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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to announce his long-awaited clean electricity strategy Thursday, after promising to show a pathway to doubling the capacity of Canada’s power grid by 2050.
Carney’s itinerary says he will announce a plan to deliver clean, affordable and reliable energy for Canadians at a news conference on Parliament Hill.
Carney had said in late March that the strategy would be released within days, but it has taken more than a month to finalize the plan. He recently told The Canadian Press the weeks-long delay was nothing to worry about, but said it was something he had hoped the government could move faster on.
‘We’re looking at things … where we can knit together the provincial grids much more effectively, be a more sustainable electricity system, more competitive, more affordable for people, all at a time when we need effectively to double our electricity over the course of the next 20, 25 years,” Carney said in an interview on May 1.
“So if you ask me for one, that would be the area where we’d like to make more progress.”
For months, Carney has been signalling his plan to double Canada’s grid, expanding hydro, other renewables and nuclear power.
The Liberal election platform last year promised to build out Canada’s east-west electricity grid. Currently most of Canada’s electricity connections go north-south, not east-west, giving provinces limited capacity to share power generation with each other.
The platform said the project would strengthen Canada’s energy security and create “one economy.”
Last year the Canadian Nuclear Association commissioned a study suggesting demand for power will double, or even triple, by 2050.
Population growth, the expansion of electric vehicles, power-hungry data centres and industrial growth are all driving up the need for more power, and Canada has for years been looking to do it with non-emitting sources.
There is also a need to help remote communities with power security and affordability. Some remote communities, including all of Nunavut, still rely on diesel generation for their power, which is expensive and high in emissions.
The previous Liberal government had initially targeted to have a zero-emission electricity grid by 2035.
In the spring economic update on April 28, the government said it was planning to release a “discussion paper” to get input from provinces and territories on how to modernize the grid.
Energy Minister Tim Hodgson promised on April 29 to publish a nuclear strategy for the country before the end of the year. That plan is to focus not only on producing nuclear power domestically, but also using Canada’s nuclear technology and uranium resources to become a global supplier as well.
