Electrification and Grid Integration - The Transition Accelerator

Electrifying Canada positions Canada to lead in the race to net zero.

Montreal, QC – The Transition Accelerator is bringing together nearly thirty organizations from finance, industry, organized labour, Indigenous communities, and civil society to jump-start Canada’s clean electricity future. Electrifying Canada convenes the key actors for planning, financing and building the electricity system of the future.

While there’s no single path to achieving Canada’s net-zero ambitions, electrification is a cost-effective and dependable way to decarbonize large parts of our economy, including high-emitting sectors. A low-carbon grid is the backbone of future economic prosperity. However, electrification is not happening at the pace and scale needed to meet the challenges of the future.

By fostering dialogue between partners on the supply, demand, and finance sides of the electricity sector, Electrifying Canada is positioning Canada to compete in the net-zero economy. This work is made even more pressing in the face of fast-forming global low-carbon supply chains. Tremendous economic opportunity exists by harnessing and growing Canada’s non-emitting electricity to meet new demand.

“This next phase for Electrifying Canada is a result of many partners doubling down on a commitment to collaborate,” says Moe Kabbara, Vice President at The Transition Accelerator. “Developing a consistent forum for information sharing and collaboration will bring us closer to overcoming the barriers to building a future-ready electricity system. Electrifying Canada brings together the key voices that will get this done.”

The Transition Accelerator is a pan-Canadian organization dedicated to identifying and advancing viable pathways to Canada’s 2050 climate targets. It works with stakeholders in government, industry, and beyond to find and implement practical solutions to the challenges of the net-zero transition.

“Building a reliable and resilient grid to power the net-zero industrial future is one of the most important challenges of our time; This analysis supports our efforts at BMO to be our clients’ lead partner in the transition to a net-zero world,” says Susan McGeachie, head of the BMO Climate Institute. “We are looking forward to working with The Transition Accelerator to continue advancing Canada’s climate goals.”

“Electrification presents incredible opportunities for Canada, particularly to attract new businesses and international investment,” says Francis Bradley, president and CEO of Electricity Canada. “For Canada to stay competitive in a low-carbon economy, we need to effectively build more non-emitting electricity resources, faster—and we need to grow a skilled workforce to achieve that.”

Canada’s electricity landscape is complex, and coordinating between provincial governments, regulators, utilities, and planning bodies to align outlooks and investments with economy-wide targets won’t happen overnight. That’s exactly why Electrifying Canada’s sustained, collaborative approach is needed. By bringing together leading experts and sector partners from across Canada, the initiative aims to solve entrenched coordination challenges while identifying new projects and financing opportunities.

“At the Ivey Foundation we are doubling down on accelerating Canada’s transition to a decarbonized economy,” says Dr. Bruce Lourie, President of the Ivey Foundation, one of The Transition Accelerator’s major funders. “Right now, technology is not the biggest barrier to meeting our net-zero goals. To build a right-sized clean grid we need exactly the kind of cross-sector coordination and collaboration Electrifying Canada will undertake.”

Electrifying Canada partners are:

BMO
Cameco
Canadian Climate Institute
Canadian Nuclear Association
Canadian Renewable Energy Association
Dunsky Energy + Climate
Electricity Canada
Electricity Human Resources Canada
Energy Modelling Hub
First Nations Major Projects Coalition
Hydro One
IBEW CANADA
Innergex
International Institute for Sustainable Development
Ivey Foundation
Marine Renewables Canada
Net-Zero Atlantic
Ontario Power Generation
The Pembina Institute
QUEST Canada
RBC Tech for Nature
Rewiring America
Rio Tinto
Scotiabank
Teck
Trottier Family Foundation
Waterpower Canada

Ottawa, ON – Reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions will require major changes in the large-scale systems we use to meet societal needs, such as the way we produce and distribute energy or move people and goods. To meet this challenge, Canada needs a paradigm shift from trying to do a little bit of everything to reduce emissions to accelerating real change by strategically focusing on building out key regional and sector-specific pathways to net zero. This is the core message behind the Pathways to Net Zero report, a decision support tool released today by The Transition Accelerator, a pan-Canadian registered charity focused on reaching net zero while solving other societal challenges. The report is available to read at transitionaccelerator.ca.

Written as a reference document and tool for those making climate policy and investment decisions, the report provides assessments of different pathways to net zero for eight critical sectors, assigning different technologies and approaches a green, yellow or red designation based on their viability. Overall, the report takes a transition and an energy systems approach, recommending that government policies need to focus on how to accelerate the transformation of systems and sectors that generate greenhouse gas emissions while delivering other societal benefits, rather than on advancing incremental emissions reductions at the lowest cost per tonne by a specific date.

With this in mind, the report calls on policymakers and investors to first focus on decarbonizing sectors where net-zero technologies and approaches are already available. This means prioritizing decarbonizing electricity, accelerating electric vehicle deployment and performing mass building retrofits, since these sectors are in the more mature ‘diffusion’ phase of their decarbonization transition. For Canada to successfully reach net zero by 2050, it must commit to these viable, ready-to-deploy solutions and put Canada on a path to decarbonization now.

“Rather than just setting a regulatory and policy framework and letting the marketplace determine the pace and scale of Canada’s net zero transition, it is vital that governments target efforts and commit now to the solutions that will get us there,” said James Meadowcroft, a research director at The Transition Accelerator and the lead author of the Pathways to Net Zero report. “Without similar past commitments from governments, Canada would not have built a national highway system or have developed the oil sands.”

The report also underscores that Canada needs to consider what its future net zero energy system will look like, and build pathways to get there. For example, the report identifies decarbonized electricity, low-carbon fuels like hydrogen and biofuels, carbon capture and storage and negative emissions solutions, and dramatic changes in technologies, business models and social practices in the end use sectors as essential elements of Canada’s future clean energy system.

The Transition Accelerator will be updating the Pathways to Net Zero report periodically, adding new chapters that provide assessments of additional sectors. Click here to read the Pathways to Net Zero report.

Category: Electrification and Grid Integration

Introducing Electrifying Canada

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