Tesla prepares to bring its electric cars to South America

Ontario Renewable Energy Procurement 2024 will see the IESO secure wind, solar, and hydro power to meet rising electricity demand, support transit electrification, bolster grid reliability, and serve manufacturing growth across the province.

Key Points

A provincial IESO initiative to add 2,000 MW of clean power and plan 3,000 MW more to meet rising demand.

✅ IESO to procure 2,000 MW from wind, solar, hydro

✅ Exploring 3,000 MW via upgrades and expansions

✅ Demand growth ~2% yearly; electrification and industry

After the Ford government terminated renewable energy contracts five years ago, despite warnings about wind project cancellation costs that year, Ontario's electricity operator, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), is now planning to once again incorporate wind and solar initiatives to address the province's increasing power demands.

The IESO, responsible for managing the provincial power supply, is set to secure 2,000 megawatts of electricity from clean sources, which include wind, solar, and hydro power, as wind power competitiveness increases across Canada. Additionally, the IESO is exploring the possibilities of reacquiring, upgrading, or expanding existing facilities to generate an additional 3,000 MW of electricity in the future.

These new power procurement efforts in Ontario aim to meet the rising energy demand driven by transit electrification and large-scale manufacturing projects, even as national renewable growth projections were scaled back after Ontario scrapped its clean energy program, which are expected to exert greater pressure on the provincial grid.

The IESO projects a consistent growth in demand of approximately two percent per year over the next two decades. This growth has prompted the Ford government, amid debate over Ontario's electricity future in the province, to take proactive measures to prevent potential blackouts or disruptions for both residential and commercial consumers.

This renewed commitment to renewable energy represents a significant policy shift for Premier Doug Ford, reflecting his new stance on wind power over time, who had previously voiced strong opposition to wind turbines and pledged to dismantle all windmills in the province. In 2018, shortly after taking office, the government terminated 750 renewable energy contracts that had been signed by the previous Liberal government, incurring fees of $230 million for taxpayers.

At the time, the government cited reasons such as surplus electricity supply and increased costs for ratepayers as grounds for contract cancellations. Premier Ford expressed pride in the decision, echoing a proud of cancelling contracts stance, claiming that it saved taxpayers $790 million and eliminated what he viewed as detrimental wind turbines that had negatively impacted the province's energy landscape for 15 years.

The Ontario government's new wind and solar energy procurement initiatives are scheduled to commence in 2024, following a court ruling on a Cornwall wind farm that spotlighted cancellation decisions.

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Canada EV-ready rules for MURBs vary by city, with municipal bylaws dictating at-home Level 2 charging in condos, apartments, strata, and townhomes; BC leads, others evaluating updates to building codes.

Key Points

Municipal bylaws mandate EV-ready, Level 2 charging in multi-unit housing; requirements vary by city.

✅ No federal/provincial mandates; municipal bylaws set EV access.

✅ B.C. leads; many cities require 100% EV-ready residential stalls.

✅ Other cities are evaluating code changes; enforcement varies widely.

An absence of federal, provincial rules for EV charging in Canada’s condos, apartment buildings, strata or townhomes punts the issue to municipalities and leaves many strata owners to fend for themselves, finds Electric Autonomy’s cross-Canada guide to municipal building code regulations for EV charging in MURBs

When it comes to reducing barriers to electric vehicle adoption in Canada, one of the most critical steps governments can do is to help provide access to at-home EV charging.

While this is usually not a complicated undertaking in single-unit dwellings, in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) which includes apartments, condos, strata and townhomes, the situation and the experience is quite varied for Canadian EV drivers, and retrofitting condos can add complexity depending on the city in which they live.

In Canada, there are no regulations in the national building code that require new or existing condos, apartment buildings, strata or townhomes to offer EV charging. Provinces and territories are able to create their own building laws and codes, but none have added anything yet to support EV charging. Instead, some municipalities are provided with the latitude by their respective provinces to amend local bylaws and add regulations that will require multi-residential units — both new builds and existing ones — to be EV-ready.

The result is that the experience and process of MURB residents getting EV charging infrastructure access is highly fragmented across Canada.

In order to bring more transparency, Electric Autonomy Canada has compiled a roundup of all the municipalities in Canada with existing regulations that require all new constructions to be EV-ready for the future and those cities that have announced publicly they are considering implementing the same.

The tally shows that 21 cities in British Columbia and one city in both Quebec and Ontario have put in place some EV-ready regulations. There are eight other municipalities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland evaluating their own building code amendments, including Calgary’s condo charging expansion initiatives across apartments and condos.

No municipalities in Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick have any regulations around this. City councils in Edmonton, Saskatoon, Hamilton, Sarnia, Halifax and St. John’s have started looking into it, but no regulations have officially been made.

British Columbia
B.C. is, by far, Canada’s most advanced province in terms of having mandates for EV charging access in condos, apartment buildings, strata or townhomes, leading the country in expanding EV charging with 20 cities with modified building codes to stipulate EV-readiness requirements and one city in the process of implementing them.

City of Vancouver: Bylaw 10908 – Section 10.2.3. was amended on July 1, 2014, to include provisions for Level 2 EV charging infrastructure at all residential and commercial buildings. On March 14, 2018, the bylaw was updated to adopt a 100 per cent EV-ready policy from 20 per cent to 100 per cent. The current bylaw also requires one EV-ready stall for single-family residences with garages and 10 per cent of parking stalls to be EV-ready for commercial buildings.

City of Burnaby: Zoning Bylaw 13903 – Section 800.8, which took effect on September 1st, required Level 2 energized outlets in all new residential parking spaces. This includes both single-family homes and multi-unit residential buildings. Parking spaces for secondary suites and visitor parking are exempt, but all other stalls in new buildings must be 100 per cent EV-ready.

City of Nelson: The city amended its Off-Street Parking and Landscaping Bylaw No. 3274 – Section 7.4 in 2019 to have at least one parking space per dwelling unit feature
Level 2 charging or higher in new single-family and multi-unit residential buildings, starting in 2020. For every 10 parking spaces available at a dwelling, two stalls must have Level 2 charging capabilities.

City of Coquitlam: The Zoning Bylaw No. 4905 – Section 714 was amended on October 29, 2018, to require all new construction, including single-family residences and MURBs, to have a minimum of one energized outlet capable of Level 2 charging or higher for every dwelling unit. Parking spaces designated for visitors are exempt.

If the number of parking spaces is less than the number of dwelling units, all residential parking spots must have an energized outlet with Level 2 or higher charging capabilities.

City of North Vancouver: According to Zoning Bylaw No. 6700 – Section 909, all parking spaces in all new residential multi-family buildings must include Level 2 EV charging infrastructure as of June 2019 and 10 per cent of residential visitor parking spaces must include Level 2 EV charging infrastructure as of Jan. 2022.

District of North Vancouver: Per the Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Policy, updated on March 17, 2021, all parking stalls — not including visitor parking — must feature energized outlets capable of providing Level 2 charging or higher for multi-family residences.

City of New Westminster: As of April 1, 2019, all new buildings with at least one residential unit are required to have a Level 2 energized outlet to the residential parking spaces, according to Electric Vehicle Ready Infrastructure Zoning Bylaw 8040, 2018. Energized Level 2 outlets will not be required for visitor parking spaces.

City of Port Moody: Zoning Bylaw No. 2937 – Section 6.11 mandated that all spaces in new residential constructions starting from March 1, 2019, required an energized outlet capable of Level 2 charging. A minimum of 20 per cent of spaces in new commercial constructions from March 1, 2019, required an energized outlet capable of Level 2 charging.

City of Richmond: All new buildings and residential parking spaces from April 1, 2018, excluding those provided for visitors’ use, have had an energized outlet capable of providing Level 2 charging or higher to the parking space, says Zoning Bylaw 8500 – Section 7.15.

District of Saanich: Zoning Bylaw No. 8200 – Section 7 specified that all new residential MURBs are required to provide Level 2 charging after Sept. 1, 2020.

District of Squamish: Bylaw No. 2610, 2018 Subsection 41.11(f) required 100 per cent of off-street parking stalls to have charging infrastructure starting from July 24, 201, in any shared parking areas for multiple-unit residential uses.

City of Surrey: Zoning By-law No. 12000 – Part 5(7) was amended on February 25, 2019 to say builders must construct and install an energized electrical outlet for 100 per cent of residential parking spaces, with home and workplace charging rebates helping adoption, 50 per cent of visitor parking spaces, and 20 per cent of commercial parking spaces. Each energized electrical outlet must be capable of providing Level 2 or a higher level of electric vehicle charging

District of West Vancouver: Per Zoning Bylaw No. 4662 – Sections 142.10; 141.01(4), new dwelling units, all parking spaces for residential use, except visitor parking, need to include an energized outlet that is: (a) capable of providing Level 2 charging for an electric vehicle; (b) labelled for the use of electric vehicle charging.

City of Victoria: In effect since October 1, 2020, the Zoning Bylaw No. 80-159 – Schedule C Section 2.4 stipulates that all residential parking spaces in new residential developments must have an energized electrical outlet installed that can provide Level 2 charging for an electric vehicle, and residents can access EV charger rebates to offset costs. This requirement applies to both single-family and multi-unit residential dwellings but not visitor parking spaces.

Township of Langley: In Zoning Bylaw No. 2500 – Section 107.3, all new residential construction, including single-home dwellings, townhouses and apartments, required one space per dwelling unit to have EV charging requirements, starting from Nov. 4, 2019.

Town of View Royal: As per Zoning Bylaw No. 900 – Section 5.13, every commercial or multi-unit residential construction with more than 100 parking spots must provide an accessible electric vehicle charging station on the premises for patrons or residents. This bylaw was adopted on Feb. 2021.

Nanaimo: According to the Off-Street Parking Regulations Bylaw No. 7266 – Section 7.7, a minimum of 25 per cent of all off-street parking spots in any common parking area for multifamily residential housing must have shared access to a Level 2 EV charging, and have an electrical outlet box wired with a separate branch circuit capable of supplying electricity to support both Level 1 and Level 2 charging.

Port Coquitlam: For residential buildings that do not have a common parking area, one parking space per dwelling unit is required to provide “roughed-in” charging infrastructure, put in effect on Jan. 23, 2018. This must include an electrical outlet box located within three metres of the unit’s parking space, according to Zoning Bylaw No. 3630 – Section 2.5.10;11. For a residential building with a common parking area, a separate single utility electrical meter and disconnect should be provided in line with the electrical panel(s) intended to provide EV charging located within three metres of the parking space.

Maple Ridge: The city’s Bylaw No. 4350-1990 – Schedule F says for apartments, each parking space provided for residential use, excluding visitor parking spaces, will be required to have roughed-in infrastructure capable of providing Level 2 charging.

Apartments and townhouses with a minimum of 50 per cent of required visitor parking spaces will need partial infrastructure capable of Level 2 charging.

White Rock: The city is currently considering changes to its Zoning Bylaw, 2012, No. 2000. On March 18, 2021, the Environmental Advisory Committee presented recommendations that would require all resident parking stalls to be Level 2 EV-ready in new multi-unit residential buildings and 50 per cent of visitor parking stalls to be Level 2 EV-ready in new multi-unit residential buildings.

Kamloops: The city of Kamloops is looking to draft a zoning amendment bylaw that would require new residential developments, all new single-family, single-family with a secondary suite, two-family, and multi-family residential developments, to have EV-ready parking with one parking stall per dwelling unit, at the beginning of Jan. 1, 2023.

Kamloops’ sustainability services supervisor Glen Cheetham told Electric Autonomy Canada in an email statement that the city’s council has given direction to staff to “conduct one final round of engagement with industry before bringing the zoning amendment bylaw to Council mid-June for first and second reading, followed by a public hearing and third reading/approval.”

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Ukraine Wind Energy Resilience shields the grid with wind power along the Black Sea, dispersing turbines to withstand missile attacks, accelerate clean energy transition, aid EU integration, and strengthen energy security and rapid recovery.

Key Points

A strategy in Ukraine using wind farms to harden the grid, ensure clean power, and speed recovery from missile strikes.

✅ Distributed turbines reduce single-point-of-failure risk

✅ Faster repair of substations and lines than power plants

✅ Supports EU-aligned clean energy and grid security goals

The giants catch the wind with their huge arms, helping to keep the lights on in Ukraine — newly built windmills, on plains along the Black Sea.

In 15 months of war, Russia has launched countless missiles and exploding drones at power plants, hydroelectric dams and substations, trying to black out as much of Ukraine as it can, as often as it can, even amid talk of limiting attacks on energy sites that has surfaced, in its campaign to pound the country into submission.

The new Tyligulska wind farm stands only a few dozen miles from Russian artillery, but Ukrainians say it has a crucial advantage over most of the country’s grid, helping stabilize the system even as electricity exports have occasionally resumed under fire.

A single, well-placed missile can damage a power plant severely enough to take it out of action, but Ukrainian officials say that doing the same to a set of windmills — each one tens of meters apart from any other — would require dozens of missiles. A wind farm can be temporarily disabled by striking a transformer substation or transmission lines, but these are much easier to repair than power plants.

“It is our response to Russians,” said Maksym Timchenko, CEO of DTEK Group, the company that built the turbines in the southern Mykolaiv region — the first phase of what is planned as Eastern Europe’s largest wind farm. “It is the most profitable and, as we know now, most secure form of energy.”

Ukraine has had laws in place since 2014 to promote a transition to renewable energy, both to lower dependence on Russian energy imports, with periods when electricity exports resumed to neighbors, and because it was profitable. But that transition still has a long way to go, and the war makes its prospects, like everything else about Ukraine’s future, murky.

In 2020, 12% of Ukraine’s electricity came from renewable sources — barely half the percentage for the European Union. Plans for the Tyligulska project call for 85 turbines producing up to 500 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough for 500,000 apartments — an impressive output for a wind farm, but less than 1% of the country’s prewar generating capacity.

After the Kremlin began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the need for new power sources became acute, prompting deliveries such as a mobile gas turbine power plant to bolster capacity. Russia has bombarded Ukraine’s power plants and cut off delivery of the natural gas that fueled some of them.

Russian occupation forces have seized a large part of the country’s power supply, and Russia has built power lines to reactivate the Zaporizhzhia plant in occupied territory, ensuring that its output does not reach territory still held by Ukraine. They hold the single largest generator, the 5,700-megawatt Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has been damaged repeatedly in fighting and has stopped transmitting energy to the grid, with UN inspectors warning of mines at the site during recent visits. They also control 90% of Ukraine’s renewable energy plants, which are concentrated in the southeast.

The postwar recovery plans Ukraine has presented to supporters including the European Union, which it hopes to join, feature a major new commitment to clean energy, even as a controversial proposal on Ukraine’s nuclear plants continues to stir debate.

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Canada Renewable Energy Outlook highlights IEA forecasts of slower capacity growth as Ontario cancels LRP auctions; wind, solar, and hydro expand amid carbon pricing, coal phase-out, Alberta tenders, and falling costs despite natural gas competition.

Key Points

The Canada Renewable Energy Outlook distills IEA projections and policies behind wind, solar, and hydro growth to 2022.

✅ IEA trims Canada renewables growth to 9 GW by 2022

✅ Ontario LRP cuts and Quebec tenders reduce near-term additions

✅ Wind, solar, hydro expand amid carbon pricing and coal phase-out

A new report expects growth in Canadian renewable energy capacity to slow in the next five years compared to earlier projections, a decrease that comes after Ontario scrapped a contentious clean energy program aimed at boosting wind and solar supplies.

The International Energy Agency’s annual outlook for renewable energy, released Wednesday, projects Canada’s renewable capacity to grow by nine gigawatts between 2017 and 2022, down from last year’s report that projected capacity would grow by 13GW.

The influential Paris-based agency said its recent outlook for Canadian renewables was “less optimistic” than its 2016 projection due to “recent changes in auctions schemes in Ontario and Quebec.”

PROGRAM CUTS

In mid-2016 the Ontario government suspended the second phase of its Large Renewable Procurement (LPR) program, axing $3.8 billion in planned renewable energy contracts. And Quebec cancelled tenders for several clean energy projects, which also led the agency to trim its forecasts, the report said.

Ontario cut the LRP program amid anger over rising electricity bills, which critics said was at least partly due to the rapid expansion of wind power supplies across the province.

Experts said the rise in costs was also partly due to major one-time costs to maintain aging infrastructure, particularly the $12.8-billion refurbishment of the Darlington nuclear plant located east of Toronto. The province also has plans to renovate the nearby Pickering nuclear plant in coming years.

The IEA report comes as Ottawa aims to drastically cut carbon emissions, largely by expanding renewable energy capacity. The provinces, including the Prairie provinces, have meanwhile been looking to pare back emissions by phasing out coal and implementing a carbon tax.

While Ontario’s decision to scrap the LRP program is a minor setback in the near-term, analysts say that tightening environmental policy in Canada and elsewhere will regardless continue to drive rapid growth in renewable energy supplies like wind power and solar.

Even the threat of cheap supplies of natural gas, a major competitor to renewable supplies, is unlikely to keep wind and solar supplies off the market, despite lagging solar demand in some regions, as costs continue to fall.

“It’s not just this (Ontario) renewables program, it’s the carbon pricing program, the coal phase out, a whole plethora of programs that are squeezing natural gas margins,” said Dave Sawyer, an economist at EnviroEconomics in Ottawa.

RENEWABLE ENERGY CAPACITY

Canada’s renewable energy capacity is still expected to grow at a robust 10 per cent per year, the report said, and is expected to supply 69 per cent of overall power generation in the country by 2022.

The IEA, however, expects the growth in hydro power capacity to “slow significantly” beyond 2022, after a raft of new hydro projects come online.

Canadian hydro power capacity is projected to grow 2.2GW in the next five years, mostly due to the commissioning of the Keeyask plant in Manitoba the Muskrat Falls dam in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Romaine 3 and 4 stations in Quebec, in a sector where Canada ranks in the top 10 for hydropower jobs nationwide.

Solar capacity in Canada is expected to grow by 2GW to 4.7GW in 2022, approaching the 5 GW milestone in the near term, mostly due to feed-in-tariff programs in Ontario and renewable energy tenders currently underway in Alberta.

Globally, China and India lead renewable capacity growth projections. China alone is expected to be responsible for 40 per cent of renewable capacity growth in the next five years, while India will double its renewable electricity capacity by 2022. The world is collectively expected to grow renewable electricity capacity by 43 per cent between 2017 and 2022.

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Clean Energy Buyers Alliance 2030 Goal targets a 90% carbon-free U.S. grid, accelerating power-sector decarbonization via corporate renewable energy procurement, market and policy reforms, and customer demand to enable net-zero electrification across industries.

Key Points

The Alliance's plan to reach a 90% carbon-free U.S. electricity system by 2030 via customer-driven markets and policy.

✅ Corporate buyers scale renewable PPAs and aggregation

✅ Market and policy reforms unlock clean power access

✅ Goal aligns with net-zero and widespread electrification

The Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA) and the Clean Energy Buyers Institute (CEBI), which together make up the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, have announced a profound new aspiration for impact: a 90% carbon-free U.S. electricity system by 2030 and a global community of energy customers driving the global energy transition forward.

Alongside the two organizations’ bold new vision of the future – customer-driven clean energy for all – the Alliance will super-charge the work of its predecessor organizations, the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA) and the REBA Institute, which represent the most iconic global companies with more than $6 trillion dollars in annual revenues and 14 million employees.

“This is the decisive decade for climate action and especially for decarbonization of the power sector,” said Miranda Ballentine, CEO of CEBA and CEBI. “To achieve a net-zero economy worldwide by 2050, the United States must lead. And the power sector must accelerate toward a 2030 timeline as electrification of other industries will be driving up power use.”

In the U.S. alone, more than 60% of electricity is consumed by the commercial and industrial sectors. Institutional energy customers have accelerated the deployment of clean energy solutions over the last 10 years to achieve increasingly ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, even as a federal coal plan remains under debate, and further cement the critical role of customers in decarbonizing the energy system. The Clean Energy Buyers Association Deal Tracker shows that 7.9 GW of new corporate renewable energy project announcements in the first three quarters of this year are equivalent to 40% of all new carbon free energy capacity added in the U.S. so far in 2021.

“With our new vision of customer-driven clean energy for all, we are also unveiling new organization brands,” Ballentine continued. “I’m excited to announce that REBA will become CEBA—the Clean Energy Buyers Association—and will focus on activating our community of energy customers and partners to deploy market and policy solutions for a carbon-free energy system. The REBA Institute will become the Clean Energy Buyers Institute (CEBI) and will focus on solving the toughest market and policy barriers to achieving a carbon-free energy system in collaboration with policymakers, leading philanthropies, and energy market stakeholders. Together, CEBA and CEBI will make up the new Clean Energy Buyers Alliance.”

To decarbonize the U.S. electricity system 90% by 2030, a goal aligned with California's 100% carbon-free mandate efforts, and to activate a community of customers driving clean energy around the world, the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance will drive three critical transformations to:

Unlock markets so that energy customers can use their buying power and market-influence, building on a historic U.S. climate deal this year, to accelerate electricity decarbonization.

Catalyze communities of energy customers to actively choose clean energy through Mission Innovation collaborations and to do more together than they could on their own.

Decarbonize the grid for all, since not every energy customer can or will use their buying power to choose clean energy.

“The Clean Energy Buyers Alliance is setting the bar for what energy buyers, utilities and governments should and need to be doing to achieve a carbon-free energy future,” said Michael Terrell, CEBA board chair and Director of Energy at Google. “This ambitious approach is a critical step in tackling climate change. The time for meaningful climate action is now and we must collectively be bolder and more ambitious in our actions in both the public and private sectors – starting today.”

This new vision of customer-driven clean energy for all is an unprecedented opportunity for every member of the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance community – from energy customers to providers to manufacturers – to all parties up and down the energy supply chain to lead the evolution of a new energy economy, which will require incentives to double investment in clean energy to rise to $4 trillion by 2030.

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Canada Distributed Energy faces disruption as solar, smart grids, microgrids, and storage scale utility-scale renewables, challenging centralized utilities and accelerating decarbonization, grid modernization, and distributed generation across provinces like Alberta.

Key Points

Canada Distributed Energy shifts from centralized grids to local solar, wind, and storage for reliable low-carbon power.

✅ Morgan Solar and Enbridge launch Alberta Solar One, 13.7 MW.

✅ Optical films boost panel efficiency, lowering cost per watt.

✅ Strong utilities slow adoption of microgrids and smart grids.

By Nick Waddell

Disruption is coming to electricity generation but Canada has become a laggard when it comes to not just adoption of alternative energy sources but in moving to a more distributed model of electricity generation. That’s according to Mike Andrade, CEO of Morgan Solar, whose new solar project in conjunction with Enbridge has just come online in Alberta, a province known as a powerhouse for both green and fossil energy in Canada.

“There’s a lot of inertia to Canada’s electrical system and I don’t think that bodes well,” said Andrade, who spoke on BNN Bloomberg on Thursday. 

“Canada is one of the poorest places for uptake of solar, as NEB data on solar demand indicates,” Andrade said, “I believe a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have strong provincial utilities that have their mandates and their chosen technologies.”

Alberta Solar One, a 13.7 MW power facility near Lethbridge, Alberta, had its unveiling this week amid red-hot solar growth in Alberta that shows no sign of slowing. It’s a 36,500-panel farm constructed by Enbridge in a quick six-month turnaround as part of the power company’s pledge to become a carbon-free generator by 2050. Along with solar, Enbridge has made big investments in offshore and onshore wind farms in the United States, while also producing so-called green hydrogen at an Ontario plant.

Private company Morgan Solar considers the Alberta Solar One project as the first utility-scale validation of its technology, which uses optical films to redirect light onto photovoltaic cells to further power production. 

“We use an advanced modelling system and a variety of tools to design very simple optical systems that can be easily inserted into a panel,” Andrade said. “They cost less and bring down the cost per watt. It captures light that would otherwise miss the cells and so you get more power per cell area than any other commercial technology at this point.”

Like renewables in general, solar energy has been thrust into the spotlight as governments worldwide aim to make good on their climate change and emissions pledges, with analyses showing zero-emissions electricity by 2035 is possible in Canada, and convert power generation from fossil fuels to alternative sources. 

The market has paid attention, too, driving up values on renewable energy stocks across the board, including solar stocks, as provinces like Alberta explore selling renewable energy into broader markets. Last year, the Invesco Solar ETF, which tracks the MAC Global Solar Energy Index, soared 234 per cent, while Canadian companies with solar assets like Algonquin Power and Northland Power have been winners over the past few years.

Canadian cleantech companies involved in the solar power sector have also fared well, with names like UGE International (UGE International Stock Quote, Chart, News, Analyst. Financials TSXV:UGE), Aurora Solar and 5N Plus (5N Plus Stock Quote, Chart, News, Analysts, Financials TSX:VNP) having attracted investor attention of late.

Currently, part of the push in alternative energy involves the move from centralized to a more distributed picture of power generation, where solar panels, wind turbines and small modular nuclear reactors can operate close to or within sources of consumption like cities.

But Andrade says Canada has a lot of catching up to do on that front, especially as its current system seems devoted to maintaining the precedence of large, centralized power production — along with the utility companies that generate it.

“Canada is going to be left with this big, old fashioned hub and spoke model, and that’s increasingly going to be out-competed by a distributed grid, call them smart grids or micro grids,” Andrade said.

“That’s the future that solar is going to drive along with storage, and I personally don’t think Canada is prepared for it, not because we can’t do it but because regulatory and incumbency is holding us back from doing that,” he said.

“We pay our utilities, saying, ‘You invest capital and we’ll give you a fixed return on capital.’ Well, guess what? You’re going to get large, centralized capital projects which are going to get big central generation hub and spoke distribution,” Andrade said.

Ahead of the Canadian federal government’s tabling next week of its first budget in two years, many in the energy sector will be taking notes on the Liberal government’s investments in the so-called green recovery after the economic downturn, with renewable energy proponents hoping for further support, noting Alberta’s renewable energy surge could power thousands of jobs, to shift Canada’s resource sector away from fossil fuels.

By comparison, President Biden in the US recently unveiled his $2-billion infrastructure plan which put precedence on greening the country’s power grid, encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles and supporting renewable resource development, and Canadian studies suggest 2035 zero-emission power is practical and profitable as well across the national grid. 

On disruption in power generation, Andrade said there are parallels to be drawn from information technology, which has historically made a point of discarded outdated models along the way.

“I was at IBM, and they had the mainframe business and that got blown up. I also worked with Nortel and Celestica and they got blown up —and it wasn’t due to having better central hub and spoke systems. They got beat up by this distributed system,” Andrade said. 

“The same thing is going to happen here and the disruption is coming in electricity generation as well,” he said.

About The Author - Nick Waddell

Cantech Letter founder and editor Nick Waddell has lived in five Canadian provinces and is proud of his country's often overlooked contributions to the world of science and technology. Waddell takes a regular shift on the Canadian media circuit, making appearances on CTV, CBC and BNN, and contributing to publications such as Canadian Business and Business Insider.

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