A pan-Canadian power grid could defuse future blackouts threat, report says

Canada will face a future battling blackouts on power grids stressed by soaring demand and more extreme weather unless the newly-elected Liberal government rapidly invests in a nationwide electricity networks and province-to-province interconnections, says a new study.

The report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporate (NERC), the US-based authority responsible for the continent’s bulk power system, found Quebec and Nova Scotia to be “particularly” exposed to potential electricity shortages in the next 10 years, especially during the high-demand winter months.

Energy “deficits” in supply meeting demand were also identified in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick in the report, which covered a forecast period to 2033. Only BC and Manitoba are expected to see “no resource deficiencies” in the 12 “weather years” studied by NERC.

However, every province’s grid was predicted to become “increasingly vulnerable” during stretches of climate change-fuelled extreme weather and unable to manage power load increases.  In Ontario, the country’s biggest economy, increases are forecast to rise 75 per cent by 2050.

“Regulators and grid planners [need to] work together to further assess the risks highlighted in our analysis and consider a wide range of options to mitigate risks, including inter-regional transmission, [new] internal resources, demand response, energy storage [and] energy efficiency,” John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessments and performance analysis, told Canada’s National Observer. 

Reliability risks were “highly dependent” on regional weather conditions — how cold or hot an area became during winter and summer months, the NERC report found. But it noted that 12 to 14 gigawatts (GW) of grid interconnectors that would make it possible to shift power between provincial grids could be “an effective vehicle to strengthen energy adequacy.” 

Release of the NERC report comes at a crucial time in Canada’s energy transition, with the impact of US tariffs galvanizing discussion around how the country can reduce its reliance on long-standing links with US energy markets. 

‘National interest’ projects

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party in its pre-election platform pledged to “work with provinces and territories to build out an East-West electricity grid, in a historic nation-building project, to secure Canadians’ access to affordable, reliable, clean, Canadian electricity.”

“We are going to aggressively develop projects that are in the national interest in order to protect Canada’s energy security, diversify our trade, and enhance our long-term competitiveness — all while reducing emissions,” said Carney, in a statement at the time.

Governments and industry have debated for decades the economic and environmental virtues — and technological viability — of a trans-Canada, interprovincially-connected grid. 

But the idea has stalled because exporting energy to power-hungry U.S customers has historically been more lucrative than selling to domestic markets, with US$3.2 billion worth of electricity flowing south in 2023.  

Zach Parston, head of global infrastructure advisory at KPMG in Canada, sees construction of a national energy “backbone” as creating a “dedicated path for expanding the necessary infrastructure to meet growing demand and facilitating cross-provincial interconnections.”

The NERC report stresses the “critical need” for improvement to Canada’s “inter-regional transfer capability” — the ability to transfer power between provincial grids — to manage the impacts of extreme weather and supply shortfalls. “This enhancement is vital for ensuring energy reliability and optimizing generation resources, especially given the increasing electrification of the economy, and increasing vulnerabilities,” he told Canada’s National Observer.

Nick Martin, director of electricity at the Transition Accelerator, a think-tank, said a “more reliable and resilient” Canadian electricity network would be good for the environment and economy, curbing emissions by adding more renewables to the grid and boosting “overall prosperity” through jobs and economic growth.

He added the provinces would have to play their part to make a nationwide grid  a reality. “Provinces will need to take proactive steps to strengthen their interregional electricity planning and coordination if we’re going to realize the benefits of these valuable infrastructure projects —improved reliability, reduced costs, and lower emissions,” he said.

Canada-wide grid price not prohibitive

A coast-to-coast power grid would bolster energy sovereignty by wiring together provincial electricity networks so they could be balanced by power supply “rolled in” from across the country, time-zone to time-zone, preventing black-outs and backing-up local and regional networks.  

The project, according to calculations by the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF). could be  built for roughly the same price as the cancelled $24-billion Energy East bitumen pipeline,

“Studies have shown, time and again, that Canada’s grid needs a wholesale upgrade in the face of greater demand and extreme weather events,” said Stephen Thomas, clean energy manager at the DSF, an environmental NGO.

“We have the problem that electricity systems in this country are not connected. That is a challenge to reliability and affordability,” he said. “The solution set [of a nationwide power grid] is exciting because it is in line with the transition we badly need to see of moving away from fossil fuels on the grid and toward renewables.”

Thomas pointed to provincial inter-ties making the addition of more wind, solar and other renewables nationwide “all the more possible” given that an interconnected grid, backed by Canada’s vast hydroelectric network, could “roll power east and west” to help balance regional demand.

“Now, it is the role of the federal government, led by Mark Carney, to bring the provincial utilities together to build it — and to pay for these upgrades,” said Thomas. “These would be great nation-building projects and part of the solution to the threats we see coming from the US due to how connected our energy system is with theirs.”

The grids in Canada and the US have some 31 electricity transmission connection points along the shared border. 

Future US-Canada power trade? 

NERC’s Moura said while a cross-country power transmission system would be key to future-proofing Canada’s provincial grids, there were a “multitude” of regional factors that needed to be considered in designing it — including how linked up to the US grid these networks continue to be. 

“The planning process must consider a multitude of factors such as geography, energy availability, and reliability,” he said, noting that historically, Canadian and US grids were developed as a border-straddling integrated system in both the Eastern and Western regions of North America.

“An inherent benefit of this interconnected [North American] grid is geographic diversity and associated energy availability which allows entities to rely on surplus power on both sides of the border,” said Moura.

“Our analysis has found reliability benefits of enhancing interregional ties between the provinces, as well as with the US.”

The Liberals have promised to set up a so-called Major Federal Project Office mandated to streamline the review process applied to industrial-scale projects, such as for power infrastructure, down to “two years instead of five.” Industry experts CNO spoke with previously believe five years would be a “reasonable timeframe” to build a trans-Canada grid. 

Several recent studies have suggested that under $2 billion in federal investment in interprovincial grids would immediately trigger private financing for nationwide transmission worth three times that figure. And there would be a knock-on effect of around 50 times more in capital spending on construction of renewable power plants over the next decade, once there was a “route to market” for their power production.

BC recently awarded 30-year power purchase deals to nine wind projects, which will eventually add some 5 GW of power to the provincial grid. Ontario and Quebec, meanwhile, have planned procurement rounds coming later this year for 7.5 W and 5 GW, respectively, something NERC sees as a  “considerable improvement in resource projections catching up to demand forecasts.”

The Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau in its Clean Electricity Strategy — published last December before US tariffs were imposed on Canada — said a “thriving, low-carbon economy” depended on “building tomorrow’s grids at the pace and scale needed to drive clean growth, strengthen our competitiveness, and attract more major investments.”