While it’s true that solar and wind generation are variable, credible analysis shows they are the most cost-effective sources of new power, even accounting for this intermittency. A report published by the Canadian Climate Institute last spring also estimates these renewables will play a large role in any future electricity system in Canada – ranging from 31 to 75% of generation by 2050, compared to only 6% today. In fact, they’ll likely play this role independently of climate policies. They are simply that cheap. 

There are lots of ways to balance variable renewables. But they don’t necessarily fit into the categories that come to mind when we think about power. Rather, they belong in a new category of things that provide “flexibility.” 

Flexibility refers to the ability to manage variability in supply and demand in a cost-effective manner over time. Historically, coal and gas plants have played this role, but any type of generation that can be turned on quickly can provide flexibility. Non-emitting hydropower is a great source of flexibility – and it’s abundant in many regions. Other emerging technologies, like geothermal and hydrogen, may play a larger role in time. 

Technological innovation has also given us entirely new types of flexibility. Battery storage is now cost-effective and getting deployed at scale across Canada. In partnership with Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario is about to build Canada’s largest battery farm, and when it comes online in 2025, it will double the energy storage in this province’s grid. While batteries tend to offer only short-duration power storage for now, new solutions like compressed air or longer-duration battery storage may extend this significantly. 

Demand-side management is also becoming more important. This is where some types of electricity load are shifted to move demand to when there’s plenty of supply to match it through pricing signals or direct remote control. Some types of industrial load are already moved around this way – for example, production in pulp and paper mills – and we will increasingly see households participate in it too. Think EV charging that costs less if you’re willing to let your utility decide when exactly your car charges overnight. Or paying you to slightly adjust your house’s temperature for short periods when electricity demand is high. 

The fourth category of flexibility is a very old technology we’re simply not using enough: interconnection. While most Canadian provinces are quite well connected with their southern neighbours, east–west transmission capacity is much smaller. Every Canadian province that could decarbonize with wind and solar has a neighbour with abundant hydro. The potential for a mutually beneficial relationship is there; we just need to tap it. 

Building more flexible electricity systems doesn’t only help balance intermittent renewables; it makes sense for its own sake. Flexible systems are better able to withstand shocks like extreme weather, which we’ll see more of in a changing climate. How we balance cheap renewables and build resilient systems using various types of flexibility is the electricity sector’s 21st-century challenge. New technology options mean that we’re no longer in a world that’s all about base load versus peaking.  

Planning and investment need to catch up to this new reality, since power-purchase agreements and electricity-market design across Canada’s provinces and territories don’t yet reflect it. Even now, when provincial utilities and system operators consider their options, they don’t necessarily take a close look at all the different types of flexibility. Pilot projects in Germany and elsewhere have shown that a grid that relies on renewables is technically feasible. The hardest work lies on the planning, policy, and governance side of things. Canadian clean power will be a competitive advantage if we can maintain it. So let’s roll our sleeves up and get serious about building a modern 21st-century electricity system. 

Jason Dion is senior research director at the Canadian Climate Institute. Sara Hastings-Simon is an assistant professor in the Department of Geoscience and the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

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A big switch is coming to Canada: the switch from fossil fuels to electricity, powered by electricity systems that are bigger, cleaner and smarter than what we have today. 

It’s a switch that will change the cars we drive, the way we heat our houses – even our stoves and dryers. Streetscapes will change, as charging stations for vehicles pop up and old gas stations transform. And at the same time, we’ll use a lot more clean sources of electricity such as wind and solar, backed up by more storage, smarter appliances and regional connections between electricity grids. 

But here’s the most important thing: that switch is going to make Canadians better off. 

The big switch is essential for achieving Canada’s climate goals, helping to stave off the worst of climate change. Plentiful, affordable electricity will drive emission reductions all through the economy, from electric cars and school buses in transportation, to highly efficient heat pumps and induction stoves in buildings, to electric arc furnaces in steel manufacturing. 

Less widely recognized: the big switch can make energy more affordable for Canadians. The costs of wind, solar and batteries have fallen dramatically over the last decade, without the same volatility and price spikes that fossil fuels have seen. Our research shows that Canadians will be spending less of their incomes on energy (including not only fuels such as natural gas and gasoline, but also the vehicles and appliances that those fuels power), largely because electric technologies are just so much more energy efficient.

The opportunity is clear: rapidly declining technology costs and the growing demand for clean technologies mean that Canadians can use clean electricity to power more and more of their energy needs. It’s about using energy in different and smarter ways. 

The big switch is essential for achieving Canada’s climate goals, helping to stave off the worst of climate change.

The big switch to clean electricity is both necessary and achievable. That’s not to say that it will be easy.

Building out bigger, cleaner and smarter electricity systems in every province and territory is a massive undertaking. Electricity demand in Canada could double by 2050, and most of the new capacity we bring online to meet that demand will have to come from solar and wind. That’s a lot of wind turbines and solar panels, and overcoming regulatory hurdles and local opposition to build this much, this quickly, will be a huge challenge. 

The same is true for expanding connections between energy grids in provinces and territories. There are huge benefits to connecting regional grids to share electricity resources, but provincial governments aren’t used to cooperating on electricity infrastructure and markets.

To drive these changes, governments at all levels will need to get policies right. That means creating strong incentives for building clean rather than dirty electricity. It means articulating a vision for regulators and public utilities that aligns with Canada’s climate plans. And it means creating opportunities for federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous governments to leverage the different clean electricity advantages that exist in different parts of the country. 

But this also comes back to Canadians. There’s a tendency for us to underestimate the benefits of climate action and overemphasize the costs, but those benefits will be considerable. Switching away from fossil fuels means cleaner air and no more pain at the pump (we’ll be plugging in at home instead). The big switch is coming, and it’s something to celebrate. 

The promise of clean, abundant, affordable energy to heat our homes and power our vehicles can be our reward for getting serious about climate change. It’s time to flip the switch.

The post Why Canadians need to flip the switch on fossil fuels appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Canadians love beef. While consumption has been steadily falling since the 1980s, we still eat a lot of it: on average we consume 24 kilograms per person per year, second only to chicken.

But producing all that beef takes a toll. A recent U.S. study found that on a per-calorie basis, beef production requires 11 times the water and 28 times the land compared to an average of other livestock categories. And the study’s lead author expects the results would be pretty similar for Canada.

Putting aside the other environmental impacts, as well as potential health and ethical concerns, beef’s impact on GHG emissions is perhaps its largest externality.

GHGeez

Beef is a huge contributor to global emissions. About three-quarters of it comes in the form of methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas 25 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. Because cattle are ruminant animals, the way they break down their food causes them to emit methane.

The odd bovine burp wouldn’t be such a big deal, but with over five million beef cattle in Canada, we’re talking about a substantial sum. All in, GHG emissions from beef production in the country total about 27 megatonnes per year. That’s 3.6 per cent of Canada’s total emissions, over a third of our agricultural emissions and nearly three-quarters of the emissions from animal production.

Other types of livestock don’t even come close. The same study noted above found that beef had five times the emissions per calorie of other meats and animal products. For context, that’s 10 to 40 times the emissions of most vegetables and grains.

There are a minority of organic, pasture-raised and grain-fed varieties of beef with lower emissions being raised in Canada as well, but these represent only a small share of the total market at present.

Addressing the hoofprint

If Canada is serious about hitting its national emission targets, we need to be looking for mitigation opportunities across all sectors, especially high-emitting ones like beef production. This doesn’t entail cutting beef out entirely, just that we need to try to reduce the emissions that come with it.

One way is to eat less of it, something that other countries are already encouraging. The Dutch government recently recommended that citizens limit meat in their diet, especially red meat. And even China is on board, recently issuing guidelines that encourage citizens to cut their meat consumption in half, a move that’s expected to have significant climate benefits.

There are also some cultural undercurrents supporting this type of shift. World Meat Free Day has begun to gain momentum, as has Meatless Mondays. Veggies are moving to the “centre of the plate” in some restaurants, and veganism is on the rise (this author is in fact a “weekday vegan,” which isn’t at all as difficult – or joyless – as it might sound).

But despite all this, our meat-eating habits have been slow to change, and emissions from our beef consumption, while down since the early 1980s, are still high.

Ecofiscal solutions

People respond to prices; it’s the law of demand. When the cost of something rises, we consume less of it. This has already been shown to be true of beef in Canada: when prices went up last year due to supply issues, Canadians reduced consumption by eating less and by shifting their consumption to other types of meat.

Making the price of beef reflect its environmental cost is sensible ecofiscal policy. Ideally, both GHG emissions and the other environmental impacts from beef would be priced in, but let’s stay focused on GHG emissions. Here are some ideas for making the price of beef reflect its climate cost.

Carbon pricing as panacea?

If you’re looking to add GHG cost to the price of a particular good or service, a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system is a great way to do it. The tricky thing is that emissions from livestock don’t really lend themselves to carbon pricing very well. The sources are too diffuse to directly monitor (and it doesn’t sound like a very pleasant job anyway). As a result, livestock emissions are typically exempted from carbon pricing schemes. This will likely be the case with the pending federal carbon price, as the policy is planned to have the same emissions coverage as B.C.’s carbon tax, which excludes emissions from animal production.

A compromise solution could be to use carbon offsets. Cattle farms could take steps to lower their emissions, get their reductions verified and then sell them as mitigation offsets. Some carbon pricing schemes in Canada and the U.S. already support offsets. Offsetting can be a useful way to extend carbon pricing’s emissions coverage, but when it comes to reducing beef’s emissions it has its limits – because offsetting only affects the supply side, there’s no incentive for consumers to reduce their demand-side emissions.

All you need is levy

An alternative could be to bring in a climate levy on beef, where for every kilogram sold, a small amount would be added to the price to account for the additional GHG emissions that beef generates compared to other types of meat. Ideally you’d have a specific levy for all types of meat, but a focus on beef makes sense because of its much larger emissions.

The levy would be applied at the point of wholesale. Imported beef would be subject to it, but beef destined for export could be exempted, helping to avoid competitiveness impacts. And crucially, Canadian farmers would receive a partial rebate from the levy if they could demonstrate that their emissions intensity was below the industry average.

By pricing a high-emitting portion of Canada’s GHG inventory that carbon pricing doesn’t touch, a beef levy would be a valuable complement to carbon pricing. It would help to drive cost-effective emissions reductions, reduce some of beef’s other environmental impacts and raise revenues that could be used for any number of purposes, including compensating the farmers who end up negatively impacted.

Putting a beef levy into action would require three steps. First, the average emissions to produce a kilogram of beef in Canada would be determined. Second, the average emissions of other types of meat would be subtracted, to reflect only the additional emissions from beef (as noted above, other meats have on average about a fifth of beef’s emissions). Finally, to produce a per-kilogram rate for the levy, beef’s average emissions intensity would be multiplied by the going carbon price.

Using the figures above, a back-of-the-envelope estimate puts the value of a beef levy at somewhere between 40 and 50 cents per kilogram. Based on my rather unscientific research of beef prices (snapping a pic at my local grocer), this would mean a price increase of somewhere between 3 and 4 per cent.

But while its effect on prices would be small, a beef levy could have powerful effects on incentives. On the demand side, a slight increase in the price of beef would encourage consumers to eat less of it by buying other types of meat, or more vegetables and grains. On the supply side, farmers would work to lower their operations’ emissions intensity in order to qualify for the rebate, which would help to reinforce some positive existing industry trends. Between 1981 and 2011 the GHG intensity of beef production in Canada fell 15 per cent as a result of industry efforts to develop technologies in genetics, nutrition, reproductive physiology and herd management. As a result of the levy, emissions from beef would fall further.

A beef levy would certainly face strong and inevitable pushback from the livestock sector, libertarians and the beef-loving public. But if Canada is serious about lowering its emissions then we need to consider all our options, and a beef levy makes an awful lot of sense. Beef is a major source of emissions, and putting a climate levy on it would create powerful incentives for consumers to consume less and for producers to produce it better.

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