(Photo by Dave Chan)
This past week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled a clean electricity strategy he says will help double Canada’s electricity grid by 2050 and lower energy costs for the majority of Canadian households. In totality, the plan's cost is expected to reach $1 Trillion Canadian, roughly $729 Billion US.
In a statement, he referenced the recent tariffs imposed on Canada as well as other world events guiding this new strategy, saying, “Wars are ongoing in Europe and the Middle East, artificial intelligence is scaling at speed, and climate change is intensifying. In response, Canada’s new government is focused on what we can control: building an affordable, competitive, and sustainable Canadian economy. Central to this mission is supplying and controlling our own energy."
Carney said the plan includes new partnerships with Indigenous people and a willingness to use a wide range of energy, including renewable gas, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal.
According to the Prime Minister's website, www.pm.gc.ca, the strategy will be guided by four pillars:
- Build the infrastructure needed to double Canada’s electricity generation:
This will require generational investments in generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and grid modernization. These new consultations will explore how to most effectively finance the build-out, to spread the costs over time to match the benefits, keeping energy affordable and our country competitive.
- Connect Canada’s fragmented grids East-West-North through new and expanded transmission lines:
Canada’s electricity system is currently fragmented across provincial and territorial grids, costing us billions of dollars in outages, duplicative infrastructure, and wasted power. These consultations will tackle common barriers to interprovincial interties so we can unite our grids and deliver more reliable, affordable power to all Canadians.
- Train, attract, and retain the talent needed to build the grid of the future:
Doubling the grid will require more than 130,000 high-skilled workers by 2050. Through these consultations, the federal government will work with industry, labor, and training partners to develop solutions to train, attract, and retain the talent needed to build and maintain the grid of the future.
- Make more of the technologies and components powering our grid here at home:
As we build the clean economy of the future, Canada’s new government is ensuring our industries can bridge to seize its opportunities. These consultations will explore how to grow domestic manufacturing capacity so that more of the components powering our grid are made in Canada.
Dale Beugin, executive vice president of the Canadian Climate Institute, said, “Ultimately, the success of the strategy will depend on details of how — and how swiftly — the government follows through on expanding clean power generation, transmission and widespread electrification,"
Electricity accounts for about 7% of Canada’s total greenhouse emissions, an amount that has fallen substantially in the last 15 years as most provinces reduced or phased out the use of coal power.
To hear about this and other stories impacting the world of Waste, Gas and Energy, check out the newest episode of Recyclist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtuE1HP0-tI
