Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Despite commitments to the contrary, we are wasting the residual heat produced by our diesel power generating stations. Eleven years ago the GNWT and the NWT Power Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding on the development of a residual heat distribution system. The news release issued to announce the MOU made some remarkable claims. They said that Public Works and Services and NTPC have been working since 1997 to develop concepts and systems to capture the residual heat from generating stations and use it to heat buildings. It said that benefits from the work could include new revenues for the Power Corporation and that, as a result of the work, customers could save as much as 30 percent in heating costs in as many as 30 communities. That was a brave new world in 1998.

Also at that time, a Gwich’in Development Corporation and NTPC venture had already started this kind of operation using so-called waste heat to heat six buildings, including the school, arena and water treatment plant. Since the release, Whati has become the second and presumably only other NWT community to use the heat that other plants filter away.

They don’t call it waste heat for nothing. In the Nordic countries we just visited in search of renewable energy opportunities, it is against the law to waste the heat produced by power generation. Every winter day I go by the Jackfish Lake diesel plant I see a hockey rink sized hole melted from the ice. This same waste of energy is happening every day across the NWT while our businesses and residents suffer with rising heat and power costs.

These substantial and potential savings have been officially waiting for at least 11 years. While European countries have made it illegal to throw away heat, we import oil from Korea and pump about half of its energy out of our NWT diesel plants into the air, wasted.

With the current review of electricity regulation, rates and subsidies now underway, I ask what mandatory measures and deadlines can be implemented to stop this waste before yet another decade goes by. Neither we nor our residents can afford to throw away any more heat or money, and until we can get off diesel we should at least exact the highest price from our production of greenhouse gases. Mahsi.