My comments are my own, but…

My comments are my own, but I think reflect the majority of the current and previous members of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association. Many of OSEA members now offer both renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. As Board Chair of OSEA I support the proposal for Beneficial Electrification as long as it takes a holistic approach to creating the incentives. With over 45 years of energy management experience, I have seen and evaluated many energy saving and fuel switching technologies from around the world. Many were dismissed as uneconomic here is Ontario as we had low subsidized energy prices and the environmental costs of our energy generation and usage were not included in the total resource cost tests used by the OEB. If we are to continue to use some fossil fuels, we should get the most benefits out of them. We need to capture the waste heat from many of these fossil fuel uses. OEB should reconsider the total costs, GHG reductions and clean air health benefits from technologies such as absorption chillers that heat and cool with much less peak demand on the electrical system as was shown to the OPA, but they didn’t look at both the electric and gas capital equipment savings from having the same equipment do both functions as they were mandated to just look at electric issues. We should look at the benefits of using waste heat in organic rankine cycle systems and fund them as Alberta has done recently with an incentive of $1500/kW. We should always look at improving the building envelope such as adding secondary windows to the existing ones as they are doing in some USA cities and other facilities caring about GHG reductions. This will lower the HVAC loads before we design the heat pump systems especially if the electrical system was not built to take on electric heating loads. We should remove barriers on drilling and incentivize the ground source heat pump option as it saves much more energy and reduces GHG than the air source option even if it cost more up front. We need to look at opportunities to share energy in adjacent buildings with opposite load profiles and use district energy systems and remove regulatory barriers to facilitate these energy exchanges. We should look into the cold weather heat pump technologies that can operate down to -40C from China that want to come to the Canadian market. We should look at all the new ways to use phase change materials to level the loads and allow for renewables and battery storage behind the meter with appropriate safety and interconnection approaches with support rather than rejection by the LDCs and HydroOne. We should promote the conversion of some AC systems to DC in buildings and other applications that are going digital and waste energy during each conversion. We should incentivize more building automation that can lower waste on certain plug loads and make grid connected buildings with DERs. We need to educate the population of the complexity of the electrical generation system with reliability and resilience objectives that may require fossil fuel back up but not wasteful usage. We need to provide great incentives for the deeper retrofits that reduce GHG more as the CIB does with their lower interest rate on the CIB loans. I teach energy related courses at the college level and have made a number of presentations that I am attaching for your review. I welcome a meeting to discuss my input.