that there is a huge amount to be learned from Europe. As we move forward with the planning exercise, with the business plans, the need to go and take a look at what’s happening over there in terms of biomass — for example, to generate things like electricity — is what we’re committed to trying to pursue. We’re working, of course, very closely with the appropriate committees.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My final question, and thanks again to the Minister for those comments. I’m glad to see we’re being progressive here. Some of the technology out there is pretty new and perhaps a little bit untried in the North.
I think it’s great we’re starting to test those systems and so on, but an important aspect of that is establishing a monitoring program on them to make sure we know how much the gain is and what the full benefit is to us with our dollars and to the public. Is there a program to ensure that some monitoring, especially on the relatively new technologies out there, is paired with these projects?
First let me comment that the Government of the Northwest Territories, the Members of Cabinet — the Premier on down — are all fully supportive of this approach and the investments we are making. I know that Public Works and Services has done work to do the monitoring the Member speaks of on some of the larger schools across the North.
I picked up a copy of a document when I went to the wood pellet fair that was held here a couple weeks ago. Clearly, we are going to have to develop all those types of support services and expertise in our own government and across the North in the communities as we move into alternative energies in a very significant and serious way.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
