With fallout from the ongoing war in the Middle East shining a new light on the dangers of fossil fuel dependence, Canada’s path to energy security lies in a full-on commitment to electrification and energy efficiency, says one of the country’s top energy policy analysts.

Four years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an act of aggression that convulsed oil and gas markets and has kept Ukraine battling to keep the heat and lights on, the wider world is once again seeing fossil fuels used as weapons, or hostages, of war.

But “something is different about the headlines” this time round, Dan Woynillowicz, principal of Polaris Strategy + Insight, told listeners during a recent webinar hosted by Climate Caucus.

Alongside reports of skyrocketing prices comes news of renewable energy-enabled resilience, with Pakistan offering a striking case in point, Woynillowicz said. The country has been significantly insulated from the worst effects of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, thanks to a rooftop solar boom that began after it was “totally priced out of the LNG market” when Russia invaded Ukraine.

That it took geopolitical conflict and the consequent abrupt loss of a critical energy source to push Pakistan to a stunning buildout of rooftop solar (32 gigawatts in two years, amounting to one-third of the country’s power demand) illustrates the energy equivalent of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Woynillowicz said: Energy security is fundamental and first, followed by affordability, with sustainability the last consideration in line.

Geopolitics will be looming large in the energy calculus of countries that spend more than 5% of their GDP on fossil fuel imports—some 25% of the world’s nations, he added.

But even fossil exporters are feeling the pinch at the pump, Canada included.

Ready and waiting to relieve much of this fuel stress are electrotechnologies like solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and battery energy storage systems, all of which are markedly resilient to geopolitical upheaval once they’re up and running. “Nobody can blockade the sun, ” Woynillowicz said.

So energy security concerns “could actually end up putting us on a net zero trajectory faster than might otherwise be the case,” he added.

That electrotechnologies provide safe harbour during times of conflict is hardly the sum of their worth, however. While geopolitics is now proving a sharp accelerant to the energy transition, forcing countries to confront the innate fragility of fossil-based energy for the second time in four years, the world’s exit from fossil fuels is also being driven by physics and economics—forces fundamental to electricity systems based on the movement of electrons.

Electrification is hugely more efficient than combustion at turning energy into work, and economies of scale have brought down the cost of essential elements like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries by as much as 90% over the past 40 years, Woynillowicz said.

What all of this adds up to is an imperative to “double-double-double” down on electrification, he said. For Canada, that means expanding rapidly on recent “good progress” on electrification by doubling the country’s electricity supply, electrifying as many energy-intensive sectors and systems as fast as possible, and doubling energy productivity through improved efficiency. 

That includes reaching the highest levels of efficiency in the built environment, including homes, he stressed.

“We’re going to have to grow and secure a domestic supply chain for all of this activity,” Woynillowicz said. It’s a path that will create jobs and economic opportunity, even as it “enhances our energy security and reduces the volatility of energy prices in the Canadian economy,” making household energy costs more affordable and predictable.

The Climate Caucus webinar was the first of two on how energy security issues are altering the trajectory of the energy transition. Coming up in early April, the second webinar will provide guidance for local governments on how to manage, and get ahead of, energy security issues.