Canada needs Carney's proposed national electricity grid

Forget interprovincial trade barriers and new pipeline infrastructure: what Canada needs now is a national electricity grid.

On April 9, Liberal Leader Mark Carney made what might be the most significant environmental and energy policy proposal of the campaign thus far, and significantly, chose Calgary as the place to do it. Specifically, Carney is advocating securing Canada’s energy and electricity sovereignty by building what he termed an “East-West electricity grid,” noting that doing so would be a considerable undertaking and a “historic nation-building project.” 

Carney’s national grid plan has a lot going for it: securing Canadians’ access to clean, reliable and affordable electricity, and reducing our dependence on the United States.

We can call it National Energy Program 2.0, as the conditions necessitating its creation are similar enough to those that led to Pierre Trudeau’s tentative steps toward energy nationalization taken 45 years ago. Then, as now, Canadians are recognizing that our reliance on fossil fuels leaves us politically and economically vulnerable to external forces. We may, in fact, be even more vulnerable today than we were back then, given that Canada abandoned economic nationalism altogether and pursued free trade and continental economic integration instead. 

Fossil fuels have, unfortunately, not only become more economically significant in the intervening years, they’ve become wrapped up in people’s identities. And the problem isn’t just that some regions of Canada have organized much of their economies toward providing the United States with cheap oil and gas, but that others — such as Ontario — have become far more dependent on American fossil fuels in recent years, as well.

It is not so much a case of untying a knot as much as loosening the noose — fossil fuels have a stranglehold on Canada’s economy as much as its politics. We are unable to move forward, adapting Canada to the realities of climate change (nor away from further entrenching ourselves as a subservient petro-state) as long as politicians listen to fossil fuel company propaganda that would have us believe the road to self-sufficiency and security is built with publicly-funded export infrastructure.

As odd as it may seem, the hope right now rests in Donald Trump’s effectively single-handed ability to throw the global economy into total disarray. The unwarranted and inexcusable tariff war (to say nothing of annexation threats), appears to have Canadian politicians thinking somewhat outside the box for the first time in decades.

Herein lies the best argument for a national electricity grid: it’s a matter of national economic security. All Canadians deserve to be protected from economic shocks brought on by reckless foreign dictators. 

What’s needed is a federal effort to manage electrical supply on a national level, in conjunction with the deployment of new renewable energy sources and the widespread introduction of heat pumps, among other efficient technologies.

Decarbonization is a much easier process if the federal government is harnessing the total renewable energy capacity of the nation, rather than doing it in provincial silos. 

Moreover, the barriers to accomplishing this goal are not technological, but ideological and political. In a recent interview with Rinnovabili, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of Stanford University’s Atmosphere/Energy Program, made the case that a global transition to fully renewable electricity is already possible with existing technologies. And while there are challenges to long-distance transmission, the deployment of solar and wind power systems can buttress a national electricity grid in Canada and be built-out to address anticipated future energy needs. Exotic and unproven technologies promoted by the fossil fuel sector — like small modular nuclear reactors and carbon capture — are unnecessary distractions that will take decades to implement and sap resources away from genuine decarbonization tools.

While building a national electrical grid comes at a cost, it may not be as much as we think, and it’s certainly less than what the government hands over to the fossil fuel sector most years. In fact, according to recent research by Environmental Defence, the cost of a national electricity grid is estimated at $24 billion, nearly $6 billion less than what the federal government gave Big Oil in subsidies last year. Put another way, a national electricity grid could cost $10 billion less than TMX — and more significantly, a national electricity grid would start paying for itself immediately given it would have the effect of both lowering electricity costs nationwide as much as stabilizing the cost of electricity. 

It is unlikely that TMX will ever be able to pay for itself — but a national grid would.

Recent research from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) reveals the benefits of a national electrical grid are considerable, and perhaps more immediate than many might assume. A national net-zero electricity grid would reduce average energy costs for all Canadians. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, about 70 percent of Canadian households could see savings of $1,500 per annum by 2050. It would also pave the way for greater energy efficiency across the board, as electricity can be several times more efficient than the energy systems it replaces. 

Perhaps most significantly, because a net-zero national electrical grid would involve the  use of existing (and deployment of new) renewable energy systems such as water, wind, and solar, the price of energy in Canada would be both more stable and immune to external disruptions. Unlike fossil fuels, we don’t have to import sunshine, water, or wind. And because there is an abundance of all these resources distributed more or less evenly across the country, renewable energy systems can be deployed essentially anywhere. 

Significantly, IISD research reveals that such a grid would not require the development of nuclear power systems or natural gas, as is often advocated by the fossil fuel sector and their allies. Better management of existing hydroelectric resources could, according to the IISD, provide most of the dispatchable power needed now and into the foreseeable future. Additional wind and solar systems, along with new storage technologies, demand-side management, and electricity-sharing infrastructure between provinces would be more than enough to give Canada a stable supply of cheap electricity into the future.

It just requires making this a national project, where decarbonization and enhanced energy security are understood to be two sides of the same coin.

While Mark Carney’s newly expressed enthusiasm for the idea is encouraging, Carney is not immune to going with the flow and advocating for some of the same moribund oil and gas pipelines Big Oil would like us to believe were cancelled by environmentalists, activists and/or bureaucracy and red tape. Though Carney hasn’t quite capitulated to industry demands in the same manner as Pierre Poilievre or Danielle Smith, he has nonetheless advocated for some of the same bad ideas. 

Canada can either build a national electrical grid, or continue shoveling public money into the bottomless pit of fossil fuel subsidies, but we have neither the time nor resources to do both. Nor should we. Big Oil has been given plenty of subsidies over the years, and it certainly hasn’t made Canada any less vulnerable to economic or political exploitation. 

It is obvious which of these options is the vastly superior choice: one would benefit all Canadians forevermore. The other would leave us vulnerable and impoverished, minding a herd of white elephant pipeline projects.