Although Canada has no national target for offshore development, there’s plenty of opportunity for provincial governments to step up, and for some of that activity to move to the centre of national industrial strategy, a veteran industry analyst says.

Last week, the UK’s Ember energy think tank identified 27 members of the Global Offshore Wind Alliance whose national plans position them to contribute to a tripling of world-wide offshore wind capacity, from 83 to 238 gigawatts, by 2030. Canada is one of three GOWA members that have provincial or state but not national targets, with Nova Scotia aiming for 5 GW of installed capacity by decade’s end.

Evan Pivnick, clean energy program manager at Clean Energy Canada, said the potential is “absolutely something we should be taking far more seriously than we do.”

Around the world, offshore wind is demonstrating “how valuable these resources are when connected as almost a capacity resource, because when it comes to offshore wind it’s a pretty perpetual and substantial resource to be unlocking,” he told The Energy Mix. But he pointed to the “specific and unique challenges that different Canadian jurisdictions face when it comes to unlocking offshore wind.”

Those factors would make a federal target more aspirational than achievable. “The federal government can and should set one, but it’s a target for an amount they seek to enable through funding, through support, through convening, through their own environmental assessment processes,” he said. “The resource mix and the specific technologies that would come onto the unique and distinct grids across the country fall under provincial jurisdiction. So in Canada, more so than many other countries, having subnational targets is a more meaningful objective to be pursuing.”

Different Regions, Different Opportunities

In British Columbia and Ontario, Pivnick said the simplest, most immediate opportunity is to include offshore wind in upcoming electricity procurements. “Let’s let companies, First Nations, proponents, bring forward projects that they believe can cost-effectively meet what the provinces are [asking for] and consider real projects from the ground up there,” he said.

In B.C., major critical mineral projects in the northwest might be located closer to where offshore wind resources can deliver cost-effective power—in a province that in the past has used cleaner electricity to justify liquefied natural gas megaprojects that emit climate-busting methane, much of it typically unmeasured, at every step in the production process.

“The question is how far down the road should we be going on LNG in the first place,” Pivnick said. “If you’re B.C., you’re talking about pursuing a potentially stranded asset that’s targeting very specific moments of potential supply and hoping you can move faster than others. That doesn’t feel aligned with a provincial strategy geared towards pursuing growing industries in the clean economy.”

“Where there are facilities, I would rather them not be burning natural gas to liquefy,” he added. “I would rather not have upstream natural gas production being powered through burning of natural gas.” But “if we’re looking at a resource like offshore wind, let’s talk about it as an enabler for something like a critical minerals industry, which could be a very significant and major new sector in British Columbia.”

In Ontario, the current moratorium on Great Lakes wind development has been more a matter of public acceptance. But “this is one of the lowest-cost ways of providing clean, renewable power for Ontarians that are facing constant upward [cost] pressure from how we’re building it out today,” and “there’s any number of different examples of companies taking their engagement with communities very seriously.”

Where communities are concerned about the impacts of offshore wind projects, he added, “we need to have a more serious conversation about community benefits, as well. Are there jobs created in the communities? Are there royalties that [will] help support municipal investments?”

From Power Production to Industrial Strategy

Pivnick cited Nova Scotia’s focus on “a more modest first tranche” of offshore wind projects as a way to demonstrate what’s possible, “prove the model”, and build public acceptance for future development. The proposed Wind West megaproject calls for 66 gigawatts of offshore power production when the entire region currently consumes 17 GW, but that’s where renewable energy becomes a central part of national industrial strategy.

“Are we talking about unlocking new industrial investments in Atlantic Canada? Is this green hydrogen? Are we building transmission to help power automotive and battery supply chains in Ontario and Quebec? Are we building transmission lines down to the U.S. to arbitrage our power and sell it into large, growing power demand from U.S. northeastern states?” he asked. “That needs to be part of the conversation. If those pieces come in, offshore wind in Canada makes an awful lot of sense in a number of different regions.”

Speaking just days before the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney was to release its first budget Tuesday, Pivnick said it’s important to keep the most important economic reason for offshore wind development in focus.

“it’s a mistake to pursue renewables as a silo, as if they exist for their own purposes,” he said. “They exist because we have a growing demand for electricity and a need to decarbonize existing energy systems.”

That means governments “need to stop treating offshore wind as some sort of abstract resource that doesn’t have a role. It sees major deployment across the rest of the world, and it needs to be part of the conversation in Canada.”