Finally, electricity arrives at the poles that reduce it to a safe smaller amount that can be delivered to your home. Once it reaches the residential neighborhood, another transformer reduces the voltage to move the energy through smaller, lower voltage lines. "So we see a strong federal role kind of working in a co-ordinated manner with provinces to make sure that everybody is moving in that same direction toward net-zero.When electricity is generated by one of the 30,000 energy power plants around the country, the connected transformers crank up the voltage so the electricity can travel long distances through the high-voltage transmission network. "With provinces acting alone, there is the risk of the kind of slow action and uncoordinated action," Lee said. Moreover, the report states Ottawa should use money and its ability to get premiers in one room to encourage collaboration across the sector. The institute, through its report, also calls for all levels of government to not burden ratepayers with the costs of helping the sector meet net-zero, saying that governments should defray those costs. It recommends Ottawa strengthen the price on carbon for the sector and ban the construction of gas-fired power plants. "So hopefully, the government will take the initiative on it."Įlectricity generation is traditionally a provincial jurisdiction, but the report states the federal government should adopt a "broad policy framework" within which provinces and territories would operate. WATCH | One driver's challenges with charging her electric vehicle foreshadows future problems:Įnvironment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says the government is investing in clean power generation, pointing to the 2022 federal budget that proposed investing $677 million over five years.
Electrical grid upgrade#
Kim Nelson, a film professor in Windsor, Ont., and her family can't upgrade to a faster charger for their Chevy Bolt because their street wouldn't be able to accommodate the extra load if their and other households also upgraded.
Some early adopters know some of these problems firsthand. "If we see more people … using electric vehicles, if we see more people switching toward electric heat pumps - and yet the systems are not well equipped to be able to manage that increased demand, as well as the timing of that demand - then there could be some real issues," Lee said. (Michael Cole/ CBC)īut it's not just the amount of electricity that needs to be increased Wednesday's report found that Canada's electricity systems will also need more battery storage and be nimble enough to adjust to peaks in demand as both vehicles and many home heating systems switch to electric. The institute's report - called The Big Switch, Powering Canada's Net Zero Future - relies on multiple studies that show the electricity system will need to double or triple its capacity by 2050. As much as 75 per cent of that additional power will need to come from wind and solar if Canada is to meet its climate goals.Ĭaroline Lee is a senior researcher at the Canadian Climate Institute and one of authors of the report, called The Big Switch, Powering Canada's Net Zero Future. The federal government has set a deadline of 2035 for achieving net-zero electricity generation. All new car sales will have to be zero-emission by that same time.
"That means outages and certain technical issues in our grids." "There could be challenges for reliability," said Caroline Lee, one of the report's authors and a senior researcher at the institute, which researches climate policy. Otherwise, there could be consequences ranging from not meeting our climate goals to brownouts. The report, released Wednesday by the Canadian Climate Institute, says significant changes are required to every aspect of the provincial and territorial power generation and distribution systems to meet the future demand. Canada will need to make aggressive changes to its electricity systems to meet increased demand, driven partly by the uptake of electric vehicles, according to a new report.