Canada’s Electrification Advantage in the Race to Net-Zero
Five catalysts to accelerate business electrification
Our research identifies targeted opportunities to accelerate the electrification of Canadian businesses, as well as the key barriers inhibiting the pace and scale of progress needed to get on a trajectory to net-zero.
In corporate boardrooms and the corridors of political power in Canada and worldwide, business and political leaders are stepping up to act on climate change. While multiple technologies and approaches will be necessary, clean electrification—substituting fossil fuels with renewables and other forms of clean electricity—has consistently been the most affordable, reliable, and efficient path forward to net-zero by 2050. This report and four sector-specific briefs outline the catalysts that will get us there.
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Industrial Electrification
The Canadian industrial sector uses electricity to power more than 25% of its energy needs. It must ramp this up to 41% by 2050 while simultaneously reducing its total energy consumption.
Scaling Up Clean Electricity
We need to leverage Canada's clean and renewable resources and expertise to deploy significant power generation capacity over the coming decades. After many years of next to no growth in demand, the electricity sector now needs to accommodate at least a doubling of current electricity consumption by 2050.
Electrifying Medium- and Heavy-Duty Fleets
Electrifying transportation has shown early promise in Canada. But the electrification of medium- and heavy-duty vehicle classes is running a few years behind the light-duty market. Despite its potential, electrification is not yet happening at the pace and scale needed to achieve significant emission reductions in these two classes of vehicles.
Canada's greenhouse gas emissions climbed in 2022, after pandemic slowdown
Canada's greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2022, as the economy rebounded from the pandemic slowdown, according to new figures released by the federal government. The new National Inventory Report data shows emissions reached 708 megatonnes in that year, compared with 698 megatonnes in 2021. But Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said the 2022 numbers are a sign his government's climate policies are working, with emissions totals the lowest in 25 years aside from the pandemic years.