US Crosses the Electric-Car Tipping Point for Mass Adoption

2020 U.S. Renewable Electricity Generation set a record as wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and geothermal produced 834 billion kWh, surpassing coal and nuclear, second only to natural gas in nationwide power output.

Key Points

The record year when renewables made 834 billion kWh, topping coal and nuclear in U.S. electricity.

✅ Renewables supplied 21% of U.S. electricity in 2020

✅ Coal output fell 20% y/y; nuclear slipped 2% on retirements

✅ EIA forecasts renewables rise in 2021-2022; coal rebounds

In 2020, renewable energy sources (including wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy) generated a record 834 billion kilowatthours (kWh) of electricity, or about 21% of all the electricity generated in the United States. Only natural gas (1,617 billion kWh) produced more electricity than renewables in the United States in 2020. Renewables surpassed both nuclear (790 billion kWh) and coal (774 billion kWh) for the first time on record. This outcome in 2020 was due mostly to significantly less coal use in U.S. electricity generation and steadily increased use of wind and solar generation over time, amid declining consumption trends nationwide.

In 2020, U.S. electricity generation from coal in all sectors declined 20% from 2019, while renewables, including small-scale solar, increased 9%. Wind, currently the most prevalent source of renewable electricity in the United States, grew 14% in 2020 from 2019, and the EIA expects solar and wind to be larger sources in summer 2022, reflecting continued growth. Utility-scale solar generation (from projects greater than 1 megawatt) increased 26%, and small-scale solar, such as grid-connected rooftop solar panels, increased 19%, while early 2021 January power generation jumped year over year.

Coal-fired electricity generation in the United States peaked at 2,016 billion kWh in 2007 and much of that capacity has been replaced by or converted to natural gas-fired generation since then. Coal was the largest source of electricity in the United States until 2016, and 2020 was the first year that more electricity was generated by renewables and by nuclear power than by coal (according to our data series that dates back to 1949). Nuclear electric power declined 2% from 2019 to 2020 because several nuclear power plants retired and other nuclear plants experienced slightly more maintenance-related outages.

We expect coal-fired generation to increase in the United States during 2021 as natural gas prices continue to rise and as coal becomes more economically competitive. Based on forecasts in our Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we expect coal-fired electricity generation in all sectors in 2021 to increase 18% from 2020 levels before falling 2% in 2022. We expect U.S. renewable generation across all sectors to increase 7% in 2021 and 10% in 2022, and in 2021, non-fossil fuel sources accounted for about 40% of U.S. electricity. As a result, we forecast coal will be the second-most prevalent electricity source in 2021, and renewables will be the second-most prevalent source in 2022. We expect nuclear electric power to decline 2% in 2021 and 3% in 2022 as operators retire several generators.

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Connected Home Energy Technologies integrate solar panels, smart meters, EV charging, battery storage, and IoT energy management to cut costs, optimize demand response, and monitor usage in real time for safer, lower-carbon homes.

Key Points

Devices and systems managing home energy: solar PV, smart meters, EV chargers, and storage to cut costs and emissions.

✅ Real-time visibility via apps, smart meters, and IoT sensors

✅ Integrates solar PV, batteries, and EV charging with the grid

✅ Enables demand response, lower bills, and lower carbon

Driven by advances in tech and the advent of high-speed internet connections, many of us now have easy access to a raft of information about the buildings we live in.

Thanks to the proliferation of hardware and software within the home, this trend shows no sign of letting up and comes in many different forms, from indoor air quality monitors to “smart” doorbells which provide us with visual, real-time notifications when someone is attempting to access our property.

Residential renewable electricity generation is also starting to gain traction, with a growing number of people installing solar panels in the hope of reducing bills and their environmental footprint.

In the U.S. alone, the residential solar market installed 738 megawatts of capacity in the third quarter of 2020, a 14% jump compared to the second quarter, according to a recent report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie.

Earlier this month, California-headquartered SunPower — which specializes in the design, production and delivery of solar panels and systems — announced it was rolling out an app which will enable homeowners to assess and manage their energy generation, usage and battery storage settings with their mobile, as California looks to EVs for grid stability amid broader electrification.

The service will be available to customers using its SunPower Eqiunox system and represents yet another instance of how connected technologies can provide us with valuable information about how buildings operate.

Similar offerings in this increasingly crowded marketplace include so-called “smart” meters, which allow consumers to see how much energy they are using and money they are spending in real time.

Elsewhere products such as Hive, from Centrica, enable users to install a range of connected kit — from plugs and lighting to thermostats and indoor cameras — that can be controlled via an app on their cellphone and, in some cases, their voice. 

Connected car charging
Solar panels represent one way that sustainable tech can be integrated into homes. Other examples include the installation of charging points for electric vehicles, as EV growth challenges state grids in many markets.

With governments around the world looking to phase-out the sale of diesel and gasoline vehicles and encourage consumers to buy electric, and Model 3's utility impact underscoring likely shifts in demand, residential charging systems could become an integral part of the built environment in the years ahead.

Firms offering home-based, connected, charging include Pod Point and BP Pulse. Both of these services include apps which provide data such as how much energy has been used, the cost of charging and charge history.  

Another firm, Wallbox, recently announced it was launching its first electric vehicle charger for North American homes.

The company, which is based in Spain, said the system was compatible with all types of electric vehicles, would allow customers to schedule charges, and could be voice-controlled through Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, while mobile energy storage promises added flexibility for strained grids.

Away from the private sector, governments are also making efforts to encourage the development of home charging infrastructure.

Over the weekend, U.K. authorities said the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme — which gives drivers as much as £350 (around $487) toward a charging system — would be extended and expanded, targeting those who live in leasehold and rented properties, even as UK grid capacity for EVs remains under scrutiny.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, described the government’s announcement as “welcome and a step in the right direction.”

“As we race towards the phase out of sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, we need to accelerate the expansion of the electric vehicle charging network, and proper grid management can ensure EVs are accommodated at scale,” he added.

“An electric vehicle revolution will need the home and workplace installations this announcement will encourage, but also a massive increase in on-street public charging and rapid charge points on our strategic road network.”

Change afoot, but challenges ahead
As attempts to decarbonize buildings and society ramp up, the way our homes look and function could be on the cusp of quite a big shift.

“Grid-connected home generation technologies such as solar electric panels will be important in the shift to a 100% renewable electricity grid, but decarbonising the electricity supply is only one part of the transition,” Peter Tyldesley, chief executive of the Centre for Alternative Technology, told CNBC via email.

With reference to Britain, Tyldesley went on to explain how his organization envisaged “just under 10% of electricity in a future zero carbon society coming from solar PV, utilising 15-20% of … U.K. roof area.” This, he said, compared to over 75% of electricity coming from wind power. 

Heating, Tyldesley went on to state, represented “the bigger challenge.”

“To decarbonise the U.K.’s housing stock at the scale and speed needed to get to zero carbon, we’ll need to refurbish possibly a million houses every year for the next few decades to improve their insulation and airtightness and to install heat pumps or other non-fossil fuel heating,” he said.

“To do this, we urgently need a co-ordinated national programme with a commitment to multi-year government investment,” he added.

On the subject of buildings becoming increasingly connected, providing us with a huge amount of data about how they function, Tyldesley sought to highlight some of the opportunities this could create. 

“Studies of the roll out of smart metering technology have shown that consumers use less energy when they are able to monitor their consumption in real time, so this kind of technology can be a useful part of behaviour change programmes when combined with other forms of support for home efficiency improvements,” he said.

“The roll out of smart appliances can go one step further — responding to signals from the grid and, through vehicle-to-grid power, helping to shift consumption away from peak times towards periods when more renewable energy is available,” he added.

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East-West Power Transmission Grid links provinces via hydroelectric interconnects, clean energy exports, and reliable grid infrastructure, requiring federal funding, multibillion-dollar transmission lines, and coordinated planning across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Newfoundland.

Key Points

A proposed interprovincial grid to share hydro power, improve reliability, and cut emissions with federal funding.

✅ Hydroelectric exports from Manitoba to prairie and eastern provinces

✅ New interconnects and transmission lines require federal funding

✅ Enhances grid reliability and supports coal phase-out

Manitoba's energy minister is recharging the idea of building an east-west power transmission grid and says the federal government needs to help.

Cliff Cullen told the Energy Council of Canada's western conference on Tuesday that Manitoba has "a really clean resource that we're ready to share with our neighbours" as new hydro generation projects, including new turbines come online.

"This is a really important time to have that discussion about the reliability of energy and how we can work together to make that happen," said Cullen, minister of growth, enterprise and trade.

"And, clearly, an important component of that is the transmission side of it. We've been focused on transmission ... north and south, and we haven't had that dialogue about east-west."

Most hydro-producing provinces currently focus on exports to the United States, though transmission constraints can limit incremental deliveries.

Saskatchewan Energy Minister Dustin Duncan said his province, which relies heavily on coal-fired electricity plants, could be interested in getting electricity from Manitoba, even as a Manitoba Hydro warning highlights limits on serving new energy-intensive customers.

"They're big projects. They're multibillion-dollar projects," Duncan said after speaking on a panel with Cullen and Alberta Energy Minister Margaret McCuaig-Boyd.

"Even trying to do the interconnects to the transmission grid, I don't think they're as easy or as maybe low cost as we would just imagine, just hooking up some power lines across the border. It takes much more work than that."

Cullen said there's a lot of work to do on building east-west transmission lines if provinces are going to buy and sell electricity from each other. He suggested that money is a key factor.

"Each province has done their own thing in terms of transmission within their jurisdiction and we have to have that dialogue about how that interconnectivity is going to work. And these things don't happen overnight," he said.

"Hopefully the federal government will be at the table to have a look at that, because it's a fundamental expense, a capital expense, to connect our provinces."

The 2016 federal budget said significant investment in Canada's electricity sector will be needed over the next 20 years to replace aging infrastructure and meet growing demand for electricity, with Manitoba's demand potentially doubling over that period.

The budget allocated $2.5 million over two years to Natural Resources Canada for regional talks and studies to identify the most promising electricity infrastructure projects.

In April, the government told The Canadian Press that Natural Resources Canada has been talking with ministry representatives and electric utilities in the western and Atlantic provinces.

The idea of developing an east-west transmission grid has long been talked about as a way to bring energy reliability to Canadians.

At their annual meeting in 2007, Canada's premiers supported development and enhancement of transmission facilities across the country, although the premiers fell short of a firm commitment to an east-west energy grid.

Manitoba, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador are the most vocal proponents of east-west transmission, even as Quebec's electricity ambitions have reopened old wounds in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Manitoba and Newfoundland want the grid because of the potential to develop additional exports of hydro power, while Ontario sees the grid as an answer to its growing power needs.

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Arvato Ontario Solar Power Plant advances sustainability with rooftop photovoltaic panels, PPA financing, and green electricity, generating 800,000 kWh annually to cut logistics emissions, reduce energy costs, and support carbon-neutral supply chain operations.

Key Points

A rooftop PV system under a PPA, supplying low-cost green power to Arvato's Ontario, CA distribution center.

✅ 1,160 panels produce 800,000 kWh of renewable power yearly

✅ PPA model avoids upfront costs and lowers electricity rates

✅ Cuts center emissions by 72%; 45% roof coverage

Arvato continues to invest consistently in the sustainability of its distribution centers. To this end, the first solar power plant in the focus market has now been commissioned on the roof of the distribution center in Ontario, California. The solar power plant has 1,160 solar panels and generates more than 800,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of green electricity annually. This reduces electricity costs and, with advances in battery storage, further cuts the logistics center's greenhouse gas emissions. Previously, the international supply chain and e-commerce service provider had converted five other distribution centers in the USA to green electricity.

The project started as early as November 2019 with an intensive site investigation. An extensive catalogue of measures and criteria had to be worked through to install and commission the solar power plant on the roof system. After a rigorous process involving numerous stakeholders, the new solar modules were installed in August 2022, similar to utility-scale deployments like the largest solar array in Washington seen recently. However, further approvals and permits were required before the solar system could be officially commissioned, a common step for solar power plants worldwide. Once official permission for the operation was granted, the switch could be flipped in February 2023, and production of environmentally friendly solar electricity could begin.

The photovoltaic system is operated under a Purchase Power Agreement (PPA), a model widely used in corporate renewable energy projects today. This unique financing mechanism is available in twenty-six U.S. states, including California. While a third-party developer installs, owns and operates the solar panels, Arvato purchases the electricity generated. This allows companies in the U.S. to support clean energy projects while buying low-cost electricity without having to finance upfront costs. "The PPA and the resulting benefits were quite critical to the success of this project," says Christina Greenwell, Microsoft AOC F&L Client Services Manager at Arvato, who managed the project from start to finish. "It allows us to reduce our electricity costs while supporting Bertelsmann's ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030."

The 1,160 solar panels were added to an existing system of 920 panels owned by the logistics center's landlord. In total, the panels now cover 45 percent of the roof space at the Ontario distribution center. The emissions generated by the distribution center are now reduced by 72 percent with the new solar panels and clean power generation. As Bertelsmann plans to switch all its sites worldwide to 100 percent green electricity, renewable energy certificates will, as seen when Bimbo Canada signed agreements to offset 100 percent of its electricity for its operations, offset the remaining emissions.

"The new solar power plant is a significant step on our path to carbon neutrality and demonstrates our commitment to finding innovative solutions that reduce our carbon footprint," said Mitat Aydindag, President of North America at Arvato. "All employees at the site are pleased that our Ontario distribution center is now a pioneer and is providing effective support in achieving our ambitious climate goal in 2030."

Similar facility-level efforts include the Bright Feeds Berlin solar project underscoring momentum across industrial operations.

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U.S. EV Manufacturing Expansion accelerates decarbonization as Ford and SK Innovation invest in lithium-ion batteries and truck assembly in Tennessee and Kentucky, building new factories, jobs, and supply chain infrastructure in right-to-work states.

Key Points

A rapid scale-up of U.S. electric vehicle production, battery plants, and assembly lines fueled by major investments.

✅ Ford and SK build battery and truck plants by 2025

✅ $11.4B investment, 11,000 jobs in TN and KY

✅ Right-to-work context reshapes union dynamics

One theme of this newsletter is that the world’s physical infrastructure will have to massively change if we want to decarbonize the economy by 2050, which the United Nations has said is necessary to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis. This won’t be as simple as passing a carbon tax or a clean-electricity mandate: Wires will have to be strung as the power grid expands; solar farms will have to be erected; industries will have to be remade. And although that kind of change can be orchestrated only by the government (hence the importance of the infrastructure bills in Congress), consumers and companies will ultimately do most of the work to make it happen.

Take electric cars, for instance. An electric car is an expensive, highly specialized piece of technology, but building one takes even more expensive, specialized technology—tools that tend to be custom-made, large and heavy, and spread across a factory or the world. And if you want those tools to produce a car in a few years, you have to start planning now, as the EV timeline accelerates ahead.

That’s exactly what Ford is doing: Last night, the automaker and SK Innovation, a South Korean battery manufacturer, announced that they were spending $11.4 billion to build two new multi-factory centers in Tennessee and Kentucky that are scheduled to begin production in 2025. The facilities, which will hire a combined 11,000 employees, will manufacture EV batteries and assemble electric F-series pickup trucks. While Ford already has several factories in Kentucky, this will be its first plant in Tennessee in six decades. The 3,600-acre Tennessee facility, located an hour outside Memphis, will be Ford’s largest campus ever—and its first new American vehicle-assembly plant in decades.

The politics of this announcement are worth dwelling on. Ford and SK Innovation were lured to Tennessee with $500 million in incentives; Kentucky gave them $300 million and more than 1,500 acres of free land. Ford’s workers in Detroit have historically been unionized—and, indeed, a source of power in the national labor movement. But with these new factories, Ford is edging into a more anti-union environment: Both Tennessee and Kentucky are right-to-work states, meaning that local laws prevent unions from requiring that only unionized employees work in a certain facility. In an interview, Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO, played coy about whether either factory will be unionized. (Last week, the company announced that it was investing $250 million, a comparative pittance, to expand EV production at its unionized Michigan facilities.)

That news might depress those on the left who hope that old-school unions, such as the United Auto Workers, can enjoy the benefits of electrification. But you can see the outline of a potential political bargain here. Climate-concerned Democrats get to see EV production expand in the U.S., creating opportunities for Canada to capitalize as supply chains shift, while climate-wary Republicans get to add jobs in their home states. (And unions get shafted.) Whether that bargain can successfully grow support for more federal climate policy, further accelerating the financial-political-technological feedback loop that I’ve dubbed “the green vortex,” remains to be seen.

Read: How the U.S. made progress on climate change without ever passing a bill

More important than the announcement is what it portends. In the past, environmentalists have complained that even when the law has required that automakers make climate-friendly cars, they haven’t treated them as a major product. It’s easy to tune out climate-friendly announcements as so much corporate greenwashing, amid recurring EV hype, but Ford’s two new factories represent real money: The automaker’s share of the investment exceeds its 2019 annual earnings. This investment is sufficiently large that Ford will treat EVs as a serious business line.

And if you look around globally, you’ll see that Ford isn’t alone. EVs are no longer the neglected stepchild of the global car industry. Here are some recent headlines:

Nine percent of new cars sold globally this year will be EVs or plug-in hybrids, according to S&P Global. That’s up from 3 percent two years ago, a staggering, iPhone-like rise.

GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, BMW, and the parent company of Fiat-Chrysler have all pledged that by 2030, at least 40 percent of their new cars worldwide will run on a non-gasoline source, and there is scope for Canada-U.S. collaboration as companies turn to electric cars. A few years ago, the standard forecast was that half of new cars sold in the U.S. would be electric by 2050. That timeline has moved up significantly not only in America, but around the world. (In fact, counter to its high-tech self-image, America is the laggard in this global transition. The two largest markets for EVs worldwide are China and the European Union.)

More remarkably (and importantly), automakers are spending like they actually believe that goal: The auto industry as a whole will pump more than $500 billion into EV investment by 2030, and new assembly deals are putting Canada in the race. Ford’s investment in these two plants represents less than a third of its planned total $30 billion investment in EV production by 2025, and that’s relatively small compared with its peers’. Volkswagen has announced more than $60 billion in investment. Honda has committed $46 billion.

Norway could phase out gas cars ahead of schedule. The country has one of the world’s most robust pro-EV policies, and it is still outperforming its own mandates. In the most recent accounting period, eight out of 10 cars had some sort of electric drivetrain. If the current trend holds, Norway would sell its last gas car in April of next year—and while I doubt the demise will be that steep, consumer preferences are running well ahead of its schedule to ban new gas-car sales by 2025.

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Canada Net-Zero Electricity 2035 aligns policy and investments with renewables, wind, solar, hydro, storage, and transmission to power electrification of EVs and heat pumps, guided by a stringent clean electricity standard and carbon pricing.

Key Points

A 2035 plan for a zero-emissions grid using renewables, storage and transmission to electrify transport and homes.

✅ Wind, solar, and hydro backed by battery storage and reservoirs

✅ Interprovincial transmission expands reliability and lowers costs

✅ Stringent clean electricity standard and full carbon pricing

By Tom Green
Senior Climate Policy Advisor
David Suzuki Foundation

Electric vehicles are making inroads in some areas of Canada. But as their numbers grow, will there be enough electrical power for them, and for all the buildings and the industries that are also switching to electricity?

Canada – along with the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom – is committed to a “net-zero electricity grid by 2035 policy goal”. This target is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s ambition of staying below 1.5 C of global warming, compared with pre-industrial levels.

This target also gives countries their best chance of energy security, as laid out in landmark reports over the past year from the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A new federal regulation in the form of a clean electricity standard is being developed, but will it be stringent enough to set us up for climate success and avoid dead ends?

Canada starts this work from a relatively low emissions-intensity grid, powered largely by hydroelectricity. However, some provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick still have predominantly fossil fuel-powered electricity. Plus, there is a risk of more natural gas generation of electricity in the coming years in most provinces without new federal and provincial regulations.

This means the transition of Canada’s electricity system must solve two problems at once. It must first clean up the existing electricity system, but it must also meet future electricity needs from zero-emissions sources while overall electricity capacity doubles or even triples by 2050.

Canada has enormous potential for renewable generation, even though it remains a solar power laggard in deployment to date. Wind, solar and energy storage are proven, affordable technologies that can be produced here in Canada, while avoiding the volatility of global fossil fuel markets.

As wind and solar have become the cheapest forms of electricity generation in history, we’re already seeing foreign governments and utilities ramp up renewable projects at the pace and scale that would be needed here in Canada, highlighting a significant global electricity market opportunity for Canadian firms at home. In 2020, 280 gigawatts of new capacity was added globally – a 45 per cent increase over the previous year. In Canada, since 2010, annual growth in renewables has so far averaged less than three per cent.

So why aren’t we moving full steam – or electron – ahead? With countries around the world bringing in wind and solar for new generation, why is there so much delay and doubt in Canada, even as analyses explore why the U.S. grid isn’t 100% renewable and remaining barriers?

The modelling team drew on a dataset that accounts for how wind and solar potential varies across the country, through the weeks of the year and the hours of each day. The models provide solutions for the most cost-effective new generation, storage and transmission to add to the grid while ensuring electricity generation meets demand reliably every hour of the year.

The David Suzuki Foundation partnered with the University of Victoria to model the electricity grid of the future.

To better understand future electricity demand, a second modelling team was asked to explore a future when homes and businesses are aggressively electrified; fossil fuel furnaces and boilers are retired and replaced with electric heat pumps; and gasoline and diesel cars are replaced by electric vehicles and public transit. It also dialed up investments in energy efficiency to further reduce the need for energy. These hourly electricity-demand projections were fed back to the models developed at the University of Victoria.

The results? It is possible to meet Canada’s needs for clean electricity reliably and affordably through a focus on expanding wind and solar generation capacity, complemented with new transmission connections between provinces, and other grid improvements.

How is it that such high levels of variable wind and solar can be added to the grid while keeping the lights on 24/7? The model took full advantage of the country’s existing hydroelectric reservoirs, using them as giant batteries, storing water behind the dams when wind and solar generation was high to be used later when renewable generation is low, or when demand is particularly high. The model also invested in more transmission to enable expanded electricity trade between provinces and energy storage in the form of batteries to smooth out the supply of electricity.

Not only is it possible, but the renewable pathway is the safe bet.

There’s no doubt it will take unprecedented effort and scale to transform Canada’s electricity systems. The high electrification pathway would require an 18-fold increase over today’s renewable electricity capacity, deploying an unprecedented amount of new wind, solar and energy storage projects every year from now to 2050. Although the scale seems daunting, countries such as Germany are demonstrating that this pace and scale is possible.

The modelling also showed that small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) are neither necessary nor cost-effective, making them a poor candidate for continued government subsidies. Likewise, we presented pathways with no need for continued fossil fuel generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) – an expensive technology with a global track record of burning through public funds while allowing fossil fuel use to expand and while capturing a smaller proportion of the smokestack carbon than promised. We believe that Canada should terminate the significant subsidies and supports it is giving to fossil fuel companies and redirect this support to renewable electricity, energy efficiency and energy affordability programming.

The transition to clean electricity would come with new employment for people living in Canada. Building tomorrow’s grid will support more than 75,000 full-time jobs each year in construction, operation and maintenance of wind, solar and transmission facilities alone.

Regardless of the path chosen, all energy projects in Canada take place on unceded Indigenous territories or treaty land. Decolonizing power structures with benefits to Indigenous communities is imperative. Upholding Indigenous rights and title, ensuring ownership opportunities and decision-making and direct support for Indigenous communities are all essential in how this transition takes place.

Wind, solar, storage and smart grid technologies are evolving rapidly, but our understanding of the possibilities they offer for a zero-emissions future, including debates over clean energy’s dirty secret in some supply chains, appears to be lagging behind reality. As the Institut de L’énergie Trottier observed, decarbonization costs have fallen faster than modellers anticipated.

The shape of tomorrow’s grid will largely depend on policy decisions made today. It’s now up to people living in Canada and their elected representatives to create the right conditions for a renewable revolution that could make the country electric, connected and clean in the years ahead.

To avoid a costly dash-to-gas that will strand assets and to secure early emissions reductions, the electricity sector needs to be fully exposed to the carbon price. The federal government’s announcement that it will move forward with a clean electricity standard – requiring net-zero emissions in the electricity sector by 2035 – will help if the standard is stringent.

Federal funding to encourage provinces to expand interprovincial transmission, including recent grid modernization investments now underway will also move us ahead. At the provincial level, electricity system governance – from utility commission mandates to electricity markets design – needs to be reformed quickly to encourage investments in renewable generation. As fossil fuels are swapped out across the economy, more and more of a household’s total energy bill will come from a local electric utility, so a national energy poverty strategy focused on low-income and equity-seeking households must be a priority.

The payoff from this policy package? Plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity that brings better outcomes for community health and resilience while helping to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

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