Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think you are correct that it didn't. I just wanted to clarify that. The next question I have in regard to fuel supply is the quality of it. Is it the same quality across the North when we resupply the communities? Is the fuel different? I have heard some concerns from constituents, who say, "Well, we get the fuel we get. It costs us X amount of dollars. We only get X amount from our tank." In Fort Simpson, the quality of gas seems to be a little bit different. When we go down south, you get a quality difference. Can you verify that the gas that we provide is all the same? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My next question is about MTS. We talked about amortization for fuel services, but do we have any amortization for MTS and the stuff that we have purchased? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. McCormick.

Thank you, Mr. McCormick. Mr. Thompson.

Thank you. I guess I am confused. When we have fuel services, we have amortization in the budget, and then, when we have MTS, we don't have it in there, and both of them are revolving funds. Could you explain the rationale for the difference in that? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will start it, Mr. Chair, and then maybe Vince will want to add something. The GNWT owns the tank farm assets. If we were to have that inside the revolving fund for fuel services, the price of fuel would be unaffordable. It wouldn't be attainable, because that would be right down through MTS. This way, it is in the government assets, and it is written down as a government asset versus through the fuel services. I think I have got that right, but I will defer it to Mr. McCormick here to answer it a little bit better. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister Schumann. Committee, please keep the sidebar conversations to a minimum. Mr. McCormick.

Thank you, Mr. McCormick. Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Minister and his staff for answering the questions. No further questions on this one. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Next, we have Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will go to pages 244 and 245, where we have a number of the programs that we contribute to described, in particular, the NWT energy efficiency projects. It seems as though we contribute about $300,000 to this each year. It is where the department works with the Power Corporation to integrate residual heat, variable-speed generators, and other efficiency technologies that could reduce fossil fuel consumption.

The Minister is aware of SSi Energy coming to the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment and putting forward a presentation that described some new technologies, to some degree a new technology, but, you know, these were technologies that are fairly well known and fairly well utilized by other means. When you bring them all together, they can do wonders in terms of reducing energy consumption and fuel usage in communities, so I am wondering if the department is taking any consideration into either working with corporations such as SSi or ATCO or others that could form microgrids and/or district energy systems to help get some of the thermal communities off of the use of really large single heavy-duty generators and get down to a system where we can utilize the energy and the fuel more efficiently. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Minister Schumann.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have met with Mr. Philipp myself a number of times. It will be either around his battery initiative that he is working on or his proposed idea of centralized heat within a community and electricity. We have had a number of discussions with him. I have asked him to sit down with our director of energy and have those conversations to kind of dissected a bit. As I have said in the House, when I talked to Mr. Philipp, I was a little bit concerned about the size of the project and the amount that he wanted to chew off at once. Even, I was a little bit concerned about the community, that, even though he's very passionate about Fort Providence, I was a little bit concerned about the size and the layout of it and suggested maybe have a look at a little bit smaller tighter knit community, where some of these things could be done in a more economic fashion.

I like Jeff's concept. I think there is a possibility that something can be worked out in a manner that could work in one of our smaller communities. We will continue to have those discussions with him, but when you have a look at what he was trying to do all at once, I think it is a bit much. It hasn't been quite proven everywhere. He has, in theory, I think, and I am not an expert on this, but when you look at the multiple generators that he wanted to lay out throughout the community and the electricity aspect of it, I said, you know, one of the concerns I've got going forward and when you look at our energy strategy 2030, our three-year rolling plan, I said we are going to put a T-line into Fort Providence and put them on hydro, so does it clearly make sense to have a community that is going to be on the hydro system have diesel generation there for electricity? Central heat is something that is intriguing, but I know the details would have to be worked out around that, around cost effectiveness, about the length of line, about capturing the amount of BTUs from the source point to the building, and what would that entail, and the cost factors of that, and the layout of the community, as well.

That being said, as we have said, our energy strategy is a three-year rolling plan, and I will continue to look at these types of initiatives. We have made the commitment. We need to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the Northwest Territories. It would be around central heat or building efficiencies or electrical generation, and we will continue to work with these proponents going forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister Schumann. Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate that the Minister is well in tune with Mr. Philipp's presentation and the concept of the microgrid and the district energy system, but one of the key pieces of that presentation was the idea of just simply getting a community, a large community, off of one large generator that runs full bore 24/7, 365, and getting it replaced with multiple smaller generators. Never mind the other aspects of, you know, graphene batteries or heat exchangers or what have you, just the idea of getting one large massive generator off and putting smaller ones in so that you can only have as many generators running as you need to cover the load that is required at the time, is there some thought being given to us putting some idea into future, replacement of our big, old, large generators into using this smaller multiple-generator system? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. I just caution Members: try not to mention any names for future, but we will go on to Minister Schumann.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I have said, you know, I am very interested in what Mr. Philipp is doing. Oh, sorry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are interested in looking with a number of proponents who brings these ideas forward with us. As I said, our strategy is a three-year rolling plan. Things are going to change. These types of ideas are out there. There are a number of people who have approached us on a number of ideas on what we can do in the communities, be it biomass or gasification. There have even been conversations about mini-nuclear and all these sorts of things. We have to be open-minded on moving this initiative forward, of lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The Premier has clearly signed on to the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change with the Prime Minister, and we have lined up our strategies and our federal funding to try to be able to achieve these things, so we have to be very open-minded on going forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.