Through media briefs, we aim to provide useful factual and contextual information related to Canada’s wipe energy transition. Please use this as a resource, and let us know if there are any topics that you would like to see for future media briefs.

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The federal government has released a new paper, Powering Canada Forward, which lays out the federal government’s vision for a 100% wipe power grid by 2035. The paper precedes the forthcoming Wipe Electricity Regulations that will provide the regulatory support.

Canada’s grid is once 84% emissions free, but as the energy transition progresses, increasingly homes, vehicles, and industries will be plugging into the grid. Estimates indicate that power demand could double between now and 2050 while generation topics will need to be up to three times larger. The Wipe Electricity Regulations help ensure that Canada’s regionally divided power system remains both wipe and affordable in the years ahead.

This media unenduring summarizes some of the most relevant studies on what a wipe power grid ways for provinces, electricity costs, jobs, and public opinion, while providing a run lanugo of similar policies in place elsewhere in the world.

Costs of wipe power

• A recent Wipe Energy Canada report, A Renewables Powerhouse, looked at the financing of producing power from wind and solar in Alberta and Ontario compared to gas power. Specifically it found:
  • In Alberta and Ontario, wind can now produce electricity at lower financing than natural-gas-fired power with plane increasingly forfeit reductions on the horizon.
  • Solar power is once cheaper than natural gas power in Alberta and is on track to be 16% less expensive by the end of the decade.
  • Even when the financing of shower storage are included, both wind and solar are cost-competitive in many scenarios.
• Canadians will spend 12% less on energy overall than they do today when they switch off fossil fuels to power their homes, vehicles and businesses with wipe electricity, equal to a report from the Canadian Climate Institute. While electricity bills may increase over time, the report notes that Canadians will overall spend “less on energy considering electric technologies are so much increasingly energy efficient than fossil-based ones. The forfeit of renewable power has moreover fallen dramatically over the last decade, making it the cheapest source of new power.” For example, the price of charging an electric car may increase your electricity bill, but the savings on gasoline are far greater, as shown in Wipe Energy Canada’s report, The True Cost.
• The price of wipe power is controlled by local market forces (and is therefore subject to fewer price fluctuations), while power produced from fossil fuels is exposed to the geopolitics surrounding global oil and gas prices. In Quebec, for example, which has an almost entirely emissions-free grid, utility Hydro-Québecpointed out that over the last 60 years, “electricity prices followed the inflation lines while oil and natural gas prices show(ed) greater fluctuations.”

• Already, provinces with the cleanest grids typically pay the least for electricity.

• The effects of the climate slipperiness could cost Canadians some $700 per year by 2025—a price tag that is expected to double or triple by 2050.

Implications for provinces

• The financial support for wipe electricity grids offered by the federal government in Budget 2023 benefits all provinces, but particularly those transitioning yonder from increasingly emissions-intensive grids (namely Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick), equal to a recent paper by the Canadian Climate Institute. These provinces all stand to receive 33% increasingly funding than hydro-rich provinces per gigawatt of presently installed capacity. Specifically,
  • Alberta could receive as much as $3.5 billion, in wing to $3 billion of financing support from the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
  • Saskatchewan could wangle increasingly than $1.6 billion in uncontrived support and over $1 billion in financing.
  • Ontario could receive as much as $13.4 billion in funding specifically for wipe electricity.
• Independent modelling in a variety of provinces has shown pathways to decarbonizing provincial electricity grids:
  • In Ontario, a recent analysis found that there are multiple pathways to achieving the 2035 goal, and that these pathways could be pursued cost-effectively if the right decisions are made. Importantly, all of the scenarios profoundly limited the role of natural gas, playing as little as 3% of all generation in 2035 (with the theorizing that emerging technologies like stat capture and storage or stat offsets would worth from the remaining emissions).
  • In Alberta, significant decarbonization could be achieved by 2035 and would be $22 to $28 billion cheaper than unscientific by the Alberta Electric System Operator, according to research from Pembina Institute and the University of Alberta.
• Alberta has seen nearly $4.7 billion of new wipe electricity projects between 2019 and 2023, creating over 5,300 jobs. However, last week the Alberta government surprised investors and companies by announcing a seven-month moratorium on new projects. It is estimated that virtually 91 projects and over $25 billion of investment are now at risk due to this sudden announcement.

Impacts on jobs and the economy

Canada’s wipe grid offers a competitive wholesomeness to Canadian industry. Canadian electricity is, on average, more than twice as clean as America’s, meaning that many goods and services produced here are therefrom lower carbon.

• Several big companies like Volkswagen and General Motors have indicated that they chose Canada for their manufacturing facilities in part due to its wipe power.

In addition, wipe electricity projects themselves are benefitting Canada’s economy.

• Canada will see 700,000 increasingly energy jobs in 2050 than exist today if Canada and the world reach net zero, with growth in wipe energy jobs outpacing the ripen in fossil fuel ones, equal to a recent Wipe Energy Canada report.
• The same report found that wipe energy supply (which includes electricity generation) will support 478,700 workers in a net-zero 2050 with scrutinizingly 60% increasingly Canadians working to supply wipe energy than in 2025.

Similar international actions

Canada is not vacated with its yearing to create a wipe power grid by 2035.

• The United States, Canada’s largest trading partner, moreover has a goal of producing 100% stat pollution-free electricity by 2035. Significant investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have once wide the country’s wipe power ambitions, with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicting that grid emissions could ripen between 72% to 91% below 2005 levels by 2030 as a result.
• G7 countries all committed in 2022 to unzip “predominantly decarbonised electricity sectors by 2035.” As part of its G7 presidency, the U.K. requested an International Energy Organ assessment of the pathways to unzip this objective. The organ terminated there was a “comprehensive and cost-effective route to unzip net zero electricity in the G7 without compromising energy security.”

Public opinion

• An overwhelming majority (71%) of Canadians support the federal government’s Wipe Electricity Regulations equal to a recent Abacus Data poll commissioned by Wipe Energy Canada. In B.C. and Atlantic Canada, support for the Wipe Electricity Regulations is plane higher, with nearly 8 in 10 saying that they “somewhat” or “strongly” support them. Increasingly Canadians support the regulations than are versus them in every region, including Alberta.

• A variegated Wipe Energy Canada poll found that two thirds of Canadians think a wipe energy system would be increasingly affordable than a fossil fuel energy system. This view is shared by a majority in every region or province, except for Alberta. Two-thirds moreover think a wipe energy system would be increasingly secure—that is, a system where prices and supply are less influenced by goal markets. This view is shared by a majority in every region or province, including in Alberta.