Body
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday unveiled a clean electricity strategy that he said is designed to double Canada’s electricity grid by 2050 and reduce energy costs for most households, positioning the policy as a response to mounting economic and climate pressures. Carney presented the plan at a news conference in Ottawa, saying the government faces challenges including tariffs imposed by the United States, higher energy costs resulting from the war with Iran, and the effects of climate change.
Carney said the strategy reflects a need for “new approaches” as conditions change. He told reporters, “When the world fundamentally changes, we must respond with new approaches,” and he framed the government’s goal in terms of affordability, competitiveness and net-zero emissions.
Carney said the government’s approach centers on electrification. “The path to affordability is electrification,” he said. “The path to competitiveness is electrification. The path to net zero is electricity.” In outlining how the country would reach those goals, he said the plan will include regulations that shift how Canada builds its grid.
The strategy, Carney said, includes regulations intended to allow natural gas to play a larger role in expanding the grid. He said construction is expected to cost more than C$1 trillion—an amount he described alongside a forecast of large-scale implementation.
Carney said the government expects to build on a “wide range” of energy options as it pursues the grid expansion target. He cited hydro, nuclear, wind and solar, along with some gas, carbon capture and geothermal, and he said the government cannot rely only on restrictions and prohibitions to get results. “The scale is huge, the timeline is short and the task of getting the right mix of power is complex,” he said. “We can’t simply rely on restrictions and prohibitions. We must do things differently.”
The plan also includes efforts to bring in Indigenous partners, Carney said, and he said the government forecasts significant workforce needs to complete the expansion. The government’s forecast calls for 130,000 new workers to be needed to double the size of the grid.
Carney’s announcement also signals a shift from clean electricity regulations presented by the former Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Under that earlier decarbonization approach, the government set limits on carbon dioxide pollution from almost all electricity generation units that use fossil fuels.
Carney said electricity accounts for about 7% of Canada’s total greenhouse emissions, adding that the share has fallen substantially over the past 15 years as many provinces reduced or phased out coal power. He said the strategy does not specify how much money the government is willing to spend to meet the goal, but it mentions offering tax credits and bringing back energy-saving retrofits for up to a million households.
Independent policy research group the Canadian Climate Institute said Carney’s announcement was directionally positive but that important elements were still unclear. In a statement, Dale Beugin, the institute’s executive vice president, said the strategy is “pointing in the right direction,” while also saying “several important issues remain ambiguous or missing.” Beugin said the strategy’s outcome would depend on details of how and how swiftly the government follows through on expanding clean power generation, transmission and widespread electrification.