Renewable energy could provide 95% of electricity in Canada by 2050

Source: David Dodge · GREEN ENERGY FUTURES · | July 22, 2021

A five-year North American Renewable Integration Study found that up to 95 per cent of Canada’s electricity could come from renewables by 2050.

The study assumed in all four scenarios that hydro and nuclear will stay the same while wind and solar will support virtually all of the growth in electricity generation in Canada up to 2050.

“One of the big things that came out was this massive deployment of wind and solar, we’re talking 10-fold increases in what we have today at, in Canada,” says Phil McKay of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA).

CanREA co-chaired a Canadian stakeholder committee from Canada which provided input into the study which was run by The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Building an affordable, reliable, low carbon grid of the future will mean a massive build-out of wind and solar in Canada says a five-year North American Renewable Integration Study. Photo David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca

Sunny future for solar and wind

“It’s been touted as the largest geographical, a study of its kind, and it is looking at the integration of renewable energy,” says McKay of the five-year study.

In Canada, Windpower would grow 10-fold to between 78 to 150 gigawatts depending on the scenario, while solar would grow 18-fold, between 34 and 51 gigawatts.

The study was aimed at the cost optimization of the integration of renewable energy and perhaps surprisingly also found that electricity prices will go down, not up over time.

McKay says one seminal moment in the last five years was when Alberta and Saskatchewan secured the lowest prices in Canadian history for both wind and solar power.