Corporate Knights puts forward a vision for an electrified Canada powered by renewable electricity, smart technology, and a coast-to-coast transmission link
Canada can save billions in unnecessary and unsustainable capital expenditures by pivoting now to renewables-based, emission-free electricity generation; a coast-to-coast transmission link; and smart grid technologies.
The vision of a decarbonized, interconnected, resilient national power grid is at the heart of recent analysis by Corporate Knights’ Climate Dollars project that sets out an ambitious plan for a zero-emission economy by 2050, all while securing and revitalizing the local economies that are the cornerstone of our national sovereignty.
It is a grid that we have only recently imagined, one based on millions of distributed, renewable generators rather than dozens of central power plants. It requires capital investments in solar, wind and storage technologies that total $700 billion over the next 25 years, in addition to the roughly equal amount of capital needed to electrify the buildings and vehicles. The capital cost for the grid investments averages $28 billion per year from now until 2050 and is below current investment level in the electric power sector in Canada, which totalled $32 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $34.5 billion this year.
But while this total investment is well within the capacity of Canadian capital spending, realizing such a sustainable outcome requires that government make the right choices now, that both new and existing buildings are fossil fuel–free, that we develop vehicle-to-grid infrastructure that feeds the energy of EV batteries back into our grid, and that we stop building new fossil and nuclear plants.
The renewable grid builds on our current hydroelectric base and leans into the wind and solar resources that Canada has in abundance, and that are leading global growth in electricity generation investment.
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