Walmart Canada Invests $2 million in Renewable Energy

Canada Oil and Gas Emissions Cap sets five-year targets to cut sector emissions toward net-zero by 2050, alongside an EV mandate, carbon pricing signals, and support for carbon capture, clean energy jobs, climate policy.

Key Points

A federal policy to regulate and reduce oil and gas emissions via 5-year targets, reaching net-zero by 2050.

✅ Regulated 5-year milestones to cut oil and gas emissions to net-zero by 2050

✅ Interim EV mandate: 50% by 2030; 100% zero-emission sales by 2035

✅ $2B fund for clean energy jobs in oil- and gas-reliant communities

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau vowed to regulate total emissions from Canada’s oil and gas producers as he laid out his first major climate change promises of the campaign Sunday, a plan that was welcomed by several environmental and climate organizations.

Trudeau said that if re-elected, the Liberals will set out regulated five-year targets for emissions from oil and gas production to get them to net-zero emissions by 2050, a goal that, according to an IEA report will require more electricity, but also create a $2 billion fund to create jobs in oil and gas-reliant communities in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador.

“Let’s be realistic, over a quarter of Canada’s emissions come from our oil and gas sector. We need the leadership of these industries to decarbonize our country,” Trudeau said.

“That’s why we’ll make sure oil and gas emissions don’t increase and instead go down with achievable milestones,” while ensuring local economies can prosper.“

The Liberals are also introducing an interim electric vehicle mandate, which will require half the cars sold in Canada to be zero-emission by 2030, and because cleaning up electricity is critical to meeting climate pledges, the policy pairs with power-sector decarbonization, ahead of the final mandated target of 100 per cent by 2035.

Trudeau spoke in Cambridge, Ont., where protesters once again made an appearance amid a visible police presence. Officers carried one woman off the property when she refused to leave when asked.

Trudeau alluded to the protesters and their actions, which included sounding sirens and chanting expletives, as he defended his government’s record on climate change including progress in the electricity sector nationally, and touted its new plan.

“Sirens in the background may remind us that this is a climate emergency. That’s why we will move faster and be bolder,” he said.

Canada’s largest oilsands producers have already committed to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but the policy proposed Sunday “calls the oil companies’ bluff” by making those goals a legislated requirement, said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada.

The new timeline for electric vehicles also “sends a clear signal to auto companies to get cracking (and build them here),” he said on Twitter, even as proposals like a fully renewable grid by 2030 are debated today. “We’d like to see this happen faster but the shift away from voluntary targets to requirements is big.”

Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, a climate program at Simon Fraser University, said clean electricity, clean transportation and “phasing out oil and gas with accountable milestones” must be key priorities over the next decade, aligning with Canada’s race to net-zero and the role of renewable energy.

“Today’s announcement, which checks all of these boxes, is not just good ambition_it’s good policy. Policy that will drive down carbon pollution and drive up clean job growth and economic competitiveness. It is policy that will drive Canada forward with cleaner cars, power Canada with clean electricity, and invest in businesses that will last such as battery manufacturing, electric vehicle manufacturing and low carbon steel,” Smith said in an email.

Michael Bernstein, executive director of the climate policy organization Clean Prosperity, said the promises laid out Sunday offer a “strong boost” to the federal government’s previous climate commitments.

He said the organization prefers market incentives such as carbon pricing, that spur innovation over further regulation. But since the largest oilsands companies have already committed to reaching net-zero emissions, he said the newly unveiled policy could provide some support.

“ First, I would encourage the Liberal Party to release independent modelling showing the types of emissions reductions they expect to achieve with their new package of policies. Second, many policies are referred to in general terms so I hope the Liberal Party will provide further details in the coming days,” he said.

“Finally, the document does not specifically mention carbon capture or carbon dioxide removal technologies but both technologies will be critical to achieve some of the pledges in today’s announcement, especially reaching net-zero emissions in the oil a gas sector.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh painted the announcement as the latest in a string of “empty promises” from the Liberals on climate change, saying Canada has the highest increase in greenhouse gas emissions among all G7 countries, and that provinces like B.C. risk missing 2050 targets as well, he argued.

“Climate targets mean nothing when you don’t act on them. We can’t afford more of Justin Trudeau’s empty words on climate change,” he said in a statement.

The Trudeau Liberals submitted new targets to the United Nations in July, promising that Canada will curb emissions by 40 to 45 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, building on the net-zero by 2050 plan announced earlier, officials say.

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Canada Renewable Energy Jobs rank top 10 in hydropower, says IRENA, but trail in solar PV, wind power, and liquid biofuels; clean tech growth, EV manufacturing, and Canada Infrastructure Bank funding signal broader carbon-neutral opportunities.

Key Points

Canada counts 61,130 clean energy roles, top 10 in hydropower, with potential in solar, wind, biofuels, and EV manufacturing.

✅ 61,130 clean energy jobs in Canada per IRENA

✅ Top 10 share in hydropower employment

✅ Growth expected in solar, wind, biofuels, and EVs

Canada has made the top 10 list of countries for the number of jobs in hydropower, but didn’t rank in three other key renewable energy technologies, according to new international figures.

Although Canada has only two per cent of the global workforce, it had one of the 10 largest slices of the world’s jobs in hydropower in 2019, says the Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

Canada didn’t make IRENA’s other top-10 employment lists, for solar photovoltaic (PV) technology, where solar power lags by international standards, liquid biofuels or wind power, released Sept. 30. Figures from the agency show the whole sector represents 61,130 jobs across Canada, or 0.5 per cent of the world’s 11.5 million jobs in renewables.

The numbers show Canada needs to move faster to minimize the climate crisis, including by joining trade blocs that put tariffs on high-carbon goods, argued the Victoria-based BC Sustainable Energy Association after reviewing IRENA’s report. The Canadian Renewable Energy Association also said it showed the country has untapped job creation potential, even as growth projections were scaled back after Ontario scrapped a clean energy program.

But other clean tech advocates say there’s more to the story. When tallying clean energy jobs, it's worth a broader look, Clean Energy Canada argued, pointing to the recent Ford-Unifor deal that includes a $1.8-billion commitment to produce electric vehicles in Oakville, Ont.

Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan’s office also pointed out the renewables employment figures from IRENA are proportional to global population. “While Canada's share of the global clean energy job market is in line with our population size, we produce almost 2.7 per cent of the world’s total primary renewable energy supply. As only 0.5 per cent of the global population, we punch above our weight,” said O'Regan's press secretary, Ian Cameron.

Canada joined IRENA in January 2019 and the country has been described by the association as an “important market” for renewables over the long term.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a new $10-billion “Growth Plan” to be run by the Canada Infrastructure Bank that would include “$2.5 billion for clean power to support renewable generation and storage and to transmit clean electricity between provinces, territories, and regions, including to northern and Indigenous communities.” The infrastructure bank's plan is expected to create 60,000 jobs, the government said, and in Alberta an Alberta renewables surge could power 4,500 jobs as projects scale up.

World ‘building the renewable energy revolution now’

A powerful renewables sector is not just about job creation. It is also imperative if we are to meet global climate objectives, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Renewable energy sources have to make up at least a 63 per cent share of the global electricity market by mid-century to battle the more extreme effects of climate change, it said.

“The IRENA report shows that people all over of the world are building the renewable energy revolution now,” said Tom Hackney, policy adviser for the BC Sustainable Energy Association.

“Many people in Canada are doing so, too. But we need to move faster to minimize climate change. For example, at the level of trade policy, a great idea would be to develop low-carbon trading blocs that put tariffs on goods with high embodied carbon emissions.”

Canadian Renewable Energy Association president and CEO Robert Hornung said the IRENA jobs review highlights “significant job creation potential” in Canada. As governments explore how to stimulate economic recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Hornung, it's important to “capitalize on Canada's untapped renewable energy resources.”

In Canada, 82 per cent of the electricity grid is already non-emitting, noted Sarah Petrevan, policy director for Clean Energy Canada.

With the federal government committing to a 90 per cent non-emitting grid by 2030, said Petrevan, more wind and solar deployment can be expected, even though solar demand has lagged in recent years, especially in the Prairies where renewables are needed to help with Canada’s coal-fired power plant phase out.

One example of renewables in the Prairies, where the provinces are poised to lead growth, is the Travers Solar project, which is expected to be constructed in Alberta through 2021, and is being touted as “Canada's largest solar farm.”

But renewables are only “one part of the broader clean energy sector,” said Petrevan. Clean Energy Canada has outlined how Canada could be electric and clean with the right choices, and has calculated clean tech supports around 300,000 jobs, projected to grow to half a million by 2030.

“We’re talking about a transition of our energy system in every sense — not just in the power we produce. So while the IRENA figures provide global context, they reflect only a portion of both our current reality and the opportunity for Canada,” she said.

The organization’s research has shown that manufacturing of electric vehicles would be one of the fastest-growing job creators over the next decade. Putting a punctuation mark on that is a recent $1.8-billion deal with Ford Motor Company of Canada to produce five models of electric vehicles in Oakville, Ont.

China ‘remains the clear leader’ in renewables jobs

With 4.3 million renewable energy jobs in 2019, or 38 per cent of all renewables jobs, China “remains the clear leader in renewable energy employment worldwide,” the IRENA report states. China has the world's largest population and the second-largest GDP.

The country is also by far the world’s largest emitter of carbon pollution, at 28 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and has significant fossil fuel interests. Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a “green revolution” last month, and pledged to “achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.”

China holds the largest proportion of jobs in hydropower, with 29 per cent of all jobs, followed by India at 19 per cent, Brazil at 11 per cent and Pakistan at five per cent, said IRENA.

Canada, with 32,359 jobs in the industry, and Turkey and Colombia hold two per cent each of the world’s hydropower jobs, while Myanmar and Russia hold three per cent each and Vietnam has four per cent.

China also dominates the global solar PV workforce, with 59 per cent of all jobs, followed by Japan, the United States, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brazil, Germany and the Philippines. There are 4,261 jobs in solar PV in Canada, IRENA calculated, and the country is set to hit a 5 GW solar milestone as capacity expands, out of a global workforce of 3.8 million jobs.

In wind power, China again leads, with 44 per cent of all jobs. Germany, the United States and India come after, with the United Kingdom, Denmark, Mexico, Spain, the Philippines and Brazil following suit. Canada has 6,527 jobs in wind power out of 1.17 million worldwide.

As for liquid biofuels, Brazil leads that industry, with 34 per cent of all jobs. Indonesia, the United States, Colombia, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Poland, Romania and the Philippines fill out the top 10. There are 17,691 jobs in Canada in liquid biofuels.

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Hurricane Grid Resilience examines how utilities manage outages with renewables, microgrids, and robust transmission and distribution systems, balancing solar, wind, and batteries to restore service, harden infrastructure, and improve storm response and recovery.

Key Points

Hurricane grid resilience is a utility approach to withstand storms, reduce outages, and speed safe power restoration.

✅ Focus on T&D hardening, vegetation management, remote switching

✅ Balance generation mix; integrate solar, wind, batteries, microgrids

✅ Plan 12-hour shifts; automate forecasting and outage restoration

When operators of Duke Energy's control room in Raleigh, North Carolina wait for a hurricane, the mood is often calm in the hours leading up to the storm.

“Things are usually fairly quiet before the activity starts,” said Mark Goettsch, the systems operations manager at Duke. “We’re anxiously awaiting the first operation and the first event. Once that begins, you get into storm mode.”

Then begins a “frenzied pace” that can last for days — like when Hurricane Florence parked over Duke’s service territory in September.

When an event like Florence hits, all eyes are on transmission and distribution. Where it’s available, Duke uses remote switching to reconnect customers quickly. As outages mount, the utility forecasts and balances its generation with electricity demand.

The control center’s four to six operators work 12-hour shifts, while nearby staff members field thousands of calls and alarms on the system. After it’s over, “we still hold our breath a little bit to make sure we’ve operated everything correctly,” said Goettsch. Damage assessment and rebuilding can only begin once a storm passes.

That cycle is becoming increasingly common in utility service areas like Duke's.

A slate of natural disasters that reads like a roll call — Willa, Michael, Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence and Thomas — has forced a serious conversation about resiliency. And though Goettsch has heard a lot about resiliency as a “hot topic” at industry events and meetings, those conversations are only now entering Duke’s control room.

Resilience discussions come and go in the energy industry. Storms like Hurricane Sandy and Matthew can spur a nationwide focus on resiliency, but change is largely concentrated in local areas that experienced the disaster. After a few news cycles, the topic fades into the background.

However, experts agree that resilience is becoming much more important to year-round utility planning and operations as utilities pursue decarbonization goals across their fleets. It's not a fad.

“If you look at the whole ecosystem of utilities and vendors, there’s a sense that there needs to be a more resilient grid,” said Miki Deric, Accenture’s managing director of utilities, transmission and distribution for North America. “Even if they don’t necessarily agree on everything, they are all working with the same objective.”

Can renewables meet the challenge?

After Hurricane Florence, The Intercept reported on coal ash basins washed out by the storm’s overwhelming waters. In advance of that storm, Duke shut down one nuclear plant to protect it from high winds. The Washington Post also recently reported on a slowly leaking oil spill, which could surpass Deepwater Horizon in size, caused by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Clean energy boosters have seized on those vulnerabilities.They say solar and wind, which don’t rely on access to fuel and can often generate power immediately after a storm, provide resilience that other electricity sources do not.

“Clearly, logistics becomes a big issue on fossil plants, much more than renewable,” said Bruce Levy, CEO and president at BMR Energy, which owns and operates clean energy projects in the Caribbean and Latin America. “The ancillaries around it — the fuel delivery, fuel storage, water in, water out — are all as susceptible to damage as a renewable plant.”

Duke, however, dismissed the notion that one generation type could beat out another in a serious storm.

“I don’t think any generation source is immune,” said Duke spokesperson Randy Wheeless. “We’ve always been a big supporter of a balanced energy mix, reflecting why the grid isn't 100% renewable in practice today. That’s going to include nuclear and natural gas and solar and renewables as well. We do that because not every day is a good day for each generation source.”

In regard to performance, Wade Schauer, director of Americas Power & Renewables Research at Wood Mackenzie, said the situation is “complex.” According to him, output of solar and wind during a storm depends heavily on the event and its location.

While comprehensive data on generation performance is sparse, Schauer said coal and gas generators could experience outages at 25 percent while stormy weather might cut 95 percent of output from renewables, underscoring clean energy's dirty secret about variability under stress. Ahead of last year’s “bomb cyclone” in New England, WoodMac data shows that wind dropped to less than 1 percent of the supply mix.

“When it comes to resiliency, ‘average performance’ doesn't cut it,” said Schauer.

In the future, he said high winds could impact all U.S. offshore wind farms, since projects are slated for a small geographic area in the Northeast. He also pointed to anecdotal instances of solar arrays in New England taken out by feet of snow. During Florence, North Carolina’s wind farms escaped the highest winds and continued producing electricity throughout. Cloud cover, on the other hand, pushed solar production below average levels.

After Florence passed, Duke reported that most of its solar came online quickly, although four of its utility-owned facilities remained offline for weeks afterward. Only one was because of damage; the other three remained offline due to substation interconnection issues.

“Solar performed pretty well,” said Wheeless. “But did it come out unscathed? No.”

According to installer reports, solar systems fared relatively well in recent storms, even as the Covid-19 impact on renewables constrained projects worldwide. But the industry has also highlighted potential improvements. Following Hurricanes Maria and Irma, the Federal Emergency Management Agency published guidelines for installing and maintaining storm-resistant solar arrays. The document recommended steps such as annual checks for bolt tightness and using microinverters rather than string inverters.

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) also assembled a guide for retrofitting and constructing new installations. It described attributes of solar systems that survived storms, like lateral racking supports, and those that failed, like undersized and under-torqued bolts.

“The hurricanes, as much as no one liked them, [were] a real learning experience for folks in our industry,” said BMR’s Levy. “We saw what worked, and what didn’t.”          

Facing the "800-pound gorilla" on the grid

Advocates believe wind, solar, batteries and microgrids offer the most promise because they often rely less on transmitting electricity long distances and could support peer-to-peer energy models within communities.

Most extreme weather outages arise from transmission and distribution problems, not generation issues. Schauer at WoodMac called storm damage to T&D the “800-pound gorilla.”

“I'd be surprised if a single customer power outage was due to generators being offline, especially since loads where so low due to mild temperatures and people leaving the area ahead of the storm,” he said of Hurricane Florence. “Instead, it was wind [and] tree damage to power lines and blown transformers.”

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EU Electricity Market Reform Opposition highlights nine states resisting an overhaul of the wholesale power market amid gas price spikes, urging energy efficiency, interconnection targets, and EU caution rather than redesigns affecting renewables.

Key Points

Nine EU states reject overhauling wholesale power pricing, favoring efficiency and prudent policy over redesigns.

✅ Nine states oppose redesign of wholesale power market.

✅ Call for efficiency and 15% interconnection by 2030.

✅ Ministers to debate responses amid gas-driven price spikes.

Germany, Denmark, Ireland and six other European countries said on Monday they would not support a reform of the EU electricity market, ahead of an emergency meeting of energy ministers to discuss emergency measures and the recent price spike.

European gas and power prices soared to record high levels in autumn and have remained high, prompting countries including Spain and France to urge Brussels to redesign its electricity market rules.

Nine countries on Monday poured cold water on those proposals, in a joint statement that said they "cannot support any measure that conflicts with the internal gas and electricity market" such as an overhaul of the wholesale power market altogether.

"As the price spikes have global drivers, we should be very careful before interfering in the design of internal energy markets," the statement said.

"This will not be a remedy to mitigate the current rising energy prices linked to fossil fuels markets across Europe."

Austria, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Latvia and the Netherlands signed the statement, which called instead for more measures to save energy and a target for a 15% interconnection of the EU electricity market by 2030.

European energy ministers meet tomorrow to discuss their response to the price spike, including gas price cap strategies under consideration. Most countries are using tax cuts, subsidies and other national measures to shield consumers against the impact higher gas prices are having on energy bills, but EU governments are struggling to agree on a longer term response.

Spain has led calls for a revamp of the wholesale power market in response to the price spike, amid tensions between France and Germany over reform, arguing that the system is not supporting the EU's green transition.

Under the current system, the wholesale electricity price is set by the last power plant needed to meet overall demand for power. Gas plants often set the price in this system, which Spain said was unfair as it results in cheap renewable energy being sold for the same price as costlier fossil fuel-based power.

The European Commission has said it will investigate whether the EU power market is functioning well, but that there is no evidence to suggest a different system would have better protected countries against the surge in energy costs, and that rolling back electricity prices is tougher than it appears during such spikes.

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Renewables' Impact on US Wholesale Electricity Prices is clear: DOE analysis shows wind and solar, capacity gains, and natural gas lowering rates, shifting daily patterns, and triggering occasional negative pricing in PJM and ERCOT.

Key Points

DOE data show wind and solar lower wholesale prices, reshape price curves, and cause negative pricing in markets.

✅ Natural gas price declines remain the largest driver of cheaper power

✅ Wind and solar shift seasonal and time-of-day price patterns

✅ Negative wholesale prices appear near high wind and solar output

One of the arguments that's consistently been raised against doing anything about climate change is that it will be expensive. On the more extreme end of the spectrum, there have been dire warnings about plunging standards of living due to skyrocketing electricity prices. The plunging cost of renewables like solar cheaper than gas has largely silenced these warnings, but a new report from the Department of Energy suggests that, even earlier, renewables were actually lowering the price of electricity in the United States.

Plunging prices
The report focuses on wholesale electricity prices in the US. Note that these are distinct from the prices consumers actually pay, which includes taxes, fees, payments to support the grid that delivers the electricity, and so on. It's entirely possible for wholesale electricity prices to drop even as consumers end up paying more, and market reforms determine how those changes are passed through. That said, large changes in the wholesale price should ultimately be passed on to consumers to one degree or another.

The Department of Energy analysis focuses on the decade between 2008 and 2017, and it includes an overall analysis of the US market, as well as large individual grids like PJM and ERCOT and, finally, local prices. The decade saw a couple of important trends: low natural gas prices that fostered a rapid expansion of gas-fired generators and the rapid expansion of renewable generation that occurred concurrently with a tremendous drop in price of wind and solar power.

Much of the electricity generated by renewables in this time period would be more expensive than that generated by wind and solar installed today. Not only have prices for the hardware dropped, but the hardware has improved in ways that provide higher capacity factors, meaning that they generate a greater percentage of the maximum capacity. (These changes include things like larger blades on wind turbines and tracking systems for solar panels.) At the same time, operating wind and solar is essentially free once they're installed, so they can always offer a lower price than competing fossil fuel plants.

With those caveats laid out, what does the analysis show? Almost all of the factors influencing the wholesale electricity price considered in this analysis are essentially neutral. Only three factors have pushed the prices higher: the retirement of some plants, the rising price of coal, and prices put on carbon, which only affect some of the regional grids.

In contrast, the drop in the price of natural gas has had a very large effect on the wholesale power price. Depending on the regional grid, it's driven a drop of anywhere from $7 to $53 per megawatt-hour. It's far and away the largest influence on prices over the past decade.

Regional variation and negative prices
But renewables have had an influence as well. That influence has ranged from roughly neutral to a cost reduction of $2.2 per MWh in California, largely driven by solar. While the impact of renewables was relatively minor, it is the second-largest influence after natural gas prices, and the data shows that wind and solar are reducing prices rather than increasing them.

The reports note that renewables are influencing wholesale prices in other ways, however. The growth of wind and solar caused the pattern of seasonal price changes to shift in areas of high wind and solar, as seen with solar reshaping prices in Northern Europe as daylight hours and wind patterns shift with the seasons. Similarly, renewables have a time-of-day effect for similar reasons, helping explain why the grid isn't 100% renewable today, which also influences the daily timing price changes, something that's not an issue with fossil fuel power.

A map showing the areas where wholesale electricity prices have gone negative, with darker colors indicating increased frequency.
Enlarge / A map showing the areas where wholesale electricity prices have gone negative, with darker colors indicating increased frequency.

US DOE
One striking feature of areas where renewable power is prevalent is that there are occasional cases in which an oversupply of renewable energy produces negative electricity prices in the wholesale market. (In the least-surprising statement in the report, it concludes that "negative prices in high-wind and high-solar regions occurred most frequently in hours with high wind and solar output.") In most areas, these negative prices are rare enough that they don't have a significant influence on the wholesale price.

That's not true everywhere, however. Areas on the Great Plains see fairly frequent negative prices, and they're growing in prevalence in areas like California, the Southwest, and the northern areas of New York and New England, while negative prices in France have been observed in similar conditions. In these areas, negative wholesale prices near solar plants have dropped the overall price by 3%. Near wind plants, that figure is 6%.

None of this is meant to indicate that there are no scenarios where expanded renewable energy could eventually cause wholesale prices to rise. At sufficient levels, the need for storage, backup plants, and grid management could potentially offset their low costs, a dynamic sometimes referred to as clean energy's dirty secret by analysts. But it's clear we have not yet reached that point. And if the prices of renewables continue to drop, then that point could potentially recede fast enough not to matter.

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Ontario Off-Peak Electricity Rate Relief extends 8.5 cents/kWh pricing 24/7 for residential, small business, and farm customers, covering Time-Of-Use and tiered plans to stabilize utility bills during COVID-19 Stay-at-Home measures across Ontario.

Key Points

A province-wide 8.5 cents/kWh price applied 24/7 until Feb 22, 2021 for TOU and tiered users to reduce electricity bills

✅ 8.5 cents/kWh, applied 24/7 through Feb 22, 2021

✅ Available to TOU and tiered OEB-regulated customers

✅ Automatic on bills for homes, small businesses, farms

The Ontario government is once again extending electricity rate relief for families, small businesses and farms to support those spending more time at home while the province maintains the Stay-at-Home Order in the majority of public health regions. The government will continue to hold electricity prices to the off-peak rate of 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with higher peak rates elsewhere in the day, until February 22, 2021. This lower rate is available 24 hours per day, seven days a week for Time-Of-Use and tiered customers.

"We know staying at home means using more electricity during the day when electricity prices are higher, that's why we are once again extending the off-peak electricity rate to provide households, small businesses and farms with stable and predictable electricity bills when they need it most," said Greg Rickford, Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, Minister of Indigenous Affairs. "We thank Ontarians for continuing to follow regional Stay-at-Home orders to help stop the spread of COVID-19."

The off-peak rate came into effect January 1, 2021, providing families, farms and small businesses with immediate electricity rate relief, and for industrial and commercial companies, stable pricing initiatives have provided additional certainty. The off-peak rate will now be extended until the end of day February 22, 2021, for a total of 53 days of emergency rate relief. During this period, and alongside temporary disconnect moratoriums for residential customers, the off-peak price will continue to be automatically applied to electricity bills of all residential, small business, and farm customers who pay regulated rates set by the Ontario Energy Board and get a bill from a utility.

"We extend our thanks to the Ontario Energy Board and local distribution companies across the province, including Hydro One, for implementing this extended emergency rate relief and supporting Ontarians as they continue to work and learn from home," said Bill Walker, Associate Minister of Energy.

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