Canada stands to attract more than $200 billion in clean energy investment over the next decade—including capital displaced by policy uncertainty in the United States—if it can assure investors it will meet their expected delivery timelines, states a new report from the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA).

CanREA, which advocates for Canada’s solar, wind, and energy storage industries, says in its recent ‘watts at stake’ report that investors are seeking out jurisdictions that can smoothly turn a signed contract to an operating asset. “Canada has historically done well on those terms, but extended permitting, interconnection delays, and transmission constraints are beginning to register in how investors price and prioritize Canadian projects relative to markets with clearer delivery timelines.”

Under a projected high-growth scenario, Canada would add 88 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable generation and storage by the mid-2030s to match growing electricity demand— or roughly triple its existing base of 25 GW in 10 years, finds CanREA.

Such growth is possible given Canada’s resources, investor interest, and policy foundation—as long as projects proceed on “reasonably predictable timelines.”

Even a low-growth scenario of 54 GW stands to secure up to $143 billion from investors. “Even this floor is an incredible investment opportunity for Canada,” Clean Energy Canada Program Manager Evan Pivnick told The Energy Mix. “The buildout of wind, solar, and batteries is an investment itself, but it’s a precursor to an awful lot of other investments.”

But lengthening timelines in Canada are increasing costs and prompting investors to “reassess whether the schedule risk justifies their commitments,” CanREA warns. Many projects currently in development are not on schedule, which risks making Canada a less attractive destination for clean energy capital that “changed its geographic preferences” after the U.S. administration pulled back support for big renewables and storage projects.

CanREA identifies four major constraints on project delivery that could have a chilling effect on investor confidence: provincial policy uncertainty, delayed and superficial community engagement, labour and supply chain shortages, and inadequate transmission capacity.

Policy uncertainty is “among the more persistent sources of delay” for clean energy projects. What such projects need, CanREA writes, are “predictable procurement schedules, revenue structures that hold up over the life of a contract, and regulatory processes with defined timelines,” which would in turn allow developers “to commit capital earlier and shorten the transition from contract award to construction start.”

Pivnick agreed that policy uncertainty remains a problem, even though “almost universally across the provinces, we have more renewables under procurement in Canada than at any point in history.”

But too often, “there’s a commitment to regular calls for power, without any certainty for industry about when the next one may be scheduled,” he said. “That type of policy uncertainty hurts the ability of developers to work into those timelines, do the background work required to put forward the best, lowest cost projects.”

Approaching community engagement as “a late-stage obligation” also significantly increases the odds of delay. CanREA calls for project developers to nurture community relationships from the outset and make equity and benefit-sharing arrangements integral to project design. Such efforts can significantly ease the approvals process and generate “fewer late-stage complications.”

To address work force and supply chain bottlenecks—both emerging as schedule risks as more projects reach the construction phase simultaneously—policy-makers should approach work force development, apprenticeship pathways, and supply chain coordination as “components of electricity system planning rather than separate work force policy objectives.”

“An expanding pipeline of approved projects that cannot be built on schedule because of labour or equipment shortages represents a failure of system planning as much as a failure of work force policy, and the two need to be addressed together,” the report states.

Pivnick pointed to Canada’s vast size, small population, and the fact that it has 10 distinct electricity systems as demographic and technological realities that will need to be addressed.

Standardization, and measures like bulk purchasing, “will be critical to creating consistency of demand” for companies looking to sell nationwide, he added. 

CanREA also points to the need for provincial ministries, regulators, and system operators to fully coordinate generation approvals and transmission planning, processes which have “historically proceeded on separate tracks.” The result is that approved projects can “wait years for a viable grid connection, either because interconnection queues are long or because the transmission infrastructure needed to carry their output to load centres does not exist.”

In Ontario, approved renewables face grid connection delays largely due to the omnipresence of nuclear, Mike Andrade, executive chair of Toronto-based Morgan Solar, told The Energy Mix.

The “biggest bottleneck” is the continuing buildout of large nuclear projects, “which will suck up all of the transmission without flexibility, even though it will take a decade to build,” Andrade said. An investor himself, Andrade highlighted the absence of any reference to distributed energy systems like rooftop solar and storage in CanREA’s report.  

“Creating more distributed energy systems will eliminate the need for as much grid infrastructure buildout and reduce capital cost” because users can install and finance themselves with the right incentives, he said.

“This can be done quickly,” he added. “Pakistan famously did around 25 gigawatts in a year.”

Andrade added that CanREA’s analysis underestimates Canada’s generation potential and pointed to Texas, which he said has around 400 gigawatts of renewables projects in its queue today, dwarfing what CanREA envisions for Canada.

“We are well off the pace that North America is running at,” he said.