Feds’ Plan to Decarbonize Canada’s Electricity Grid by 2035 ‘Not Feasible’: Think Tank

The West Pubnico Point Wind Farm is seen in Lower West Pubnico, N.S., on Aug. 9, 2021. The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

The federal government’s plan to make Canada’s electricity generation carbon-free by 2035 is “impractical and highly unlikely” to succeed, the Fraser Institute says, noting that physical, infrastructure, financial, and regulatory realities make the plan “not feasible.”

A new study by the think tank says Ottawa faces a “significant challenge” to its goal of 100 percent decarbonizing the electricity grid in another 10 years alongside its broader aim of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

This transition requires eliminating the remaining use of fossil fuel sources as well as expanding capacity to meet growing demands from electric vehicle adoption, population growth, and industrial electrification, the report from the study indicated.

“Canada’s federal government has set an ambitious, and, frankly, unrealistic target of achieving complete carbon-free electricity in ten years,” said study co-author Jock Finlayson, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, in a news release on Oct. 29.

Using data from Statistics Canada, the authors found that in 2023, nearly 81 percent of Canada’s electricity came from carbon-free sources, which included hydro (58.4 percent), nuclear (13.7 percent), wind (6.4 percent), biomass (1.5 percent) and solar (0.8 percent).

Fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and petroleum, accounted for the remaining 19.1 percent. To replace the electricity generated by fossil fuels, Canada will need about 117,700 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity to be supplied by carbon-free sources each year, “assuming no growth in overall electricity supply,” said the report by Finlayson along with co-author Elmira Aliakbari, director of the Centre for Natural Resources Studies at the Fraser Institute.

Lands Required

Using hydro power as the sole alternative to replace that remaining fossil fuel-based generation would require building approximately 23 large hydroelectric dams, similar in generation capacity to B.C’s Site C facility, or 24 projects comparable to Newfoundland and Labrador’s Muskrat Falls, the report said.

“These numbers are determined by dividing 117,696 by 5,100 GWh and 4,900 GWh, which are the expected annual outputs of the Site C project and Muskrat Falls project, respectively,” stated the report.

If solely wind energy were to be used to replace that fossil fuel-based electricity, the authors calculated that Canada would need to build around 11,000 large wind turbines across the country by 2035. The calculation assumes a capacity of 3.5 megawatts per turbine and a capacity factor of 35 percent.

“[The turbines] would require approximately 7,302 square kilometres of land—larger than Prince Edward Island and nearly nine times the size of Calgary,” the co-authors wrote. “Hydropower projects would require even more land, about 26,345 square kilometers, nearly half the size of Nova Scotia.”

If nuclear power were solely to be used to replace that fossil fuel electricity, the report said approximately 2.3 large-scale nuclear plants, equivalent to Ontario’s Bruce Power generating station, would have to be built in the next decade. “Assuming Bruce Power operates 8,760 hours a year (that is, 365 × 24) at 90% capacity, this would mean the facility generates 50,458 GWh of electricity annually.” it added.

‘Cost Overruns’

The authors said the current process of planning and constructing major electricity generation facilities in Canada is complex and often marked by “delays, regulatory challenges, and significant cost overruns.”

An example they cited is the Site C project in B.C., which took about 43 years from the initial engineering studies in 1971 to environmental certification in 2014. Site C, expected to be completed in 2025, faced cost challenges during its construction phase.

“Construction finally began in July 2015, but significant cost overruns soon emerged. By 2017, the project’s cost had risen from $8.3 billion to $10.7 billion, and by 2021, it had increased to $16 billion,” the report said.

Co-author Aliakbari says the scale of infrastructure needed to be planned, approved, financed, and built to decarbonize Canada’s electricity grid in just 10 years is “not at all realistic” given that the requirements mentioned in the report would only meet the country’s existing electricity needs.

“This doesn’t even account for the additional infrastructure needed to meet future electricity demand,” Aliakbari said.

Samuel Lafontaine, a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada, doesn’t agree with the authors’ assessment, saying their report “does not provide an accurate portrayal” of the current draft Clean Electricity Regulations. He said the regulations have been the subject of extensive consultations since 2022.

“In February 2024, Environment and Climate Change Canada announced a series of changes to the draft regulations based on feedback received from provinces, electricity providers, Indigenous organizations, experts and individuals during consultations,” said Lafontaine in an emailed statement on Nov. 5.

“Those changes as well as others made since that time, including allowances for the continued use of natural gas electricity past 2035, will serve to ensure that provinces can continue to provide affordable and reliable electricity during the transition to a net zero grid by 2050.”

He added that the federal government has since announced over $60 billion in funding to facilitate the transition, and that the final regulations would be released later this year.