By Mitchell Beer

With the federal government expected to release its long-awaited national electricity strategy this week, Canada could be in line to lose $110 to $220 billion in new investment and 40,000 to 80,000 direct jobs if it fails to deliver a clean power grid “at the scale and speed that industry and investors need,” a recent report concludes.

While senior executives across Canada’s finance, technology, heavy industry, mining, and clean energy sectors recognize that clean power is essential, it’s only worth pursuing “when it is predictable, cost-competitive, and available at scale,” states the report released earlier this month by the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE).

Canada enters the energy transition with an advantage over many other industrialized nations, with about 85% of its power coming from non-emitting sources, consultants at Dunsky Energy + Climate report. Clean economy sectors like electric vehicles, batteries, and the grid itself have received about $65 billion in new investment, producing at least 26,000 direct jobs and tens of thousands more across related supply chains.

That investment is taking place at a moment when access to electricity is central to site selection and capital allocation for new projects, adding asset value and enabling market access for new investments in tech, artificial intelligence, and mining.

But “Canada’s clean electricity edge is under threat,” Dunsky warns. “Grid constraints, permitting delays, and interconnection uncertainty are already slowing or cancelling investments.”

Canada faces those challenges in a moment of intensifying global competition, the report adds, with other jurisdictions “rapidly decarbonize their grids with the aim of attracting clean investment.”

The national electricity strategy has been in development for some time. Insiders say its release is now just days away, and it’s expected to focus on east-west transmission, Indigenous leadership, and better collaboration among provinces. Earlier this month, Ontario announced a “major nation-building milestone” when 10 provinces and territories—everyone but Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nunavut—agreed to work together on new transmission infrastructure.

There was no official word on the national strategy’s release as this story went to virtual press. But The Energy Mix has learned that it may appear as soon as this Wednesday or Thursday and feature federal investment in grid interties between provinces, though the form of investment—through loans, grants, federal ownership, of investment tax credits—remains to be seen. The strategy is expected to remain silent on the fate of the federal Clean Electricity Regulations, and it isn’t clear whether it will address the role of gas-fired electricity or carbon capture and storage on the grid.

The Dunsky report calls for long-term coordination and policy certainty across federal, provincial, and territorial governments to make permitting and grid interconnections faster and more transparent, all with the goal of accelerating the buildout of clean generation, storage, and transmission. It points to Indigenous partnerships as an element that could “unlock project development”, and stresses the role of demand-side solutions to “lower system costs, defer infrastructure, and improve reliability—especially for fast-growing data centre and industrial loads.”

SHARE Public Affairs Director Jennifer Story said the consultants sought interviews with executives whose companies will need reliable supplies of green energy. “There’s a growing number of investors and companies that are hearing back from regulators, hearing back from provincial decision-makers, that they’re in the queue or that their needs can’t be met.,” she told The Energy Mix in an interview.

“If Canada is really serious about creating new opportunities in our economy to buffer the effects of the worsening relationship with the United States, this is a really obvious place to do it,” she added. “We’ll certainly be looking to see whether or not [the federal electricity strategy] goes the distance to meet this need.”

With net-zero commitments and carbon pricing systems in place in 10 of Canada’s 11 biggest trading partners—the U.S. is the outlier—Story said faster buildout of a clean electricity grid could be an essential nation-building project to protect Canadian sovereignty.

“It does tie in to trade strategy,” she told The Mix. “Some countries and regions are imposing carbon border adjustments, for example. Responding to that reality means again demonstrating clearly that we can supply our issuers, our publicly-traded and private companies, with the clean power they need to not have those border adjustments be a barrier to market access in other parts of the world.”

And to attract climate-aligned investment, “we also need to demonstrate to those investors that the companies they’re considering, the projects they’re considering, have not just green but also reliable, affordable, consistently available clean power.”

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Kassandra Starkell and Martin Martyniak were looking for a well-located home with a few green features. So they were surprised to find themselves moving into a fully solar-powered, net-zero house in Blatchford—the largest planned carbon-neutral community in North America, located on 500 acres in the heart of Edmonton.

Kassandra and Martin, who love the vibrancy of living downtown, say Blatchford “ticked all the boxes.”

“In terms of the ‘Blatchfordness’ of it, we really liked the energy efficiency that was coming with the homes and specifically the Landmark home,” said Kassandra.

Blatchford units built by Landmark Homes—a company that pioneered net-zero homes in Edmonton 16 years ago—come equipped with 9 to 10 kilowatts of rooftop solar, an energy-efficient air-source heat pump, triple-paned windows, and high insulation levels—all standard, thanks to Blatchford’s green building code.

“I didn’t think that we were in that price bracket to get a net-zero home or even just a home with solar. So that was a really happy coincidence,” says Kassandra.

Landmark townhomes in Blatchford are currently listed between C$644,900 and $672,900.

‘Wildly Ambitious’ Beginnings

Blatchford’s genesis traces back to around 2008, when the City of Edmonton was locked in a political battle to close its downtown airport, and then-Mayor Stephen Mandel was looking for a new vision.

“Mandel wasn’t really a green mayor in any significant way,” urban planner Tom Young told the VOLTS podcast about Blatchford. But the city had a fairly progressive council, and this was their way to set a new vision for the land, challenging those nostalgic for a city airport that was well past its due date.

“It was wildly ambitious; the idea of a carbon-neutral community was very far out there,” said Anne Stevenson, Edmonton city councillor for the O-day’min ward, which includes the neighbourhood of Blatchford.

Stevenson, a former planner by profession, admitted she was skeptical at first.

The city looked far and wide for bold, new sustainable strategies, receiving proposals to build a biomass power plant and even a deep geothermal project on the site. When the dust settled, council finally landed on the concept of using a proven geoexchange district energy sharing system to heat the community with renewable energy.

Gas is not allowed in Blatchford.

Geoexchange, Not Geothermal

It’s not technically “geothermal,” though most people call it that. Geoexchange is a much simpler idea: it uses underground loops to harvest the heat of the Earth, and then ground-source heat pumps amplify that to heat homes.

This is proven technology. There are more than 100,000 geoexchange systems already installed in Canada, but it’s still rare to see it used in a district energy system.

Here, they drilled 570 bore holes, 150 metres deep beneath a lake-sized drainage pond. This feeds into “Energy Centre One,” a building equipped with a very large heat pump that further upgrades the temperature of the fluids before distributing it to the homes of Blatchford, where ground-source heat pumps heat and cool most of the homes.

Josh Culling, an early Blatchford resident, recalled his first experience with the system. “The day we moved into our house, there was a heat wave,” he said. “We walked into the house and it was like walking into a walk-in freezer.”

Culling added he’s “never forgotten that moment.”

Blatchford is located in the most northerly big city in North America, where in recent years, heat waves have seen temperatures reach 37° C— astonishing heights for locals used to a much cooler climate.

Two other early residents of Blatchford, Heather MacKenzie and Justin Wheler, who experienced heat pumps for the first time there, said the system is very effective amid temperature extremes. “You’re just sitting at home blissful,” MacKenzie said.

“We don’t notice the hot days or the cold days other than when we go outside,” Wheler added.

Aiming For 30,000 Residents by 2042

“The vision is 30,000 Edmontonians living a sustainable lifestyle, carbon neutral, using renewable energy,” said Tom Lumsden, the City of Edmonton’s development manager for Blatchford. The city chose to act as the developer to set high standards for sustainability in the neighbourhood. Blatchford’s green building code is about 70% more stringent than standard codes, Lumsden said.

The “incredibly efficient” homes are nearly net-zero, councillor Stevenson added. “What I hear most often from residents is that they love their air conditioning in the summer.”

The bar for Blatchford’s green building code has been raised periodically since its inception, and as of 2024, it’s now nearly equivalent to the top tier of the National Building Code—the Alberta edition.

The code applies to all of the homes in Blatchford, but builders like Landmark are taking it one step further, offering only fully net-zero homes powered by solar.

Uniquely, these homes also come with a 20-kilowatt-hour battery to store solar energy for later use. It’s part of a pilot program that will link about 100 batteries as a virtual power plant to sell peaking energy to the grid.

“The concept of net-zero then comes from the fact that when you net everything out, it doesn’t cost you anything,” Landmark founder Reza Nasseri said. “But as we said before, if you have batteries it’s a double whammy.”

Designed to Counter Sprawl

Blatchford demonstrates an emerging version of people-centred urban design, with many amenities built right at the outset.

“We have a playground already, they have an outdoor rink, there’s a walking path and a stormwater pond with lots of ducks and wildlife around it,” said resident Justin Wheler.

Due to its central location in Edmonton and good planning—there’s even a local grocery store—Blatchford already has what many suburban neighbourhoods wait years, even decades, for, Stevenson said.

It has a light rail transit station within walking distance and bike baths being built into the layout, Wheler said. “You see kids learning to bike and scoot around the neighbourhood.”

The neighbourhood also has a community garden and a small apple orchard that’s “pretty special,” according to resident Heather MacKenzie.

Another special feature is its location 10 minutes from the city’s core, Lumsden said.

“It’s about the size of the existing downtown,” Lumsden explained. “The old adage from real estate is ‘location, location, location.’ We have that bar none.”

“The fact that we’re doing something really cool with the sustainability features is the cherry on top.”

Given the location efficiency, residents will save time and money, while producing as few as half as many emissions due to their shorter commute distances. Even more emissions are avoided when you consider the energy efficiency of Blatchford homes.

Overcoming Sluggish Growth

Blatchford’s growth seemed sluggish in the beginning as consumers slowly began to understand the value proposition. In April 2024, a city audit concluded that Blatchford’s managers needed to better track and report progress on its goals, with city councillors expressing disappointment with the pace of development, CBC News reported. At the time, 84 homes were occupied, up from 20 over four years. Lumsden said many more lots were being sold.

But the development has also weathered a downturn in housing, a global pandemic, and supply chain issues that have plagued many industries.

Despite it all, Lumsden said Blatchford is doing very well, comparing it to any other greenfield development.

“We are actually less than seven years from an active airport to somebody living here,” he said. “I know suburban neighbourhoods that have taken the better part of a decade to go from farmer’s field to where people are living.”

Recently, things seem to be taking off. A 90-townhouse project is under way, four- to six-story buildings are coming, and another 90-unit apartment-style development is about to begin construction.

In the early stages, mostly townhouses were built, and some were fairly expensive. But the plan was always to build a diversity of housing formats— townhomes, condos, and apartments with mixed commercial use.

Stevenson said the plan is to incorporate 16% affordable housing to help address the housing crisis and meet climate objectives, which “is truly phenomenal.”

“It’s easy to brag about Blatchford,” said resident Mackenzie. “There are few places in the city where you can get a net-zero row home at a great price point.”

“I know some of the homes here are not super affordable, but when I looked at a net-zero row home one neighbourhood over, it was $200,000 more than ours.”

Bigger builders are coming to Blatchford, such as Qualico, which is building the most affordable homes so far.

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By Gaye Taylor

Community wealth building is the key to making Canada’s energy transition an inclusive project rooted in the local, rather than a technocratic solution disengaged from people’s everyday lives, say sustainability experts and practitioners.

“Local ownership, democratic control, and a balanced distribution of wealth” are the key components of community wealth building, which should play “a critical role in advancing Canada’s net-zero objectives,”  write Martin Boucher, research chair of sustainability at NorQuest College in Edmonton, and Max Lacey-Barnacle, research fellow in just transitions at the University of Sussex (UK), in a recent article in Policy Options.

As Canada moves forward on its net-zero emissions goals, important financial scaffolding is in place, including “$964 million for renewable energy and grid modernization projects and $14.9 billion for public transit projects, including zero-emission transit vehicles,” the two sustainability experts write.

However, ensuring that the energy transition translates into fully inclusive, resilient, sustainable communities remains a challenge.

“Despite some clear overlaps, net-zero initiatives and community wealth building often operate in silos,” the authors warn, adding that “an integrated approach” is key to achieving both objectives.

The pressing need to build community wealth is reflected in the Salvation Army’s annual Canadian Poverty and Socio-Economic Analysis, published in September, which found one in four parents testifying that they eat less so that their children or other family members get enough. Within this group, 90 per cent said they had to cut back on groceries to pay other bills, and 85 per cent said they were buying less nutritious food because it was cheaper.

“While not yet a household term among policymakers,” the driving principle behind community wealth building is “straightforward,” Boucher and Lacey-Barnacle write.

“Rather than relying on external investments or top-down economic development, [the] approach emphasizes the importance of locally-rooted structures such as cooperatives, social enterprises, businesses, and anchor institutions like colleges and universities, local government, and hospitals.”

Community bonds are an essential instrument in severing local reliance on external funding. These interest-bearing loans issued by non-profits to fund local projects are slowly “gaining traction” in Canada, especially in the affordable housing sector, reports CBC News.

Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington in southwestern Ontario used the model to raise roughly $4.5 million for two affordable housing projects. The first, a 32-unit townhouse project, broke ground about a year ago, The Canadian Press reported at the time.

While community wealth builds communities in a very bricks-and-mortar sense, the financing model also works in more subtle ways to stitch a neighborhood, and surrounding neighborhoods, together.

“With the high cost of living—and with fewer Canadians donating to charity—asking supporters to buy a bond can be easier than asking them to make a cash donation,” writes the CBC.

Ryan Collins-Swartz, co-executive director at Toronto-based Tapestry Community Capital, a not-for-profit that helps other non-profits set up community bond campaigns, told CBC the under-40 demographic to which he belongs doesn’t typically have a lot of cash for charitable donations.

“But with a little bit of money that we have saved up, we’re looking to be allies to causes and social movements and things that we believe in.”

Fully realizing the efforts of local development organizations to advance the energy transition as a social movement—one that integrates net-zero efforts with efforts to build community wealth—will require “comprehensive policy support” at both federal and provincial levels, write Boucher and Lacey-Barnacle.

Measures to “formally harmonize” Canada’s net-zero policies with community wealth building “could include streamlined permitting for community-scale renewable energy installations and financial incentives for community investment,” they add.

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By Gaye Taylor

Housing projects receiving federal dollars must be mandated to meet the highest energy efficiency and emissions standards in Canada’s building codes so that all new homes are climate resilient and meet zero-carbon goals, states an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

While Ottawa’s housing plan acknowledges the need for change in the way Canada builds homes, it lacks rigorous performance criteria to ensure new housing is built right the first time, states the letter posted on LinkedIn by Efficiency Canada and signed by the Canada Green Building Council, the Pembina Institute, the Trottier Family Foundation, and several other prominent organizations.

“Once constructed, our buildings need to be affordable to heat and cool,” states the letter. “They must protect us from extreme heat and power outages, exacerbated by climate change.”

But national model building codes no longer simply define a minimum standard, writes Efficiency Canada. “They include progressively higher performance tiers that lead to the nation’s net-zero goals.”

The top tier of Canada’s 2020 building code already encompasses “net-zero energy-ready (NZEr)”—a term that describes builds designed, modelled, and constructed to be net-zero energy, but lacking access to on- or offsite renewable sources.

“A core aspect of NZE ‘readiness’ is improved air sealing, increased insulation levels, and high-performance windows and doors to reduce thermal demand and facilitate appropriately sized space and water heating equipment,” Efficiency Canada explains on its website. A fully NZE building produces as much clean energy as it consumes, and is expected to be “80 per cent more efficient than a new building constructed to today’s building code minimum.”

However, under the 2020 requirements, a builder or homeowner “could offset energy produced by gas with solar panels and still be ‘net zero energy,’ but not necessarily net-zero emissions,” Brendan Haley, Efficiency Canada’s senior director of policy strategy, told The Energy Mixin an email. The upcoming 2025 versions of the codes will address this loophole with greenhouse gas (GHG) performance levels that reach net-zero emissions.

These levels “will take into consideration the operational emissions of the building that are significantly impacted by heating system fuel options of fossil fuels versus electric or renewable fuels,” Haley said. “Adding GHG performance levels helps make sure buildings are both energy efficient and use low- to zero-carbon fuels.”

Using the national codes “to define how to build for the future” will also help ensure that buildings are not only built right the first time, but also as quickly as possible, he added.

“Net-zero emission building codes and performance criteria for publicly financed housing can be part of a clear roadmap for the building sector to prepare supply chains to avoid future shortages and bottlenecks,” wrote Haley in a post for Policy Options last September.

Efficiency Canada says Canada should require that buildings constructed with federal government funds—via programs like the Apartment Construction Loan Program, the Affordable Housing Fund, and others—consider material emissions, and meet the 2020 codes NZEr top tier and the top level for operational GHG emission performance in the 2025 codes.

“This will create an immediate market for high performance building practices and help meet the 2021 Liberal platform commitment to ‘accelerate the development of the national net-zero emissions model building code for 2025 adoption’,” the organization states.

The letter also recommends “requiring that provinces and territories receiving funds from the Housing Infrastructure Fund progressively adopt higher tiers of the 2020 and 2025 building codes leading towards adopting the top tiers for energy efficiency and operational GHG emissions in 2030.”

“The affordable housing we need won’t be affordable unless it is energy efficient and zero-carbon,” the signatories say. “Integrating Canada’s building codes into the Housing Plan will make our homes affordable, healthy, and resilient.”

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By Gaye Taylor

Vancouver has adopted a first-in-Canada bylaw aimed at decarbonizing all its large buildings by 2040.

The Annual Greenhouse Gas and Energy Limits bylaw came into effect June 1, and “applies to retail and office buildings 100,000 square feet or larger, with plans to reduce emissions in subsequent years,” reports CBC News. It is expected to apply to some 200 properties and requires building owners to measure how much energy each building uses and the greenhouse gas intensity of each building.

These large buildings must reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, and 100% by 2050, writes Citynews Vancouver.

The news had some commercial real estate sector representatives warning of dire consequences: “It costs money and not everyone is going to be able to afford to do that,” said Damian Stathonikos, president of Business Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of British Columbia.

Rather than spend “significant sums” to comply with the bylaw—or risk heavy fines after the grace period ends in 2026—some owners may decide either to demolish their properties or develop them into housing projects so they no longer fall within the new bylaw, Stathonikos said.

“The one thing we heard loud and clear is that real estate owners need help to get this work done,” he added.

That backing is available. Cadillac Fairview (CF), one of Canada’s largest real estate companies, told CBC it has spent the last decade working to decarbonize its buildings with the help of the city, the province, and the federal government. As many as 13 of its buildings will be affected by the new bylaw.

In February, CF announced a C$9.5-million investment partnership with the province and the feds to help decarbonize its Pacific Centre mall and several waterfront properties. CF is investing $7 million, Ottawa is supplying $1.5 million via its Low Carbon Economy Fund, and the province is covering the rest. CF also mentioned “significant potential incentives from both Fortis BC and BC Hydro.”

Jesse Gregson, CF vice-president of office operations for Western Canada, expressed optimism about the imperative to invest in climate. “Many of our tenants have set ambitious climate targets themselves and they’ve told us this is important to them,” he said.

But he was still grateful for the funding support. “It’s important we have support from senior government and local government to make these projects happen, because without that they’d be too expensive for most landlords to undertake,” said Gregson.

“Vancouver is the first Canadian jurisdiction to enforce limits on building emissions,” writes CBC News. Similar standards have been passed in Europe, the United Kingdom, and parts of the United States.

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By Christopher Bonasia

Having proven that the world has enough fossil fuel projects to meet demand until 2050, researchers say a global norm against new projects—similar to the taboo against nuclear testing—would help phase down fossil fuels and achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

In a policy paper for the journal Science, authors from University College London and the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) build the case for such a norm in three steps.

• They assess existing stocks against projected demand to show that no new fossil fuels are needed in a 1.5°C world, providing a rigorous, scientific basis for a call to stop new fossil projects.

• They explain how it is economically, politically, and legally easier to prevent new fossil fuel projects than to shut down existing ones or phase them out. For one thing, firms will lobby more actively to protect projects into which they’ve already sunk investments, they write. The public is more likely to tolerate an existing project, while politicians will have an easier time enacting stringent regulations on new ones, and investors might attempt legal action to prevent losses from new regulations.

“The first two claims together justify a third, normative claim: that new fossil fuel projects ought not be permitted,” they write.

“The No New Fossil norm derived from this finding provides a clear policy demand against which we can judge misalignment with the Paris agreement target,” IISD policy advisor and study co-author Olivier Bois von Kursk told The Energy Mix. It “builds on the analysis of political, social, and economic barriers to the energy transition, showing it is significantly harder to close existing fields than to prevent new ones from being built”

However, “this does not mean that closing existing fields before the end of their economic lifetime won’t also be necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C,” he added. “No new fossil fuel is a necessary step to meet the Paris goals, but it is not sufficient.”

The study says a new “social-moral norm” against new fossil fuel projects could also combat industry pushback. “Norms are most resonant when they are framed in terms of simple demands for powerful actors to cease or ban harmful activities.”

By shifting the focus to upcoming projects that create wide-ranging environmental, public health, and climate harms, a No New Fossils norm would align groups with diverse interests for the same cause, which “reduces the power asymmetry between pro- and anti-fossil fuel forces.”

The researchers point to past cases when a norm change has succeeded in shifting power away from vested interests, like the slave trade and the nuclear arms race.

Those cases show the power of a simple demand, said lead author Fergus Green, a lecturer in political theory and public policy at University College London. “Complex, long-term goals like ‘net-zero emissions by 2050’ lack these features, but ‘no new fossil fuel projects’ is a clear and immediate demand against which all current governments, and the fossil fuel industry, can rightly be judged.”

The researchers say the norm should be used to push governments toward ending permits for fossil fuel exploration, production, or power generation, “and to take whatever legislative or administrative action is necessary to give effect to such a policy.” While a legislated ban would be ideal, other measures—like restrictions on finance or subsidies—could also help.

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By Christopher Bonasia

A Canadian regulator’s pathway to net-zero is overly optimistic about slow-to-scale technologies, even as reliance on fossil fuels continues, finds a new report—but a course correction is possible through substantial policy upgrades that focus on reducing emissions and energy demand.

Earth scientist David Hughes reviewed the Canada Energy Regulator’s (CER) June 2023 report, which offered scenarios aligned with the country’s net-zero target. It called for major changes in Canada’s energy supply, including reducing oil and gas production, a “several-fold increase” in renewable generation from solar, wind, and biomass, nearly tripling nuclear capacity, and a ramping up of technologies like carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS).

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By Matt Dreis

Last month at COP 28, 198 countries and coalitions agreed that the world must transition away from fossil fuels, and that taking action this decade is critical for getting the world on a net-zero aligned trajectory. This agreement marks a turning point in international negotiations, which have previously struggled to find consensus on the role of fossil fuels in the energy transition, and highlights that ambitious, rigorous emissions reduction policies are needed immediately from all levels of government.

In April 2023, the Alberta government released the Emissions Reduction and Energy Development Plan (ERED). The plan outlines the course of action the province will take to cut emissions and achieve aspirations of a carbon-neutral economy by 2050 while increasing economic development and investment in new technologies.

Most of the emissions reduction initiatives and targets discussed in the ERED Plan were previously announced or implemented with deadlines fast approaching.  Absolute emissions from Alberta’s oil and gas sector reached 144.7 Mt CO2e in 2021, close to returning to pre-pandemic levels with a slightly lower emissions intensity, indicating Alberta’s recent progress on methane emissions reduction has made an impact. But emissions from the sector remain high, and are not aligned with Alberta’s goals of carbon neutrality by 2050. What’s needed now are forward-looking measures that could meaningfully bend the curve on emissions to 2030 and beyond. Unfortunately, there have been very few measures like that announced by the Alberta government.

At COP28, 29 major oil and gas companies (including ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell) signed the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter which outlines targets of net-zero scope 1 & 2 emissions by 2050, with an immediate focus on minimizing upstream methane emissions and eliminating routine flaring by 2030.

This signals that a major segment of the global oil and gas sector is beginning to acknowledge a need to be competitive on emissions as well as cost, especially as demand for fossil fuels declines globally. As our recent analysis finds, Alberta’s oil is both costlier and more emissions-intensive compared to global averages and is therefore poised to be less competitive than resources that have lower costs and emissions. Key policies and regulations must be put in place—both to address Alberta’s largest source of emissions, and so that those Albertan facilities that are best-placed to reduce costs and emissions can keep pace with the international marketplace.

With the one-year anniversary of the ERED looming large, it is now time to set the next round of targets and policies that can achieve meaningful emissions reductions to 2030 and beyond. Early establishment of emissions targets, and regulations to support those targets, provides certainty for industry and encourages the investment needed to reach the net zero aspirations of the ERED.

See more of our analysis on Alberta’s Emissions Reduction and Energy Development Plan in our backgrounder.

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The company says this leveraging of renewable energy sources is the first of its kind in Canada.

According to a press release, this program will eliminate the carbon emissions associated with the company’s electricity purchases in Alberta, while cutting its nationwide enterprise operating emissions by 17 per cent.

Loblaw says one day soon, carbon-free electricity will be used to power over 280 locations, including Real Canadian Superstore, Shoppers Drug Mart, No Frills, Real Canadian Liquor Store, Independent and Wholesale Club stores, as well as the company’s offices and distribution centres.

This energy purchase will provide over 300,000 megawatt hours of carbon-free energy every year – enough to power the homes in a city like Lethbridge, Alberta.  It will also save the equivalent of up to 180,000 metric tons of carbon emissions from being released into the atmosphere.

“Loblaw has been actively reducing its carbon emissions for over a decade, consistently exceeding its own ambitious targets. Last year, when we raised those targets to become net zero by 2040, we knew we would need some breakthrough innovation to reach our goal,” said Galen G. Weston, Chairman and President, Loblaw Companies Limited.

“This project delivers that by turning our highest carbon emitting energy market into our lowest, in one single step. Today’s announcement is a powerful example of private industry working together to bring scaled change to the energy transition.”

Loblaw is making this purchase from TC Energy, a Calgary-based energy company. TC Energy, in its own campaign to reduce emissions, has put together Alberta’s first product to make carbon-free energy available round-the-clock. As such, TC Energy either owns, operates, or has access to carbon-free renewable energy generation and large-scale energy storage facilities.

This product solves the renewable energy intermittency challenge: what to do when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. With this approach, carbon-free energy is generated by solar panels and wind turbines that capture energy from the elements and feed it into Alberta’s electrical grid – which powers Loblaw stores, offices and distribution centres.  A pumped-hydro energy storage station circulates water up- and down-hill to store and generate carbon-free power when wind and solar power are not available.

The end result: carbon-free energy, available 24/7, generated by Canadian innovation, that will not only power Loblaw’s stores and business, but also create more stable and reliable renewable energy for Albertans.

“TC Energy’s success is incumbent on providing customer-led energy solutions,” says François Poirier, President and CEO, TC Energy. “Our team crafted a plan to help them access carbon-free electricity to power their entire operation in Alberta.”

Poirier added “Our intrinsic power knowledge and experience drove our team to develop Canada’s first-ever 24X7 carbon-free energy product. This means Loblaw – and other companies – can make huge strides to reduce their emissions – a goal we are all aligned to.”

The energy purchase between Loblaw and TC Energy is subject to the satisfaction of all terms and conditions set out in the agreement between the two organizations.  Elements of the program are expected to come online in 2025.

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