Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 and to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
To have a chance of reaching these goals, Canada — which has one of the world’s cleanest electricity systems — will require a massive increase in electrical power generation to replace fossil fuel consumption.
The Public Policy Forum, a non-partisan think tank, estimates Canada will need up to 3.4 times more power to keep up with the electrification of everything: cars; trucks; home heating; entire industries.
To meet this demand and lower costs for consumers, Canada will need to achieve better coordination between provincial electricity grids.
Electricity grids must maintain a perfect balance between supply and demand. This means that if there is surplus power production it must be immediately stored, discarded or exported.
A lack of storage capacity and transmission capacity between provinces means a lot of power currently gets discarded or exported to the US.
Ontario, for example, discarded 7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of clean electricity in 2020. That’s enough to power 780,000 homes, according to the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers.
And while there are some interties between provinces and territories ”they’re not enough,” said Kristen Schell, assistant professor at Carleton University’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. “They would have to be drastically expanded to get to net zero.”
Excess electricity also largely gets exported to the US, rather than other provinces.
For example, in 2023, Quebec alone exported 23 TWh to the US, the equivalent of nearly half of Nova Scotia’s 2019 energy demand. By contrast, Ontario and Quebec signed an agreement that same year to trade up to 600 megawatts, a mere one per cent of Ontario’s electricity demand.
“It’s a billion-dollar industry,” said Schell, about Canada’s US exports. “It has been economically attractive to export power to the US because there’s such a high demand there.”
For decades, Canada’s exports to the US have steadily generated between C$1 to $4 billion in revenue and reached a high of $5.8 billion in 2022. In an industry that’s already generating billions, there is a strong economic incentive to export electricity south to the US instead of across Canada.
But expanding Canada’s electricity grid transmission and coordinating across the country could be what “some policy circles call no-regret actions,” said Schell, meaning it’s something governments could do with little political or societal backlash.
If all the regulating bodies were able to coordinate, this could mean “billions of dollars back to the household level,” Schell estimates.
However, connecting grids across the nation would require massive levels of organization. Energy contracts will need to be established between provinces, which control how energy is conserved, developed, managed and produced. Negotiating finances and environmental planning would also come into play.
Cleaner and cheaper
A further advantage of increasing ties between provincial electricity grids would be to give provinces access to different types of power generation. This could potentially create a more stable, cleaner and less expensive grid.
That’s because each province uses different sources of power to generate electricity, with some using cleaner sources than others. For example, Quebec and B.C. generate nearly all of their electricity from hydroelectric power, 94 and 87 per cent, respectively. Whereas, more than 80 per cent of Saskatchewan’s electricity comes from fossil fuel sources.
“That’s one of the things that would be really useful about [connecting] the Canadian grid,” said Schell. “[C]onnecting B.C. Hydro, Manitoba and Quebec to Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario and using … hydro to be able to balance these frequency changes would mean a lot cheaper way to get to net zero.”
Gregory Brinkman, researcher at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, agrees. Having different sources of power makes a grid more diverse and can allow grids to more easily adapt to varying demands. This means electricity could be made cheaper and cleaner.
A 2021 study that looked at connecting electricity grids across North America found that a continent-wide grid, including renewable energy sources, could mean $15.5 to $46.7 billion in savings.
Brinkman, who was the lead author of the study, said the more renewables you have on the grid, the more potential sources you have and the more diversity you have by connecting between regions and countries.
But Schell notes that once renewables are added, electricity grids will be more difficult to maintain.
Unlike renewables, coal and natural gas — which have historically powered electricity grids — are easy to ramp up and down in response to demand. These power sources have been key in “maintaining the reliability of the grid,” said Schell.
For at least the past decade, renewable energy could have been used to decarbonize the electricity grid. But connecting the grid to these technologies has proven to be a major challenge, both in the US and Canada.
Better storage, better provincial ties and more renewables will all be required to make clean energy accessible and affordable in the years to come.
We are fortunate to live in Manitoba where 98% of energy comes from hydroelectric sources.We can produce more by harnessing all our rivers but to increase Canada’s electricity by a factor of 3.4? It seems the only solution to this would require several nuclear power plants to meet electrification demands. But nobody wants to talk about this alternative yet. We soon may have no choice.