Innovation Spring 2025

“So we were in deep conversation throughout the process with provinces, utilities, system operators, and private companies and NGOs [non-governmental organizations].” Access to modelling information across different partner groups was helpful for establishing priorities during the consultation process. “Typically, we would run our models, and they would come with their own models,” said LeSage. “We were able to have a dialogue based on some of that analytical information.” Inter-provincial connections The government’s work in energy modelling and consultation has led to a substantial set of regulations and plans to achieve Canada’s net-zero emissions target by 2050. Alongside the Clean Electricity Strategy, Canada also released new regulations for carbon emissions from electricity-generation facilities in the Clean Electricity Regulations. These rules require electricity generators to cap the amount of carbon emissions that they generate beginning in 2035, making them responsible for sourcing clean electricity.

With this mandate comes a set of new challenges for establishing a stable electrical grid. In Canada, some provinces without significant hydroelectric reserves, such as Alberta and Saskatchewan, will come to depend more on wind and solar energy as their renewable energy sources. Though solar and wind power are becoming more effective with advances in storage and generation capacity, they are still fundamentally intermittent, or unstable, sources of energy that are influenced by available sunlight and fluctuating weather patterns, and are difficult to store at large scales. To address this, a priority for McPherson’s modelling work is developing electricity transmission capacity between provinces. “What we have seen in our models is that if we have interprovincial transmission, we can use the resources of hydro-rich provinces to balance the variability of wind and solar that could dominate in others,” said McPherson. “That’s a huge lever regarding emissions and transition pathways.” Intermittency poses a significant difficulty for energy security. Traditionally, electricity providers have offset this risk by maintaining backup coal plants and other carbon-intensive reservoirs. With the new Clean Energy Regulations, this will no longer be an option in 2035. More power transmission between provinces can help increase grid reliability. In the case of BC and Alberta, more interconnections would be mutually beneficial for the provinces. In addition to increased stability for Alberta, deeper energy ties between the two provinces could allow BC to import low-cost wind and solar energy when Alberta has excess, allowing BC to avoid drawing down its hydroelectric reservoirs. While an elegant solution, the idea of interprovincial ties has its challenges. “Interprovincial transmission is difficult to build from a governance perspective,” said McPherson. McPherson anticipates that models like COPPER and SILVER, which emphasize how inter-provincial collaboration could assist in Canada’s net-zero goals, could potentially lead to changes in how BC and Canada approach resource planning. “The importance of inter-regional transmission is a common requirement for our need to get to net zero worldwide. Canada is not alone in that,” said McPherson. The federal government’s models align with SESIT’s. “We definitely see that transmission plays an important role in ensuring reliability while keeping costs down,” said LeSage.

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Spring 2025

Innovation