Meeting Ottawa’s mandate for a fully electric fleet on Canadian highways by 2035 could increase power demands up to 15.3 percent, placing heavy strain on the country’s electricity grids, according to a newly released report.
Accommodating that demand in just over a decade simply isn’t “realistic or feasible,” said report author and Fraser Institute senior fellow G. Cornelis van Kooten.
“Requiring all new vehicle sales in Canada to be electric in just 11 years means the provinces need to substantially increase their power generation capabilities,” Mr. van Kooten wrote. That would require the construction of “10 new mega hydro dams or 13 large natural gas plants” by 2035.
The federal government released its final regulations in December requiring all passenger cars, SUVs, crossovers, and light trucks sold by 2035 to be zero-emission vehicles. The plan is to phase in the rules starting with a 20 percent requirement in 2026.
EVs Come at a Cost
The necessary changes to make Ottawa’s mandate a reality, however, won’t come cheap.“Canadians need to know just how much additional electricity is going to be required in order to meet Ottawa’s electric vehicle mandate, because its impact on the provinces—and taxpayers and ratepayers—will be significant,” Mr. van Kooten said.
He used British Columbia’s new Site C dam as an example of the types of dams that will need to be built to ensure the country’s electrical grid can withstand the load a fully electric fleet will put on it.
The Site C dam took a decade to build at a cost of roughly $16 billion—and that was after 10 years of planning and meeting environmental regulations, he wrote. Building 10 such facilities would not only take too long to meet the demand of the electrical grid, it would cost more than $160 billion.
“For Canada, the load coming from EVs in the next decade would require the construction of perhaps 10 hydro facilities like Site C, one built in B.C., four in Ontario, and two in Quebec,” Mr. van Kooten said. “Construction of even a single dam of that size is highly unlikely to happen within the next decade, based on how long it took to complete Site C.”
The next option, he said, is to use natural gas to power the grid. Meeting demand would require the construction of 13 gas plants of 500 MW capacity or greater in Canada, with one located in B.C., five in Ontario, and three in Quebec.
Many ‘Obstacles’
To be truly environmentally friendly and stay true to the government’s plan to make Canada as green as possible, power would need to come from a renewable source. While wind is the most likely option, Mr. van Kooten said, it is vastly unreliable and would require a backup power source.Constructing enough wind turbines in the allotted time would also be a challenge. B.C. alone would require 600 large wind turbines along with backup such as combined-cycle gas turbine power plants, Mr. van Kooten said.
This backup power would not be used often enough to pay for itself, he added, meaning the government would need to subsidize its operation, driving up costs for taxpayers.
“The real world situation is not as easy as merely replacing current vehicles with EVs,” he said. “There are many obstacles to be overcome on the path of electrifying the personal vehicle fleets within Canada.”
If Ottawa has any hope of meeting its zero-emissions vehicle goal, he said, it must begin construction of the required generating infrastructure “immediately.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault described the government’s strategy on EVs as “skating to where the puck is going.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, however, has promised a Conservative government would repeal all electric vehicle mandates.
Mr. Poilievre said he preferred “smart regulations” that would improve fuel efficiency gradually over the course of several years.
“That will save money for consumers while protecting the environment,” he said. “And over time we get to a point where we have close to zero emissions in our automobiles through various types of technology.”
