Two Canadian provinces unveiled major moves last week to increase their supplies of renewable electricity, largely to serve skyrocketing demand from industry, while a third took criticism for an upcoming renewables procurement that won’t shift its reliance on natural gas peaker plants and nuclear generation.
In British Columbia, Premier David Eby announced a 10-year, C$36-billion plan to expand his province’s electricity system, including high-voltage transmission lines for industrial users and electricity supplies for some of the 50 proposed hydrogen projects now under development. BC Hydro is also looking to procure more wind- and solar-generated electricity, using its large inventory of hydro reservoirs to store off-peak power for when it’s needed.
“This is what it looks like to build our electrified future and is unequivocally good news for British Columbians,” veteran analyst Dan Woynillowicz, principal of Polaris Strategy + Insight, wrote on LinkedIn.
A couple of days later, Quebec Energy and Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon tipped legislation next month that will allow independent power producers to sell their electricity directly to private customers, rather than working through provincial utility Hydro-Québec.
The B.C. plan is expected to create 10,500 to 12,500 jobs per year, CBC writes. Last November, Quebec introduced a $155- to $185-billion plan to install eight to nine gigawatts of new capacity and recruit 35,000 qualified workers by 2035.
In Ontario, meanwhile, Mark Winfield, co-chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative at York University, warned that the province’s plan to procure up to 5,000 megawatts of new wind, solar, and hydropower resources by 2034 “does nothing to change its overall trajectory on electricity and energy,” including 1,500 MW of new gas-fired capacity and a 6,000-MW nuclear expansion for which “no cost estimates are available”.
The rewrite of BC Hydro’s 10-year capital plan, representing a 50% increase from the previous one, also follows a year of record-breaking power imports triggered by “extreme and persistent drought conditions” that reduced output form the province’s hydro dams, the Globe and Mail reports. The province is also facing major demands from potential new industrial users, with just one hydrogen project put forward by Australian mining giant Fortescue set to consume about 1,000 MW, CBC says—roughly the output of the controversial Site C hydro megaproject.
“We’re in the third year of ongoing drought, and it is having an impact on reservoirs and the ability of BC Hydro to generate electricity at the level that they would like to,” Eby said. “Part of our capital announcement is about responding to that. We need to make our system resilient to what we’re seeing, which is extreme weather in all directions. Whether it’s cold weather, drought, or extremely hot weather, our system needs to be more diverse.”
At the same time, “$36 billion of investment in our power system means a few things,” he told CTV News. “It means opening up new economic opportunities for the province with our affordable, clean electricity. There are a lot of companies that want to locate here if they can access the kind of power that we can provide through this investment.”
Evan Pivnick, clean energy program manager at B.C.-based Clean Energy Canada, agreed that “cheap, clean electricity is a big draw for businesses looking to cut their carbon footprint, and only by building enough of it can we ensure we are attracting economic opportunities that will fuel a healthy, job-creating economy in the years and decades ahead.”
But “to that end, it is vital that this electricity be used to set B.C. on a prosperous course to compete in a rapidly evolving global economy,” he added. “New capacity must be used to power sectors that will grow in the coming decades, including sustainable critical mineral mines and the production of clean hydrogen. Using it to export more fossil fuels in a world that is decarbonizing will lead to stranded assets and lost opportunities.” (Mark Winfield and Evan Pivnick are members of the community sounding board for The Energy Mix’s Heat & Power edition.)
A similar motivation to B.C.’s may be driving a “major transformation” in Quebec, where Fitzgibbon’s announcement signalled “significant changes to Hydro-Québec’s long-standing quasi monopoly in electricity distribution,” the McCarthy Tétrault law firm writes. “The bill would aim to allow greater integration of private sector producers and distributors into the existing electricity framework,” moving beyond a set of rules that only permits private generators to produce power for their own use.
“This development, following a wave of interest in recent months for private electricity self-production projects, could be seen as the government’s answer to a growing need to supplement Hydro-Québec’s supply capabilities,” McCarthy Tétrault says. “While Hydro-Québec plans significant expansion to infrastructure, the increasing demand from industries outpaces its current supply capacity and private electricity production has been gradually viewed as a solution.”
In Ontario, the decision to contract for 2,000 of mostly clean capacity by 2030, another 1,500 MW in 2032, then 1,500 MW more by 2034, “is certainly a welcome development, particularly given its previous refusal to consider additional renewable energy sources in its electricity plans, and its infamous 2018 decision to terminate 758 renewable energy projects across the province at a cost of at least $231 million,” Winfield writes in a Toronto Star op ed. But it doesn’t represent a fundamental shift in strategy or trajectory.
“The province has been happy to accept billions in federal funding for ‘green’ steel, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, and nuclear projects,” Winfield says. “But it continues to lack any meaningful or effective strategy around climate change, particularly in key areas like transportation, space heating, and land use.”
