OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney released a plan Thursday to double Canada’s electricity generation capacity by mid-century, a $1-trillion-Canadian undertaking that would lean on a broad mix of energy sources — including natural gas — to make the grid cleaner and household bills smaller.
Carney, speaking at a news conference, said the strategy was forced by a transformed world: U.S. tariffs, higher energy costs from the war involving Iran, and the accelerating effects of climate change. “When the world fundamentally changes, we must respond with new approaches,” he said.
“The path to affordability is electrification,” Carney said. “The path to competitiveness is electrification. The path to net zero is electricity.”
The plan marks a sharp turn from the Trudeau government’s clean-electricity regulations, which set hard caps on carbon dioxide emissions from nearly all fossil-fuel-burning power units. Under the new strategy, natural gas would be permitted to play a “larger role” in building the grid, Carney said, alongside hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, carbon capture and geothermal.
“The scale is huge, the timeline is short and the task of getting the right mix of power is complex,” Carney said. “We can’t simply rely on restrictions and prohibitions. We must do things differently.”
The government projects the build-out will require 130,000 new workers. The strategy document itself does not specify how much public money will be committed, though it mentions tax credits and the revival of energy-saving retrofit programs for up to one million households. Electricity currently accounts for about 7% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that has fallen significantly over the past 15 years as provinces moved away from coal.
The Canadian Climate Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group, offered a cautious endorsement. “Ultimately, the success of the strategy will depend on details of how — and how swiftly — the government follows through on expanding clean power generation, transmission and widespread electrification,” said Dale Beugin, the institute’s executive vice president.