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Appendix 2:
Consolidated Breakout Reports – Afternoon Session

Breakout Session #2:
Identification of Initiatives and Action Steps

There were five breakout groups in the afternoon session organized around the five strategies:

  1. Regulatory and Policy Mechanisms
  2. Marketing Strategy
  3. Fiscal Incentives
  4. Centres of Excellence
  5. Demonstration Projects

Regulatory and Policy Mechanisms

Initiatives

Who's Involved

Critical Needs/Actions

Time Frame

Bring About Regulatory Coordination/ Harmonization

• Create smart performance-based environmental regulatory reporting with three levels of government to one point of focus
• Pan-western review of entrepreneurial technology regulations led by provincial ministers of environment and ministers of industry and facilitated by the Government of Canada:

  • Standardize
  • Eliminate
  • Strengthen

• Single portal for government information on programs

• Performance-based regulations (action-comprehensive regulatory review):

  • Predictable
  • Consistent
  • Business certainty

 



Federal, provincial, municipal and First Nations governments



Prime Minister, Environment Minister and provincial First Ministers to convene a series of meetings to create smart, performance-based environmental regulations



3 years

Promote Eco-Efficiency through Performance-Based Standards

• Waste recycling objectives: The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) is to establish national policy to encourage recycling of waste for multiple cycle use rather than disposal. Currently 80% of industry waste is land filled without any recovery or reuse. Set target to reduce volume to 50% through recycling to recover as a resource

• Minimum efficiency standards for power plants, homes, and commercial buildings

• Government should set fleet emission standard

• Power generation: credit for pollution reduction (e.g. NOx) compared to existing mix

• Measurement and public reporting of environmental performance and eco-efficiency for industry

• Establish energy budget for Canadian buildings: e.g. 5 kilowatt hours per square metre per year

• Sustainable building policy: use LEED as a performance based building standard for all federal funded projects including Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), Health Canada, Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC)

• Require improvement of industrial eco-efficiency over time

• Canadian Space Agency (CSA): quick approvals for good technologies



PWGSC, Infrastructure Canada, Health Canada, INAC, Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), National Research Council (NRC), provincial governments



Hold regular intergovernmental and industrial meetings/forums, establish performance-based targets, and use a multi-stakeholder process



0 to 5 years

Transfigure the Electricity Industry from Centralized Vertical Integration to a Distributed Generation Model

• National standards for interconnection in metering (re: energy decentralization)

• Net metering: enabling micro, mini and large generators to easily and transparently sell surplus electricity back to the utility at market price

• Export driven




Federal and provincial governments




Multi-layer intergovernmental meeting

  

Additional Initiative: Market Support

  • Require locally-based manufacturing for imported technologies
  • Risk underwriting for new technologies

Marketing Strategies

Discussion

  • Is it reasonable to have one strategy for all technologies?
  • We want market pull
  • Is there a single industry?
  • We need marketing enablers, not marketing strategies
  • Marketing enablers: broad category
  • SMEs don’t know the resources that exist
  • Need enablers that help us reach specific customers
  • Strategic underpinning of marketing: products
  • What is the highest value market proposition?
  • Small companies cannot afford marketing personnel: support does exist
  • Can SMEs band together through trade associations to get market intelligence? Barriers: SMEs are introverted, lack time, and are fragmented
  • Example: small companies are banding together in this case
  • Goal of attacking international markets requires that we get out of provincial silos
  • We suffer from a lack of critical mass; we need a vehicle to pull us together
  • How much do we have in common?

Summary: Key themes of opening discussion

  • Need marketing enablers, not marketing strategies
  • Lack of commonality among environmental technology and firms
  • Need to get out of provincial silos to attack international markets
  • Fragmentation and lack of resources among SMEs
  • SMEs not aware of resources that exist

Enabler: a technology or resource that clears roadblocks and allows a company or process to move forward more efficiently. Example: providing a list of potential customers

Consideration: what kind of firms are we talking about?

Initiatives

  • Provide incentives for large companies with large projects to allow SMEs to piggyback on development of projects. Who: CIDA
  • Technology partnerships as enablers: incentives for incorporating standards or technologies
  • Facilitate networking and information flow through trade commissions and other such bodies – ensure bodies already in place have sufficient resources. How will Western Economic Diversification Canada facilitate continued dialogue?
  • Knowledge capture based on real case studies of successful companies. Deconstructed case of Joule Microsystems Canada – enabling factors: serendipity; the board; access to government programs; CEO recognized importance of research, product and marketing; finding a partner locally (Terasen)
  • Provide marketing expertise for firms trying to commercialize or go international; mentoring; centres of excellence; differences among companies; more collaborative approach needed (Team Canada); differentiating from others internationally: what is uniquely Canadian; sales force closing deals internationally; resources to fill orders; tying in R&D funding to marketing
  • Canadian government providing level playing field (e.g. one bid from Japan vs. three from Canada)
  • Some of the federal enablers do exist; have SME programs and the budget; problem: we do not excel in Canada in use of technologies; focus on what the international customers are looking for; example of 21 BC forestry service companies coming together to provide integrated solution – trade alliance
  • Industry connectivity: larger players don’t know the small players. Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program (SR&ED), Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade have a role
  • Targeted trade alliances segmented by market
  • Need a brand name: Canadian government certified products as tool for differentiation? Advantage in some cases but not all; should it be international certification instead?
  • Address need for SME visibility: companies looking for niche solutions go to the Web
  • Federal government assistance in levelling the playing field internationally for SMEs: SMEs going to US due to superior programs
  • Mechanism to get marketing expertise to companies at earlier stage; connecting commercialization support to R&D funding

Fiscal Incentives

Discussion

  • Reduced capital gains tax for environmental technology and green buildings
  • RPS/Financing: design RPS to capture financial issues
  • Accelerated depreciation of environmental assets
  • Broaden production/reduce consumption or conservation incentives of “brown” incentives to green technologies
  • Expansion of flow-through shares

Initiatives

  1. Tax Incentives
    1. Create incentives for green technologies (e.g. energy production)
    2. Level the playing field for all energy sources
    3. Consider emission caps
    4. Expansion of flow-through share incentives (consistent for all industries)
    5. Enhanced Canadian Exploration Expense (CEE) for all renewable energy sources
    6. Tax credits for environmental technology adoption (e.g. film industry, labour funds)
  2. Broaden and Increase Renewable Energy Production, Consumption, Conservation Incentives
    1. Net metering
    2. National system of green tags
    3. Expanding this concept to other environmental technology (e.g. wind production incentive to other environmental technology areas)
  3. Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)/Financing
    1. Consumer financing
    2. SME financing
    3. An example includes Independent Power Producers Assurance Bonds

Centres of Excellence

Discussion

  • Centre versus regional
  • Excellence overused
  • Research and commercialization
  • Innovation network
  • Expertise versus excellence
  • Node versus centre
  • Build on existing organizations (professional etc.)
  • Has to include commercialization consortium
  • Intersectional partnerships
  • Research
  • Training
  • Consumer
  • Public/private/non-governmental organizations/University partnerships
  • Environment vs. sustainability
  • Crucial drivers = Social etc.
  • An example includes Environmental Technology Advancement Nodes
  • Environmental technology – marketable locally
  • The structure of centres of excellence:
    • Facilitate/participate
    • Have mentoring capacity
    • Generate new ideas/products/services
    • Move forward to commercialization
    • Market research and partners: e.g. venture capital
    • Partnering with industry
    • Portals for information regarding funding research
    • Stay out of research and focus on marketing
    • Commercialization clients
    • Organizations/private agencies
    • Investors, Venture Capital
    • Branding the capacity of industry in Western Canada
    • Review of regulations to determine public policy
    • Due diligence on products (SMEs)
    • Convene investors/industry/market alliances/partnerships
    • Mentor the project to commercialization
    • Marketing
    • Manage growth
  • Focus:
    • Long term, sustainable strategic work for the industry
    • Knowledge sharing
    • Strategic alliances

Initiatives

  • Implement demonstration of integrated solutions – independent review of technology
  • Facilitate linkage between existing centres and resources to commercialize environmental technology
  • Define the needs of the sector for commercialization to refine the vision and the strategy
  • Audit resource clusters and centres of excellence
  • Market research
  • Technical and financial risk reduction

Demonstration Projects

Discussion

  • Environmental technology and ways of living with that technology
  • After R&D, before product development
  • Demonstration projects: Part of the flow, essence of the process
  • Demonstration projects: tested in the marketplace
  • Integrated solutions: demonstration projects that makes many technologies work
  • Real world, commercially viable, relevance to location
  • Room for strategic partnerships: first priority (e.g. Sustainable University of British Columbia campus)
  • Pet projects: problem of prioritizing; synthesize approaches
  • The more the merrier: the more demonstration projects the better; cannot be narrowly defined at this point
  • Using the technology and seeing which technology works: cannot limit the technologies
  • Strategic competitive framework: what does the market want locally and internationally – need to know why we’re doing it
  • Community has to have the capacity to accommodate demonstration projects
  • Also need to follow up on demonstration projects: significant assessment to see what works, what does not
  • Challenge: Strategic mechanisms, actions that do not zero-in on one project
  • Different requirements/objectives, conflicting strategies
  • Demonstration projects are experiments: expect the unexpected; need flexible framework
  • Which technologies deserve demo projects?
  • Refocusing: What about structuring demo projects? e.g., challenge people to come up with ideas in transportation; learn how to do what we normally do but in a sustainable way
  • Demonstration programs: transportation, energy and sustainable buildings; regarding sector approach (food production, waste disposal, etc.)
  • Sustainability approaches in cities: technology frameworks that work with existing systems; goal is livable regions
  • Social dimension of fear of change: need to look at diversity of demonstration projects and range of projects; regarding satisfying societal needs sustainably and cost-effectively
  • Need for open evaluations of projects using strict evaluation standards
  • Need for integration: distribution, management, etc. regarding demonstration projects that serve criteria mentioned
  • Energy supply problem of Vancouver Island: social, geographic, complex problem
  • Demonstrations that need to address problems
  • Living with the old infrastructure: example of fibre-optical links in Japanese homes; complete change in socialization
  • Demonstration projects specifically for Western Canada that deal with air, soil, water, oil and gas

Initiatives

The 2010 Winter Olympics

  • What: Olympics to become a demonstration project for Canadian environmental technology and sustainable living: Olympic Village, Green Building accommodations for tourists, transportation, cross-Canada sustainability torch relay (regarding a green torch network connecting Canada), new green sporting facilities, demonstration of an entire closed loop system, and green procurement
  • Who: athletes, tourists, planners, Olympic Organizing Committee, etc.
  • When: 2010

Model Green Remote Communities

  • What: Model Green Remote Communities, one in each province: a project to demonstrate integrated, sustainable, community systems in lower technology Canadian communities with a goal to export what is learned about addressing population growth in less industrialized countries – education and learning program
  • Elements: Locally based planning methods, Green Buildings, alternative renewable local energy grid, alternative water and waste water systems; eco-industrial network between business and the community
  • Who: Aboriginal organizations, federal government departments, research facilities – University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Laurentian University, University of Alberta, University of Saskatchewan, Canadian Light Source (Saskatoon), government – BC Sustainable Resource Management, private sector
  • When: Staggered rollouts

A Green Community: Waste to Use

  • What: Example: Britannia Beach Mine Site
  • High profile site
  • Contaminated site: worst metal pollution site in North America
  • To be remediated by 2005
  • On Sea to Sky Highway, close to new Sea to Sky University
  • Gateway to 2010 Winter Olympics
  • Technology can be replicated on global basis
  • Addresses a significant Canadian industry and how it protects the environment
  • Transforms an eyesore into something of value


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