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Morning Breakout Reports
The breakout groups presented their discussion summaries.
Energy Group “A”
“There are many opportunities in the energy industry because of pent-up demand,” said the group representative. He listed five strategies:
- The government needs to commit to sustainable development
- For credibility, environmental technology should be used domestically before it can be exported internationally
- The environmental technology industry needs to attract money for alternative energy demonstration projects. This could be a fiscal incentive
- A consistent regulatory environment would guide private investment
- Industry-driven clusters and centres of excellence should be created
Energy Group “B”
The group representative listed four strategies:
- Fiscal incentives and regulatory predictability. This could take different forms, such as taxes or program funding
- Demonstration projects for access to larger markets. These demonstration projects could be on a larger scale, such as 500 homes, in order to decrease the unit price
- Creating centres of excellence that could be virtual or feature hard assets, land, and buildings
- Coordinating the programs of municipalities, the federal and provincial governments, and independent government agencies
Water, Waste Water, and Remediation
The group representative listed four strategies:
- Fiscal incentives
- An enabling regulatory/policy/program framework (i.e. streamline government programs)
- Industry cluster infrastructure support, focusing on commercialization, which could promote SMEs and public-private partnerships
- Demonstration projects and incentives for first-in use of new technology. Demonstration projects could be used to prove technology or look at implementation in a community
A participant said that an agreement over First Nations’ lands was required to promote compliance to a regulatory framework.
Green Buildings
The group representative stated that the environmental technology sector needs:
- To expand its market and look for opportunities to collaborate with Oregon and Washington
- A strategy which features environmental technology incentives such as green financing, tax incentives, incentives for early adopters, and green mortgages
- Changes to building codes from prescriptive to performance-based codes
- Changes to federal procurement policy. Federal buildings and infrastructure should require, for example, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver rating. Sustainable building and community demonstration projects compose a fifth strategy. Although other benchmarks exist, the LEED standard influences the market
A participant indicated that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities provides funds for research in municipalities. The program is grounded and credible, and should continue.
Another participant suggested that federal financial contributions to projects should require a green building standard. Secretary of State Owen said that federal infrastructure funding should encourage green infrastructure.
Morning Summary and Next Steps
Charles Holmes synthesized five strategies emerging from the morning discussions: regulatory and policy mechanisms, a Western Canada environmental technologies marketing strategy, fiscal incentives, centres of excellence, and demonstration projects. He suggested these themes for breakout group discussions in the afternoon.