Thank you once again for that commitment from the Minister. I think it has been very frustrating as far away as Sachs Harbour where energy is so costly and people have taken action there and then found out after things were in place that they couldn’t afford to do it, to literally hook it up. So the facility sits there.
I’d like now to turn to our general renewable energy, energy efficiency programs. It’s no surprise to this Minister or this government that committee has wanted to see a major effort and expenditure in the energy area. We see huge opportunities for addressing many, again, of our highest priority government goals, and that’s reducing the cost of living, developing especially our local economies and the environmental aspects that we can get with these sorts of projects. In just about every case, and I’m not aware of any failures where we’ve lost money and not had these sorts of benefits and the Minister is right, we have been one of the jurisdictions leading the way in many ways, but it’s a no-brainer. Why shouldn’t we when we’re getting all these benefits from it?
At the other time, we’re also very much aware of the tens of millions of dollars that we’re spending this year in subsidy of fossil fuels. Again, this just doesn’t make sense and we’ve been talking about this for a long time. So I’ve pushed, and I know many of my colleagues have pushed, let’s get back to cranking up our expenditures in this area and enjoy those benefits. There are some areas out there that can provide very good feedback, and specifically and very quickly I’d like to mention the area of replacing hot water heaters, electric hot water heaters in thermal communities with fuel heaters. These electric hot water heaters are the single most expensive use of electricity of anything. They typically use 450 kilowatts per year. Several programs have tried to encourage homeowners to switch, but with limited success. Again, it’s this frontend expenditure that I’ve talked about. Two main barriers seem to be the high capital cost of an oil-fired hot water heater and the technical challenges of installing one. Just the benefits of a diesel-fired hot water heater, replacing an electrical one in a thermal community would have a net reduction of 780 litres. So 1,000 hot water heaters, 2,000 tons of greenhouse gases. It would save GNWT over half a million dollars and homeowners over a million dollars.
So, Mr. Chair, on the basis of all this I would like to propose the consideration of my colleagues on this motion. May I read the motion?