Ontario to Reintroduce Renewable Energy Projects 5 Years After Cancellations

Northwest Territories EV Charging Corridor aims to link the Alberta boundary to Yellowknife with Level 3 fast chargers and Level 2 stations, boosting electric vehicle adoption in cold climates, cutting GHG emissions, supporting zero-emission targets.

Key Points

A planned corridor of Level 3 and Level 2 chargers linking Alberta and Yellowknife to boost EV uptake and cut GHGs.

✅ Level 3 fast charger funded for Behchoko by spring 2024.

✅ Up to 72 Level 2 chargers funded across N.W.T. communities.

✅ Supports Canada ZEV targets and reduces fuel use and CO2e.

Electric vehicles are a rare sight in Canada's North, with challenges such as frigid winter temperatures and limited infrastructure across remote regions.

The Northwest Territories is hoping to change that.

The territorial government plans to develop a vehicle-charging corridor between the Alberta boundary and Yellowknife to encourage more residents to buy electric vehicles to reduce their carbon footprint.

"There will soon be a time in which not having electric charging stations along the highway will be equivalent to not having gas stations," said Robert Sexton, director of energy with the territory’s Department of Infrastructure.

"Even though it does seem right now that there’s limited uptake of electric vehicles and some of the barriers seem sort of insurmountable, we have to plan to start doing this, because in five years' time, it’ll be too late."

The federal government has committed to a mandatory 100 per cent zero-emission vehicle sales target by 2035 for all new light-duty vehicles, though in Manitoba reaching EV targets is not smooth so progress may vary. It has set interim targets for at least 20 per cent of sales by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030.

A study commissioned by the N.W.T. government forecasts electric vehicles could account for 2.9 to 11.3 per cent of all annual car and small truck sales in the territory in 2030.

The study estimates the planned charging corridor, alongside electric vehicle purchasing incentives, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 260 and 1,016 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in that year.

Sexton said it will likely take a few years before the charging corridor is complete. As a start, the territory recently awarded up to $480,000 to the Northwest Territories Power Corporation to install a Level 3 electric vehicle charger in Behchoko.

The N.W.T. government projects the charging station will reduce gasoline use by 61,000 litres and decrease carbon dioxide equivalent by up to 140 tonnes per year. It is scheduled to be complete by the spring of 2024.

The federal government earlier this month announced $414,000, along with $56,000 in territorial funding, to install up to 72 primarily Level 2 electric vehicle charges in public places, streets, multi-unit residential buildings, workplaces, and facilities with light-duty vehicle fleets in the N.W.T. by March 2024, while in New Brunswick new fast-charging stations are planned on the Trans-Canada.

In Yukon, the territory has pledged to develop electric vehicle infrastructure in all road-accessible communities by 2027. It has already installed 12 electric vehicle chargers with seven more planned, and in N.L. a fast-charging network signals early progress as well.

Just a few people in the N.W.T. currently own electric vehicles, and in Atlantic Canada EV adoption lags as well.

Patricia and Ken Wray in Hay River have owned a Tesla Model 3 for three years. Comparing added electricity costs with savings on gasoline, Patricia estimates they spend 60 per cent less to keep the Tesla running compared to a gas-powered vehicle.

“I don’t mind driving past the gas station,” she said.

Despite some initial hesitation about how the car would perform in the winter, Wray said she hasn’t had any issues with her Tesla when it’s -40 C, although it does take longer to charge. She added it “really hugs the road” in snowy and icy conditions.

“People in the North need to understand these cars are marvellous in the winter,” she said.

Wray said while she and her husband drive their Tesla regularly, it’s not feasible to drive long distances across the territory. As the number of electric vehicle charge stations increases across the N.W.T., however, that could change.

“I’m just very, very happy to hear that charging infrastructure is now starting to be put in place," she said.

Andrew Robinson with the YK Care Share Co-op is more skeptical about the potential success of a long-distance charging corridor. He said while government support for electric vehicles is positive, he believes there's a more immediate need to focus on uptake within N.W.T. communities. He pointed to local taxi services as an example.

"It’s a long stretch," he said of the drive from Alberta, where EVs are a hot topic, to Yellowknife. "It’s 17 hours of hardcore driving and when you throw in having to recharge, anything that makes that longer, people are not going to be really into that.”

The car sharing service, which has a 2016 Chevy Spark dubbed “Sparky,” states on its website that a Level 2 charger can usually recharge a vehicle within six to eight hours while a Level 3 charger takes approximately half an hour, as faster charging options roll out in B.C. and beyond.

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EV Battery Recycling and Urban Mining enable a circular economy by recovering lithium-ion materials like nickel, cobalt, and lithium, building a closed-loop supply chain that lowers emissions, reduces costs, and strengthens sustainable EV manufacturing.

Key Points

Closed-loop recovery of lithium-ion metals to cut emissions, costs, and supply risk across the EV battery supply chain.

✅ Cuts lifecycle emissions via circular, closed-loop battery materials

✅ Secures nickel, cobalt, lithium for resilient EV supply chains

✅ Lowers costs and dependency on mining; boosts sustainability

Few people have had the sort of front-row seat to the rise of electric vehicles as JB Straubel.

The softly spoken engineer is often considered the brains behind Tesla: it was Straubel who convinced Elon Musk, over lunch in 2003, that electric vehicles had a future. He then served as chief technology officer for 15 years, designing Tesla’s first batteries, managing construction of its network of charging stations and leading development of the Gigafactory in Nevada. When he departed in 2019, Musk’s biographer Ashlee Vance said Tesla had not only lost a founder, but “a piece of its soul”.

Straubel could have gone on to do anything in Silicon Valley. Instead, he stayed at his ranch in Carson City, Nevada, a town once described by former resident Mark Twain as “a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad mountains” without a tree in sight.

At first glance it is not the most obvious location for Redwood Materials, a start-up Straubel founded in 2017 with a formidable mission bordering on alchemy: to break down discarded batteries and reconstitute them into a fresh supply of metals needed for new electric vehicles.

His goal is to solve the most glaring problem for electric vehicles. While they are “zero emission” when being driven, the mining, manufacturing and disposal process for batteries could become an environmental disaster for the industry as the technology goes mainstream.

JB Straubel is betting part of his Tesla fortune that Redwood can play an instrumental role in the circular economy
“It’s not sustainable at all today, nor is there really an imminent plan — any disruption happening — to make it sustainable,” Straubel says. “That always grated on me a little bit at Tesla and it became more apparent as we ramped everything up.”

Redwood’s warehouse is the ultimate example of how one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Each weekday, two to three heavy-duty lorries drop off about 60 tonnes worth of old smartphones, power tools and scooter batteries. Straubel’s team of 130 employees then separates out the metals — including nickel, cobalt and lithium — pulverises them and treats them with chemicals so they can re-enter the supply chain as the building blocks for new lithium-ion batteries.

The metals used in batteries typically originate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia and Chile, and emerging sources such as Alberta’s lithium potential are being explored, dug out of open-pit mines or evaporated from desert ponds. But Straubel believes there is another “massive, untapped” source: the garages of the average American. He estimates there are about 1bn used batteries in US homes, sitting in old laptops and mobile phones — all containing valuable metals.

In the Redwood’s warehouse, Straubel’s team separates out the metals, including nickel, so they can re-enter the supply chain
The process of breaking down these batteries and repurposing them is known as “urban mining”. To do this at scale is a gargantuan task: the amount of battery material in a high-end electric vehicle is roughly 10,000 times that of a smartphone, according to Gene Berdichevsky, chief executive of battery materials start-up Sila Nano. But, he adds, the amount of cobalt used in a car battery is about 30 times less than in a phone battery, per kilowatt hour. “So for every 300 smartphones you collect, you have enough cobalt for an EV battery.”

Redwood is also building a network of industrial partners, including Amazon, electric bus maker Proterra and e-bike maker Specialized, to receive their scrap, even as GM and Ford battery strategies highlight divergent approaches across the industry. It already receives e-waste from, and sends back repurposed materials to, Panasonic, which produces battery cells just 50 miles north at the Tesla Gigafactory.

Straubel is betting part of his Tesla fortune that Redwood can play an instrumental role in the emergence of “the circular economy” — a grand hope born in the 1960s that society can re-engineer the way goods are designed, manufactured and recycled. The concept is being embraced by some of the world’s largest companies including Apple, whose chief executive Tim Cook set an objective “not to have to remove anything from the earth to make the new iPhones” as part of its pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2030.

If the circular economy takes root, today’s status quo will look preposterous to future generations. The biggest source of cobalt at the moment is the DRC, where it is often extracted in both large industrial mines and also dug by hand using basic tools. Then it might be shipped to Finland, home to Europe’s largest cobalt refinery, before heading to China where the majority of the world’s cathode and battery production takes place. From there it can be shipped to the US or Europe, where battery cells are turned into packs, then shipped again to automotive production lines.

All told, the cobalt can travel more than 20,000 miles from the mine to the automaker before a buyer places a “zero emission” sticker on the bumper.

Despite this, independent studies routinely say electric vehicles cause less environmental damage than their combustion engine counterparts. But the scope for improvement is vast: Straubel says electric car emissions can be more than halved if their batteries are continually recycled.

In July, Redwood accelerated its mission, raising more than $700m from investors so it could hire more than 500 people and expand operations. At a valuation of $3.7bn, the company is now the most valuable battery recycling group in North America. This year it expects to process 20,000 tonnes of scrap and it has already recovered enough material to build 45,000 electric vehicle battery packs.

Advocates say a circular economy could create a more sustainable planet and reduce mountains of waste. In 2019 the World Economic Forum estimated that “a circular battery value chain” could account for 30 per cent of the emissions cuts needed to meet the targets set in the Paris accord and “create 10m safe and sustainable jobs around the world” by 2030.

Kristina Church, head of sustainable solutions at Lombard Odier Investment Managers, says transportation is “central” to creating a circular economy, not only because it accounts for a sixth of global CO2 emissions but because it intersects with mining and the energy grid.

“For the world to hit net zero — by 2050 you can’t do it with just resource efficiency, switching to EVs and clean energy, there’s still a gap,” Kunal Sinha, head of copper and electronics recycling at miner Glencore says. “That gap can be closed by driving the circular economy, changing how we consume things, how we reuse things, and how we recycle.

“Recycling plays a role,” he adds. “Not only do you provide extra supply to close the demand gap, but you also close the emissions gap.”

Although niche today, urban mining is set to become mainstream this decade given the broad political support for electric vehicles, an EV inflection point and policies to address climate change. Jennifer Granholm, US secretary of energy, has called for “a national commitment” to building a domestic supply chain for lithium-based batteries.

It is part of the Biden administration’s goal to reach 100 per cent clean electricity by 2035 and net zero emissions by 2050. Granholm has also said the global market for clean energy technologies will be worth $23tn by the end of this decade and warned that the US risks “bring[ing] a knife to a gunfight” as rival countries, particularly China, step up their investments, while Canada’s EV opportunity is to capitalize on the U.S. auto sector’s abrupt pivot.

In Europe, regulators emphasise environmental and societal concerns — such as the looming threat of job losses in Germany if carmakers stop producing combustion engines. Meanwhile, Beijing is subsidising the sector to boost sales of electric vehicles by 24 per cent every year for the rest of the decade, according to McKinsey.

This support, however, could have unintended consequences.

A shortage of semiconductors this year demonstrated the vulnerability of the “just-in-time” automotive supply chain, with global losses estimated at more than $110bn. The chip shortage is a harbinger of a much larger disruption that could be caused by bottlenecks for nickel, cobalt and lithium supply risks as every carmaker looks to electrify their vehicle portfolio.

Electric car sales last year accounted for just 4 per cent of the global total. That is projected to expand to 34 per cent in 2030, underscoring the accelerating EV timeline, and then swell to 70 per cent a decade later, according to BloombergNEF.

“There is going to be a mass scramble for these materials,” says Paul Anderson, a professor at the University of Birmingham. “Everyone is panicking about how to get their technology on to the market and there is not enough thought [given] to recycling.”

Monica Varman, a clean tech investor at G2 Venture Partners, estimates that demand for battery metals will exceed supply in two to three years, leading to a “crunch” lasting half a decade as the market reacts by redesigning batteries with sustainable materials. Recycled materials could help ease supply concerns, but analysts believe it will only be enough to cover 20 per cent of demand at most over the next decade.

So far, only a handful of start-ups besides Redwood have emerged to tackle the challenge of reconstituting discarded materials. One is Li-Cycle, based in Toronto and founded in 2016, reflecting Canada-U.S. collaboration in EV supply chains, which earlier this year raised more than $600m in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company valuing it at $1.7bn. Li-Cycle has already lined up partnerships with 14 automotive and battery companies, including Ultium, a joint venture between General Motors and LG Chem.

Tim Johnston, Li-Cycle chair, says the group’s plan is to create facilities it calls “spokes” around North America, where it will collect used batteries and transform them into “black mass” — the powder form of lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite. Then it will build larger hubs where it can reprocess more than 95 per cent of the substance into battery-grade material.

Without urban mining at scale, Johnston worries that the coming shortages will be like the 1973 Arab oil embargo, when US petrol prices quadrupled within four months, imposing what the US state department described as “structural challenges to the stability of whole national economies”.

“Oil you can actually turn back on relatively quickly — it doesn’t take that long to develop a well and to start pumping oil,” says Johnston. “But if you look at the timeline that it takes to develop a lithium asset, or a cobalt asset, or a nickel asset, it’s a minimum of five years.

“So not only do you have the potential to have the same sort of implications of the oil embargo,” he adds, “but [the effects] could be prolonged.”

Beyond aiding supply constraints and helping the environment, urban mining could also prove cheaper. A 2018 study on the recycling of gold and copper from discarded TV sets in China found the process was 13 times more economical than virgin mining.

Straubel points out that the concentration of valuable material is considerably higher in existing batteries versus mined materials.

“With rock and ores or brines, you have very low concentrations of these critical materials,” he says. “We’re starting with something that already is quite high concentration and also has all the interesting materials together in the right place. So it’s really a huge leg up over the problem mining has.”

The top-graded lithium found in mines today are just 2 to 2.5 per cent lithium oxide, whereas in urban mining the concentration is four to five times that, adds Li-Cycle’s Johnston.

Still, the process of extracting valuable materials from discarded products is complicated by designs that fail to consider their end of life. “Today, the design parameters are for quick assembly, for cost, for quality, fit and finish,” says Ed Boyd, head of the experience design group at Dell, the computer company. Some products take 20 or 30 minutes to disassemble — so laborious that it becomes impractical.

His team is now investigating ways to “drastically” cut back the number of materials used and make it so products can be taken apart in under a minute. “That’s actually not that hard to do,” he says. “We just haven’t had disassembly as a design parameter before.”

‘Monumental task’
While few dismiss the circular economy out of hand, there are plenty of sceptics who doubt these processes can be scaled up quickly enough to meet near-exponential demand for clean energy technologies in the next decade. “Recycling sounds very sexy,” says Julian Treger, chief executive of mining company Anglo Pacific. “But, ultimately, [it] is like smelting and refining. It’s a value added processing piece which doesn’t generally have enormous margins.”

Brian Menell, the founder of TechMet, a company that invests in mining, processing and recycling of technology metals and is partly owned by the US government, calls it “a monumental task”. “In 10 years’ time a fully optimised developed lithium-ion recycling battery industry will maybe provide 25 per cent of the battery metal requirements for the electric vehicle industry,” he says. “So it will be a contributor, but it’s not a solution.”

The real volume could be created when the industry recycles more electric vehicle batteries. But they last an average of 15 years, so the first wave of batteries will not reach their end of life and become available for recycling for some time. This extended timeline could be enough for technologies to develop, but it also creates risks. G2 Ventures’ Varman says recycling processes being developed now, for today’s batteries, risk being made redundant if chemistries evolve quickly.

Even getting consistent access to discarded car batteries could be a challenge, as older cars are often exported for reuse in developing countries, according to Hans Eric Melin, the founder of consultancy Circular Energy Storage.

Melin found that nearly a fifth of the roughly 400,000 Nissan Leaf electric cars produced by the end of 2018 are now registered in Ukraine, Russia, Jordan, New Zealand and Sri Lanka — places where getting a hold of the batteries at end-of-life is harder.

Berdichevsky of Sila Nano says his aim is to make EV batteries that last 30 years. If that can be accomplished, pent-up demand for recycling will be less onerous and costs will fall, helping to make electric vehicles more affordable. “In the future we’ll replace the car, but not the battery; of that I’m very confident,” he says. “We haven’t even scratched the surface of the battery age, in terms of what we can do with longevity and recycling.”

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Ontario EV Charger Streamlining accelerates public charging connections with OEB-led standardized forms, firm timelines, and utility coordination, leveraging Ontario’s clean electricity grid to expand reliable infrastructure across urban, rural, and northern communities.

Key Points

An OEB-led, provincewide procedure that standardizes EV charger connections and accelerates public charging.

✅ Standardized forms, data, and responsibilities across 58 utilities

✅ Firm timelines for studies, approvals, and grid connection upgrades

✅ Supports rural, northern, highway, and community charging expansion

The Ontario government is making it easier to build and connect new public electric vehicle (EV) chargers to the province’s world-class clean electricity grid. Starting May 27, 2024, all local utilities will follow a streamlined process for EV charging connections that will make it easier to set up new charging stations and, as network progress to date shows, support the adoption of electric vehicles in Ontario.

“As the number of EV owners in Ontario continues to grow, our government is making it easier to put shovels in the ground to build the critical infrastructure needed for drivers to charge their vehicles where and when they need to,” said Todd Smith, Minister of Energy. “This is just another step we are taking to reduce red tape, increase EV adoption, and use our clean electricity supply to support the electrification of Ontario’s transportation sector.”

Today, each of Ontario’s 58 local electricity utilities have different procedures for connecting new public EV charging stations, with different timelines, information requirements and responsibilities for customers.

In response to Minister Smith’s Letter of Direction, which called on the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) to take steps to facilitate the efficient integration of EV’s into the provincial electricity system, including vehicle-to-building charging applications, the OEB issued provincewide, streamlined procedures that all local utilities must follow for installing and connecting new EV charging infrastructure. This new procedure includes the implementation of standardized forms, timelines, and information requirements which will make it easier for EV charging providers to deploy chargers in all regions of the province.

“Our government is paving the way to an electric future by building the EV charging infrastructure drivers need, where they need it,” said Prabmeet Sarkaria, Minister of Transportation. “By increasing the accessibility of public EV charging stations across the province, including for rural and northern communities, we are providing more sustainable and convenient travel options for drivers.”

“Having attracted over $28 billion in automotive investments in the last three years, our province is a leading jurisdiction in the global production and development of EVs,” said Vic Fedeli, Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. “By making it easier to build public charging infrastructure, our government is supporting Ontario’s growing end-to-end EV supply chain and ensuring EV drivers can confidently and conveniently power their journeys.”

This initiative is part of the government’s larger plan to support the adoption of electric vehicles and make EV charging infrastructure more accessible, which includes:

• The EV ChargeON program – a $91 million investment to support the installation of public EV chargers, including emerging V1G chargers to support grid-friendly deployment, outside of Ontario’s large urban centres, including at community hubs, Ontario’s highway rest areas, carpool parking lots, and Ontario Parks.
• The new Ultra-Low Overnight price plan which allows customers who use more electricity at night, including those charging their EV, to save up to $90 per year by shifting demand to the ultra-low overnight rate period when provincewide electricity demand is lower and to participate in programs that let them sell electricity back to the grid when appropriate.
• Making it more convenient for electric vehicle (EV) owners to travel the province with EV fast chargers now installed at all 20 renovated ONroute stations along the province’s busiest highways, the 400 and 401.

The initiative also builds on the government’s Driving Prosperity: The Future of Ontario’s Automotive Sector plan which aims to create a domestic EV battery ecosystem in the province, expand energy storage capacity, and position Ontario as a North American automotive innovation hub by working to support the continued transition to electric, low carbon, connected and autonomous vehicles.

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UK Renewable Energy Milestones: wind outpacing gas, record solar output, offshore wind growth, National Grid data, and a net-zero grid by 2035, despite planning reforms, connection queues, and grid capacity constraints.

Key Points

Key UK advances where wind beat gas, solar set records, and policies target a 2035 net-zero electricity grid.

✅ Wind generated one-third of electricity, outpacing gas

✅ Record solar output reported by National Grid in April

✅ Onshore wind easing via planning reforms; grid delays persist

In the first three months of this year a third of the country's electricity came from wind farms, with the UK leading the G20 for wind power according to research from Imperial College London has shown.

National Grid has also confirmed that April saw a record period of solar energy generation, and wind generation set new records earlier in the year.

By 2035 the UK aims for all of its electricity to have net zero emissions, though progress stalled in 2019 in some areas.

"There are still many hurdles to reaching a completely fossil fuel-free grid, but wind out-supplying gas for the first time, a sign of wind leading the power mix, is a genuine milestone event," said Iain Staffell, energy researcher at Imperial College and lead author of the report.

The research was commissioned by Drax Electrical Insights, which is funded by Drax energy company.

The majority of the UK's wind power has come from offshore wind farms, and wind generated more electricity than coal in 2016 marking an early shift. Installing new onshore wind turbines has effectively been banned since 2015 in England.

Under current planning rules, companies can only apply to build onshore wind turbines on land specifically identified for development in the land-use plans drawn up by local councils. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agreed in December to relax these planning restrictions to speed up development.

Scientists say switching to renewable power is crucial to curb the impacts of climate change, with milestones like wind and solar topping nuclear underscoring the shift, which are already being felt, including in the UK, which last year recorded its hottest year since records began.

Solar and wind have seen significant growth in the UK. In the first quarter of 2023, 42% of the UK's electricity came from renewable energy, with 33% coming from fossil fuels like gas and record-low coal shares.

Some new solar and wind sites are waiting up to 10 to 15 years to be connected because of a lack of capacity in the electricity system.

And electricity only accounts for 18% of the UK's total power needs. There are many demands for energy which electricity is not meeting, such as heating our homes, manufacturing and transport.

Currently the majority of UK homes use gas for their heating - the government is seeking to move households away from gas boilers and on to heat pumps which use electricity.

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Biden Impact on Canadian Energy Exports highlights shifts in trade policy, tariffs, carbon pricing, and Keystone XL, with implications for aluminum, softwood lumber, electricity trade, fracking limits, and small modular nuclear reactors.

Key Points

How Biden-era trade, climate rules, and tariffs may reshape Canadian energy and exports.

✅ Reduced tariff volatility and friendlier trade policy toward allies

✅ Climate alignment: carbon pricing, clean power, cross-border electricity

✅ Potential gains for oil, gas, aluminum, and softwood lumber exporters

There is little doubt among industry associations, the Conference Board of Canada and C.D. Howe Institute that a Joe Biden White House will be better for Canadian resource and energy exporters – even Alberta’s beleaguered oil industry, despite Biden’s promise to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

The consensus among industry observers in the lead-up to the November 3 U.S. presidential election was that a re-elected Donald Trump would become even more pugnacious on trade and protectionism, putting electricity exports at risk for Canadian utilities, which would be bad for Canadian exporters. The Justin Trudeau government would likely come under increased pressure to lower Canadian business taxes to compete with Trump’s low-tax climate.

“A Joe Biden victory would likely lead to higher taxes for both corporations and wealthy Americans to help pay down the gigantic fiscal deficit that is currently running at plus-US$5 trillion,” the conference board concluded in a recent analysis.

On trade and tariffs, the conference board said: “Many but not all of these ongoing trade disputes would wither away under a Joe Biden administration. He would likely run a broad trade policy favouring strategic allies like Canada.

While Canadian industries like forestry and aluminum smelting benefited from strong demand and prices in the U.S. under Trump, the forced renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement failed end tariffs and duties on things like softwood lumber and aluminum ingots, even as Canadians backed tariffs on energy and minerals during the dispute.

The uncertainty over trade issues, and Trump’s tax cuts, which made Canada’s tax regime less competitive, have contributed to a period of low business investment in Canada during Trump's presidency.

“For Canada, we’ve seen a period, since this administration has been in power, where investment has eroded steadily,” conference board chief economist Pedro Antunes said. “We are not doing well at all, in terms of private capital investment in Canada.”

Alberta’s oil industry has been hit particularly hard, with a slew of divestments by big energy giants, and cancellations of major projects, like the $20 billion Frontier oilsands project, scrubbed by Teck Resources.

While domestic policies and global market forces are partly to blame for falling investments in Canada’s oil and gas sector, up until the pandemic hit, investment in oil and gas increased significantly in the U.S., while declining in Canada, during Trump’s first term.

Biden is also expected to level the playing field with respect to climate change policies. Canadian industries pay carbon taxes and face regulations that their counterparts in the U.S. don’t. That has disadvantaged energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries like mines and pulp mills in Canada.

“With Biden in office, Canada will once again have a partner at the federal level in the states in the transition to a decarbonized economy,” said Josha MacNab, national policy director for the Pembina Institute.

Biden’s policies might also favour importing aluminum, cross-laminated timber, fuel cells and other lower-carbon products and commodities from Canada.

At least one observer believes that Canada’s oil and gas sector might benefit more from a Biden White House, despite Biden’s pledge to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

“I think Joe Biden could be very good for Alberta,” Christopher Sands, director of the Wilson International Center’s Canada Institute, said in a recent discussion hosted by the C.D. Howe Institute.

Sands added that the presidential permit Biden has promised to tear up on the Keystone XL pipeline project is a construction permit, not an operating permit.

“The segment of that pipeline that crosses the U.S.-Canada border, which is the only place that the presidential permit applies, has been built,” Sands said. “So I think that’s somewhat of an empty threat.”

He added that, if Biden bans fracking on federal lands, as he has promised, and implements other restrictions that make it more costly for American oil and gas producers, it might increase the demand for Canadian oil and gas in the U.S. The demand would be highest in the U.S. Midwest, which depends largely on Marcellus Shale production, notably in Pennsylvania, and Western Canada for its oil and gas.

One of the Canadian industries directly affected by the Trump administration was aluminum smelting, which is relevant for B.C. because Rio Tinto plc’s Kitimat smelter exports aluminum to the U.S.

Jean Simard, president of the Aluminum Association of Canada, said one of Trump’s legacies was the reactivation of a little-used mechanism – Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act – to hit Canada and other countries, notably China, with import tariffs.

The 10 per cent tariffs on aluminum cost Canadian aluminum producers US$15 million in the month of August alone, Simard said.

The Trump administration eventually exempted Canadian aluminum exports from the tariffs, then reintroduced them, and then, one week before the election, exempted them again.

These on-again, off-again tariff threats create tremendous uncertainty, not just for Canadian producers, but also for U.S. buyers. That kind of uncertainty is likely to ease under a Biden presidency.

Simard said Biden’s track record suggests he is well-disposed towards Canada and less confrontational with allies and trade partners in general, and some in Washington have called for a stronger U.S.-Canada energy partnership as well.

Meanwhile, softwood lumber tariffs have been imposed by Democrats and Republicans alike. But there are compelling reasons for ending the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber war.

Home renovation and repair in the United States has done surprisingly well during the pandemic.

As a result of sawmill curtailments in the U.S. due to pandemic restrictions and high demand for lumber in the U.S. housing sector, North American lumbers prices broke records this summer, soaring as high as US$900 per thousand board feet.

“It shows that there’s very strong demand for our product,” said Susan Yurkovich, president of the Council of Forest Industries.

Ultimately, the duties Canadian lumber exporters pay are passed on to U.S. consumers.

Sands said Biden’s climate action pledges, including a clean electricity standard, could increase opportunities for trading electricity between Canada in the U.S., as the U.S. increasingly looks to Canada for green power, and could also be good for Canadian nuclear power technology.

Strong climate change policies necessarily result in an increased demand for low-carbon electricity, and advancing clean grids, which Canada has in abundance, thanks to both hydro and nuclear power.

“[Biden] does share the desire to act on climate change, but unlike some of his fellow party members who are more signed on to a Green New Deal, he’s open to pragmatic solutions that might get the job done quickly and efficiently,” Sands said.

“This is a huge opportunity for small, modular nuclear reactors, and Atomic Energy Canada has some great designs. There’s a real opportunity for a nuclear revival.” 

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Harbour Air Electric Seaplane completes a point-to-point test flight, showcasing electric aircraft innovation, zero-emission short-haul travel, H55 battery technology, and magniX propulsion between Vancouver and Victoria, advancing sustainable aviation and urban air mobility.

Key Points

Retrofitted DHC-2 Beaver testing zero-emission short-haul flights with H55 batteries and magniX propulsion.

✅ 74 km in 24 minutes, Vancouver to Victoria test route

✅ H55 battery pack and magniX electric motor integration

✅ Aims to certify short-haul, zero-emission commercial service

A seaplane airline in Vancouver says it has achieved a new goal in its development of an electric aircraft.

Harbour Air Seaplanes said in a release about its first electric passenger flights timeline that it completed its first direct point-to-point test flight on Wednesday by flying 74 kilometres in 24 minutes from a terminal on the Fraser River near Vancouver International Airport to a bay near Victoria International Airport.

"We're really excited about this project and what it means for us and what it means for the electric aviation revolution to be able to keep pushing that forward," said Erika Holtz, who leads the project for the company.

Harbour Air, founded in 1982, uses small propeller planes to fly commercial flights between the Lower Mainland, Seattle, Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and Whistler.

In the last few years it has turned its attention to becoming a leader in green urban mobility, as seen with electric ships on the B.C. coast, which would do away with the need to burn fossil fuels, a major contributor to climate change, for air travel.

In December 2019, a pilot flew one of Harbour Air's planes — a more than 60-year-old DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver floatplane that had been outfitted with a Seattle-based company's electric propulsion system, magniX — for three minutes over Richmond.

Since then, the company has continued to fine-tune the plane and conduct test flights in order to meet federally regulated criteria for Canada's first commercial electric flight, showing it can safely fly with passengers.

Harbour Air's new fully electric seaplane flew over the Fraser River for three minutes today in its debut test flight.
Holtz said flying point-to-point this week was a significant step forward.

"Having this electric aircraft be able to prove that it can do scheduled flights, it moves us that step closer to being able to completely convert our entire fleet to electric," she said.

All the test flights so far have been made with only a pilot on board.

Vancouver seaplane company to resume test flights with electric commercial airplane
The ePlane will stay in Victoria for the weekend as part of an open house put on by the B.C. Aviation Museum before returning to Richmond.

A yellow seaplane flies over a body of water with the Vancouver skyline visible in the background.
A prototype all-electric floatplane made by B.C.'s Harbour Air Seaplanes on a test flight in Vancouver in 2021. (Harbour Air Seaplanes)
Early in Harbour Air's undertaking to develop an all-electric airplane, experts who study the aviation sector said Harbour Air would have to find a way to make the plane light enough to carry heavy lithium batteries and passengers, without exceeding weight limits for the plane.

Werner Antweiler, a professor of economics at UBC's Sauder School of Business who studies the commercialization of novel technologies around mobility, said in 2021 that Harbour Air's challenge would be proving to regulators that the plane was safe to fly and the batteries powerful enough to complete short-haul flights with power to spare.

In April 2021 Harbour Air partnered with Swiss company H55 to incorporate its battery technology, reflecting ongoing research investment to limit weight and improve the distance the plane could fly.

Shawn Braiden, a vice-president with Harbour Air, said the company is trying to get as much power as possible from the lightest possible batteries, a challenge shared by BC Ferries' hybrid ships as well. 

"It's a balancing act," he said.

In December, Harbour Air announced it had begun work on converting a second de Havilland Beaver to an all-electric airplane, copying the original prototype.

The plan is to retrofit version two of the ePlane with room for a pilot plus three passengers. If certified for commercial use, it could become one of the first all-electric commercial passenger planes operating in the world.

Seth Wynes, a post-doctoral fellow at Concordia University who has studied how to de-carbonize the aviation industry, said Harbour Air's progress on its eplane project won't solve the pollution problem of long-haul flights, but could inspire other short-haul airlines to follow suit, alongside initiatives like electric ferries in B.C. that expand low-carbon transportation. 

"It's also just really helpful to pilot these technologies and get them going where they can be scaled up and used in a bunch of different places around the world," he said. "So that's why Harbour Air making progress on this front is exciting."

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