CCI report warns improvements are needed to ensure Canada’s electricity grid can support net zero
A new report from the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI) suggests that modernizing Canada’s electricity systems is the key to moving households and businesses off natural gas and gasoline dependencies, and toward electricity as an energy source.
Doing so, says CCI in its report, The Big Switch: Powering Canada’s net zero future, will play a central role in ensuring an affordable and secure supply of energy, while helping Canada meet its climate goals. However, it adds, the policy choices that governments make to align electricity systems with net zero are extremely consequential. Getting those right – or wrong – say the authors will have big implications far beyond the electricity sector, and coordinated action is essential.
“The big switch from fossil fuels to clean electricity is key to reducing Canada’s emissions,” says report author Jason Dion, who also serves as the CCI’s director of mitigation research. “Making our electricity systems bigger, cleaner and smarter to deliver on this is completely feasible—and Canada already has a head start. With co-ordinated action by federal and provincial governments, Canadians can power more and more of their lives using clean, affordable, and reliable electricity.”
The report recommends early action. Doing so can reduce overall costs to deployment and adoption, and make thew goal of achieving net zero more realistic.
Fortunately, the report finds, the technologies needed are available and affordable, and the policy solutions are readily at hand.
It suggests the switch to electricity will increase affordability for Canadians if is powered by the right policies. Rapidly declining costs of renewables and storage makes electricity more affordable than volatile fossil fuels. Smart, co-ordinated policy can build the electricity systems that can power this promise.
The authors add that aligning electricity systems with net zero – by making them bigger, cleaner, and smarter – is necessary and achievable. These systems can reliably and affordably power Canada’s economy and the broader transition to net zero.
Finally, they caution that the most significant barriers to the big switch will be social, political and institutional. Public policy will need address both technical and non-technical barriers to the deployment and uptake of key solutions.
“Transforming Canada’s electricity systems is necessary to achieve net zero,” said Francis Bradley, President and CEO of Electricity Canada. “We have much to do, and limited time to do it. The technologies to build bigger, cleaner, and smarter systems are known and cost-effective, but there remain policy and regulatory barriers that are slowing progress. Utilities and other market actors need clear climate policies, and the role of regulators and system operators in the transition needs to be clearly laid out. Governments have a driving role in addressing these challenges and accelerating the big switch.”