Honda is being whipsawed by a decreasing emphasis on electric vehicles in the United States and a rapid shift to electric vehicles in China. The two markets are moving in opposite directions, with companies regretting EV investments in the United States and facing intense competition from upstart EV manufacturers in China.

Honda is not a company that expresses public frustration, but there was a sense of disappointment in its announcement last week about cancelling plans for three models of U.S.-made electric vehicles.

The U.S. government indicated just a few years ago that it would provide policy support for a transition to EVs and encouraged automakers to invest. Honda did just that, including a new battery plant in Ohio in partnership with LG Energy Solution. Then voters sent Donald Trump back to the White House and he dismantled this industrial strategy within months. Honda and other automakers were left exposed. Financial losses and job cuts followed.

That’s infuriating. But here is how Honda describes what happened, filtered through the language of corporate communication: “Previously, with stringent environmental regulations fully implemented in the U.S. and other countries, Honda pursued EV adoption with strong determination that striving for carbon neutrality is a responsibility Honda, as a manufacturer of mobility products, must fulfill for the future,” the company said in a news release. “However, in the U.S., the expansion of the EV market has slowed down due to several factors including the easing of fossil fuel regulations and revisions to EV incentives.”

I live in Columbus, Ohio, and I wrote about Honda for nine years while covering manufacturing and energy for The Columbus Dispatch. The company’s main North American manufacturing campus is less than an hour from Columbus, with factories in Marysville and East Liberty, Ohio.

While Honda is based in Japan, it produces more cars and light trucks in the United States than its home country and also has a major presence in China.

Honda’s announcement included disclosure of a US$15.7 billion charge related to restructuring its operations, which means the company is poised to post its first annual loss in about 70 years.

Previously, Honda had said it would manufacture three electric models in Ohio: the Honda 0 – that’s a zero – SUV, the Honda 0 Saloon and the Acura RSX. Now, all three are cancelled for production or sale in North America. They join other U.S. models that were cut, including those that made it to production, such as the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup and those halted before mass production, such as the all-electric Ram 1500 pickup.

It’s not clear what Honda’s decision means for the Honda-LG battery plant that began production late last year in Jeffersonville, Ohio. That plant, which has about 600 employees, was going to provide batteries for the RSX and other models. “As our company assesses the impact of Honda’s announcement on our operations, we are in discussions with our parent companies regarding related future business opportunities that align with the technology and expertise we have developed,” says Caroline Ramsey, a spokeswoman for the battery plant, in an email.

Honda’s other plants in the state will use the capacity that was slated for EVs to produce gasoline models, including gas-electric hybrids.

The company has struggled with its EV strategy over the last decade. Its greatest success has been the Honda Prologue SUV, introduced in 2024, which is part of a partnership with General Motors and shares components with the Chevrolet Blazer.

The now-scrapped models, headlined by the Honda 0 series, were part of the company’s attempt to signal a new beginning, with fresh designs and new technology.

There’s just so much uncertainty broadly in the U.S. economy right now.

— Hannah Hess, director of energy and climate practice at Rhodium

Honda is a major reason Ohio is a leader in automobile manufacturing employment, trailing only Michigan and Indiana. These next EVs were going to be Honda’s statement about how it intended to compete in the market of the near future.

Now, Honda and other automakers in the U.S. market are left to watch and wait.

Rhodium Group, a research firm, issued a report this week that gives a sense of the scale of investment that took place in recent years and the cancellation of some of that investment.

In 2025, companies said they were cancelling US$22 billion in previously announced EV or battery manufacturing projects in the United States, the report said. This exceeded the $17 billion in new EV or battery manufacturing announcements made last year.

To get a better sense of what’s happening, I looked at the indispensable database of project announcements from Rhodium and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. It shows a spike in investment in 2022, the year President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a law with incentives for EV manufacturing and purchases. Companies announced $80 billion in U.S. investment that year, and another $47 billion in 2023.

About half of last year’s cancellations by dollar value, or $11 billion, involved projects announced in 2022. The largest was a $4.3-billion EV manufacturing project from General Motors in Orion, Michigan. That’s a lot of investment going up in smoke, but I also urge observers to note that most of those 2022 projects are still active, either operational or under construction.

What we don’t know is if the cancellations to date are just the start of a larger wave. “The outlook looks cloudier than it did a year ago,” says Hannah Hess, director of Rhodium’s energy and climate practice. The next steps, she says, will be determined by many factors, including consumer demand for EVs and automakers’ assessment of where the market is heading. “There’s just so much uncertainty broadly in the U.S. economy right now.”

One thing the Rhodium report doesn’t capture are layoffs at plants that remain open, and that’s something else to watch.

SK On, the South Korean battery manufacturer, said last week that it is laying off 958 people at a plant in Commerce, Georgia, that had 2,566 workers before the reduction. The company cited a decline in demand for EV batteries.

Some jobs and investment could come back. The United States could reassert itself as a place where the cars of the future are built.

But gyrations in policies have a cumulative effect, reducing confidence in the staying power of any one policy. The next time a U.S. president says it’s time to invest, automakers are likely going to react more carefully.

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Corporate Knights’ annual Global 100 ranking adds more grist to that mill. Of the nine automakers on this year’s list, six are based in China: XPeng (20), Li Auto (29), Nio (30), Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology (43), Seres (63) and Yadea (60), which mainly makes electric two-wheelers. Tesla is a U.S. company, but about half of its production is in China, and BorgWarner, headquartered in Michigan, also has plants in China. A significant number of Western automakers use Chinese batteries in their EVs, too.

But China’s EV market can be hard to parse. In November, The Atlantic published an explosive article contradicting the main narrative around the growth of its industry and purporting that “China’s EV Market Is Imploding.” In the article, Beijing-based writer Michael Schuman points to the pervasive practice of selling zero-mileage “used” cars and claims that the Chinese Communist Party artificially keeps struggling manufacturers afloat.

China, with its cheap electric cars, is teaching Western automakers a lesson, as they build unaffordable, large, luxurious electric models.

– Colin Pratte, transportation researcher, IRIS

In the West, popular perception varies widely, suggesting the distorting effects of online misinformation and a lack of independent data. Chinese cars are thought to be more technologically advanced than their Western counterparts, but their production is considered dirtier than in Europe or North America because of coal-heavy electricity and pollution from upstream processes like mining and mineral processing. But Colin Pratte, a transportation researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques in Quebec, suspects that the latter perception is influenced more by racism than reliable data and that steep tariffs on China’s EVs in Canada and the United States reflect pure protectionism, not high ecological standards.

A big lead

China isn’t the only country propping up its automotive sector, argues Thomas Hundal, a Toronto-based automotive journalist: “To some extent, subsidies are offered everywhere, and people exploit them.” That’s a problem that’s not unique to China, or to EVs, he says, adding that pre-registration, or listing new cars as used, has been a practice in Europe for ages.

According to Reuters, the top 10 countries buying China’s EVs are Mexico, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Belgium, Germany, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

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China’s EV industry is more technologically advanced than the West in two main areas, Hundal says. The first is its battery supply chain: “They can produce huge numbers at low cost compared to North America. China is also years ahead of the Western manufacturers in terms of chemistry, with more impressive discharge rates and higher energy density.” China also has a big lead in charging; their stations are substantially more powerful than North America’s, according to Hundal. Broadly, China has been working on its EV market “in a larger and more serious capacity than the West has,” and for longer.

“China, with its cheap electric cars, is teaching Western automakers a lesson, as they build unaffordable, large, luxurious electric models,” Pratte says. China’s small, inexpensive cars compete directly with the big electric SUVs that Western automakers are pushing with the backing of their own governments. If governments really wanted to reduce greenhouse gases by electrifying transportation, they would welcome cheap Chinese EVs with open arms, Pratte says.

Following a pattern

As few as 15 of the 129 Chinese EV brands are predicted to achieve financial viability by 2030, according to the financial advisory firm AlixPartners. Looking at the stiff competition and excess manufacturing capacity in China’s EV sector, Hundal expects to see major upheaval. “If we go back 100 to 120 years, there were thousands of manufacturers in Canada and hundreds in [the United States]; some survived but most didn’t. I expect that to be the sort of trajectory we will see in China,” he says.

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The threat posed by companies like Nio, Li Auto and XPeng is reminiscent of Toyota’s introduction to the West, when it rapidly gained market share by focusing on affordability and fuel efficiency. Western carmakers at the time emphasized size, power and styling, but Toyota’s big challenge pushed them to overhaul their manufacturing processes and improve their quality and durability. Chinese automakers could force a similar overhaul today by exposing weaknesses in the Western firms. However, its disruptive potential must first overcome the nationalist and protectionist tendencies that have long been the hallmarks of the auto industry.

Ophélie Dénommée-Marchand is a Quebec-based independent journalist with a focus on fact-checking and investigation. She’s also an encyclopedist for the Canadian Encyclopedia.

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But a Quebec green-tech investor thinks he can break the mould and go mainstream.

This winter, François Boutin-Dufresne, a serial entrepreneur based in Montreal, is launching ShareCharge, an app that connects drivers with private EV chargers. In doing so, he hopes to solve the most pernicious challenge limiting EV adoption: range anxiety.

A 2024 J.D. Power study found that nearly three-quarters of Canadians described themselves as unlikely to buy an EV, with most citing limited range as the main obstacle. Surveys in Quebec, the leader in Canada when it comes to EV adoption, show that two-thirds of respondents also felt the charging network needs expansion, especially in rural areas, although data suggest range anxiety decreases over time for EV owners. In Quebec, some 80% of charging is done at home, making the jurisdiction a prime spot for ShareCharge’s proposition.

Boutin-Dufresne, a former economist for the Government of Canada and the International Monetary Fund, draws inspiration from Uber. ShareCharge would allow users to adjust prices according to supply and demand, with rates fluctuating up or down. For example, more expensive and efficient charging equipment would cost more to rent. He predicts that increased demand during holidays or major events will create hot spots where people can earn more from their chargers. Remote locations will also enable rural owners to charge a premium.

Boutin-Dufresne believes that civil society cannot sit by and wait for the government to build out the necessary EV infrastructure. “People need to take matters into their own hands,” he says.

Filling the infrastructure gap

Quebec launched Canada’s first public charging network for electric vehicles in 2011, before the technology really took off, and now has around 6,500 public stations in Montreal and nearly 30,000 across the province.

But its reach has remained too limited, Boutin-Dufresne argues. The impetus for ShareCharge came from his own struggles as an EV owner. He was tired of what he calls EV charging deserts where he has to travel three kilometres or more to replenish his car.

Boutin-Dufresne’s brash, fast-talking demeanour is reflected in his company. Prior to its planned official rollout in December, ShareCharge already purports to be “the world’s largest EV charging network” on its website, even though it had only 150 registered providers. But Boutin-Dufresne believes the network can quickly attract 10% of Quebec EV drivers and owners of home-charging stations, representing 40,000 new places to power up an EV.

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“Chargers on the side of the road cost the city of Montreal $50,000 each; ours cost the government nothing to improve access,” Boutin-Dufresne says.

ShareCharge is planning to expand across North America, though Quebec’s abundant, low-cost hydroelectricity will make the service more affordable there than in most other regions. Boutin-Dufresne is betting that Quebec’s fierce winters increase the appeal for drivers to have access to a large private network of EV chargers.

He aims to develop partnerships with Communauto, Quebec’s popular car-sharing service, and other vehicle rental companies. He believes the charging stations will attract Uber drivers, as well as more people who are not property owners, do not have private charging stations, and park their EVs on the street.

Lack of charging stations in high-rise buildings is cutting off access to EVs

But users who want to earn passive income from their EV chargers also have to shoulder the risk of things going wrong. ShareCharge takes care of quality control and validation for those who wish to rent out their charging stations, and individuals rely on the five-star rating system to avoid renting to users with undesirable behaviour, as is done on Uber or Airbnb. The company does not, however, cover risks that may arise from its use. If someone’s charging station is located in their garage and a customer’s car catches fire, it is up to the owner of the charging station to assume the risk.

Public versus private

The company’s plans also raise questions about government subsidies for private chargers. “It’s a public policy failure that the government, which invested massively in this infrastructure, did not think ahead and come up with this idea themselves,” says Thomas Hundal, an automotive journalist in Toronto.

Critics argue that the public sector should retain control of the charging economy to make it more accessible. “Across the world, governments are following the same modus operandi: they invest public funds to build a basic charging infrastructure so that, in a second phase, it becomes attractive for the private sector,” says Colin Pratte, a transport researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques, a Quebec-based non-profit. He argues that instead of ceding the race for better charging infrastructure to private companies that “parasitize the sharing economy under the guise of enabling it,” it would be better to optimize public networks and keep prices low. Pratte believes EV charging is headed toward a repeat of the mistakes that led to the oil shock, where gas prices became unaffordable.

The Quebec government is preparing to invest nearly a billion dollars in its EV transition by 2028. According to its 2023 projections, there will be two million EV drivers in the province by 2030, though EV sales have been losing momentum since late 2024.

Ophélie Dénommée-Marchand is a Quebec-based independent journalist with a focus on fact-checking and investigation. She’s also an encyclopedist for the Canadian Encyclopedia.

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The company’s board replaced the CEO and CFO in a decision announced May 1, when Li-Cycle publicized that it was looking for buyers. A potential deal with mining giant and lead creditor Glencore evidently had not come to fruition: Two weeks later, a Canadian bankruptcy court appointed Alvarez & Marsal Canada Securities to oversee a sale of Li-Cycle’s assets. A Li-Cycle spokesperson referred Canary Media to the company’s public bankruptcy announcements.

Prospective buyers for the partially completed recycling empire can state their intent by early June. In the meantime, Glencore has loaned $10.5 million to keep things going during the proceedings. Glencore also entered a ​“stalking horse” offer of $40 million for most of Li-Cycle’s holdings, setting a floor for bidding (if any other investors want a piece of the action). Glencore could emerge with a real deal on its hands, but it won’t be recouping the $275 million it previously invested in Li-Cycle.

“The Company represents a compelling investment opportunity, uniquely positioned to benefit from rapid growth in the battery materials and [lithium-ion battery] recycling market, amid increasing global focus on sustainability and critical raw material supply chain resilience,” Alvarez & Marsal pitch in a flyer for the sale.

That ​“compelling” opportunity amounts to five battery shredding plants, a massive unfinished recycling centre in western New York, and a business predicated on the growth of a nascent North American EV supply chain that currently faces far-reaching disruption from the Trump administration. A buyer would not be able to fully recycle any batteries without spending a few hundred million dollars more, and even then, it’s not clear they would make any money doing so.

The start-up’s collapse underscores the struggles of the fledgling battery-recycling industry in general. A few years ago, the sector was flush with venture capital and charting out rapid timelines for commercializing breakthrough technologies that would enable the transition to EVs while minimizing mining. The sector was also seen as a way to achieve the bipartisan goal of reducing dependence on China, which dominates the global battery supply chain.

Li-Cycle was founded in Canada in 2016 and went public in 2021 through a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC (generally a red flag for early-stage cleantech companies). Its engineers developed a technique for shredding whole lithium-ion battery packs while they’re submerged in liquid; this prevented fires and saved considerable effort compared with painstakingly discharging and dismantling the packs for processing.

Li-Cycle successfully built five ​“spoke” facilities to collect and shred whole EV battery packs, turning them into the powdery mixture known as black mass. The spoke operations have paused in Arizona, Alabama, New York and Ontario, while a German outpost continues to function during bankruptcy proceedings. Collectively, these facilities can break down up to 40 kilotons of batteries a year.

The spokes were supposed to feed their black mass to Li-Cycle’s hub in Rochester, New York, which would refine it and isolate useful battery materials to reintroduce into the supply chain. This never came to pass because Li-Cycle halted construction in fall 2023, citing runaway costs. It became clear that Li-Cycle needed to find a lot more cash to complete the nearly two-million-square-foot site.

Prospective buyers for the partially completed recycling empire can state their intent by early June.

The company hoped for a lifeline from the Biden-era Department of Energy: in November, its Loan Programs Office finalized a $475-million loan for Li-Cycle to complete the recycling hub. But Li-Cycle never drew on that federal money because it couldn’t secure additional private funding to hold in reserve, as stipulated in the loan terms.

Li-Cycle is not the only battery recycling firm in a tough spot. Since last year, a number of challenges have beset the industry.

The adjacent U.S. EV sector has seen slower growth than expected, which has in turn reduced the urgency of building out a North American battery supply chain. Core battery materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt have plummeted in price, lessening the value of whatever recyclers might glean. And battery makers have increasingly turned to lithium iron phosphate, a cheaper alternative to nickel- and cobalt-based chemistries, further reducing the value of recycling these batteries.

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In the past year, a fire destroyed the largest battery-shredding plant in the United States, Interco’s Critical Mineral Recovery site in Missouri. Reno, Nevada–based Aqua Metals ran low on funds and laid off staff while it searched for financing to build a commercial-scale recycling line. Ascend Elements delayed construction of its flagship recycling plant in Kentucky, citing a customer’s decision to postpone buying the recycled materials. In March, Ascend cancelled plans to make cathode active materials in Kentucky to focus on precursor materials and lithium carbonate.

Redwood Materials is the rare bright spot. The venture by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel raised a couple billion dollars and has been building out a major compound in the desert outside Reno, not far from Tesla’s factory there. In 2024, Redwood Materials broke down 20 gigawatt-hours of batteries and earned $200 million in revenue from recycled materials.

The industry’s challenges come as the Trump administration says it aims to expand U.S. mineral supplies. Paradoxically, the administration has taken steps to undermine the fledgling U.S. EV and battery industries, which are the big drivers of demand growth for rare earth metals. The budget bill passed by the House last week would strip tax incentives for EV purchases and battery installations, weakening demand for the domestic supply chain that recyclers like Li-Cycle hoped to serve – and making the tough road for recycling firms even tougher.

This article was first published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

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The vision of a decarbonized, interconnected, resilient national power grid is at the heart of recent analysis by Corporate Knights’ Climate Dollars project that sets out an ambitious plan for a zero-emission economy by 2050, all while securing and revitalizing the local economies that are the cornerstone of our national sovereignty.

It is a grid that we have only recently imagined, one based on millions of distributed, renewable generators rather than dozens of central power plants. It requires capital investments in solar, wind and storage technologies that total $700 billion over the next 25 years, in addition to the roughly equal amount of capital needed to electrify the buildings and vehicles. The capital cost for the grid investments averages $28 billion per year from now until 2050 and is below current investment level in the electric power sector in Canada, which totalled $32 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $34.5 billion this year.

But while this total investment is well within the capacity of Canadian capital spending, realizing such a sustainable outcome requires that government make the right choices now, that both new and existing buildings are fossil fuel–free, that we develop vehicle-to-grid infrastructure that feeds the energy of EV batteries back into our grid, and that we stop building new fossil and nuclear plants.

The renewable grid builds on our current hydroelectric base and leans into the wind and solar resources that Canada has in abundance, and that are leading global growth in electricity generation investment.

• Sized to provide for the growth in electrification of buildings and vehicles, the scenario includes up to 100,000 wind turbines and 100 million solar panels to be built across Canada over the next 25 years.
• The batteries in tens of millions of interconnected electric vehicles will provide the energy storage to ensure a reliable grid, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. By 2050, vehicle-to-grid technology cuts the cost of the national grid by half – even after putting money in vehicle owners’ pockets by compensating them for access to their batteries.

Every part of the Climate Dollars scenario is built on technologies that are proven, affordable and beginning to scale up. Getting it done will depend on government leadership in clearing regulatory and other barriers to rapid action, and an accelerated response from businesses and investors who see opportunities to prosper generated by a positive, pragmatic response to the climate emergency.

The Trans-Canada Transmission Link

At the heart of the transition scenario is what we are calling the Trans-Canada Transmission Link, a bold nation-building project as central to our future as the Trans-Canada Railway and Highway were to our past. It’s a coast-to-coast, high-voltage DC transmission line that will foster interprovincial trade in electricity to bring down the cost of decarbonization while supporting broad distribution of the benefits of the hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in renewable electricity through the coming transition.

A Trans-Canada Transmission Link will also be a more efficient means of transporting energy across the country than a new pipeline. As the energy transition unfolds, the link could transport gas-powered electricity generated in Alberta to Eastern Canada faster than pushing the gas across the country in a pipeline, with an important added benefit: the Trans-Canada Transmission Link will not be obsolete after the transition to zero-carbon sources is complete. The link will give each province access to electricity-generating capacity in any of the others, with different parts of the country using and consuming power at different times of day. With the grid itself as a coordinating point, Manitoba sunshine will be able to power the dinner-hour peak in Halifax, while Quebec’s summer winds supply morning electricity for office towers in Calgary and Edmonton.

The Trans-Canada Transmission Link is a bold nation-building project as central to our future as the Trans-Canada Railway and Highway were to our past.

A Canada-wide link also cuts the total amount of renewable generation the country will need. Rather than every province building its own carbon-free grid independently, a national link is stronger, and smarter, together. It will cost $30 to $40 billion to build, including the converter stations in each province, and deliver two to three times that much in cost savings.

The interprovincial transactions along the Trans-Canada Transmission Link will be a win for all provinces, whether they’re buying or selling electricity. The prospect of stable, new domestic markets will increase the incentive for hydropower-rich Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia to develop their wind resources. And the easy availability of electrons through an east–west grid will help out provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario that will be hard pressed to independently develop all the renewable generation they need to decarbonize their economies by 2050.

The battery under your hood

Short-term energy storage, operating every hour of every day of the year, is the key to the renewable grid, delivering the flexibility to match the peaks and valleys of intermittent electricity supply with constantly fluctuating demand. In the Climate Dollars scenario, the battery under the hood of your electric vehicle is the most affordable way to deliver that reliability.

In the short to medium term, large, utility-scale batteries that can store 240,000 kilowatt-hours or more will support the transition to renewable electricity, and there will likely be a longer-term role for some of these large, more expensive batteries. In the longer run, however, the key to bringing down the cost of emissions-free electricity is to bring down the cost of storage.

In the Climate Dollars scenario, we tap into the millions of much smaller EV batteries that will be available from the electrification of road transport. The cars are generally parked 95% of the time and on any given day use only 10 to 20% of their battery capacity. With relatively inexpensive vehicle-to-grid (V2G) infrastructure that enables the cars to charge at times of day when solar electricity is abundant and partially discharge in the evening and overnight, the otherwise idle batteries become a key enabling technology for the transition to renewable electricity.

Utility and fleet managers in Canada and around the world are beginning to adopt V2G technology for load management and cost savings. In the Climate Dollars scenario, vehicle owners decide , but V2G becomes the universal way in which personal electric vehicles connect to the grid. With utility batteries costing more than $1,000 per kilowatt, access to EV batteries could be worth $10,000 to $20,000 per vehicle battery. In the Climate Dollars scenario, V2G cuts the cost of grid decarbonization in half, saving hundreds of billions of dollars – not because the car batteries are that much cheaper, but because they’re already embedded in the cost of the cars. Those vehicles, in turn, become more affordable to buy if their owners can count on revenue from a V2G contract.

Heat pumps and winter peak electricity consumption

In the Climate Dollars scenario, air-source and ground-source heat pumps are the key to eliminating fossil fuel consumption in residential and commercial buildings.

In most provinces, fossil fuels – mainly natural gas – provide most building space and water heating, and the conversion of millions of gas-heated buildings to heat pumps will result in strong growth in winter peak consumption of electricity. Fortunately, because the heat pumps are so efficient – providing anywhere from two to four units of heat for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they consume – it will require that much less energy to heat the buildings with heat pumps than it currently takes to heat them with gas.

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Nevertheless, there are millions of buildings to be converted, and the resulting growth in winter peak consumption of electricity is the defining factor in the capital investment required to establish and maintain a renewable, emission-free electricity supply.

Ensuring that all new buildings are built to high efficiency standards and retrofitting existing buildings for higher levels of efficiency can make a big difference in their peak consumption – more than $100 billion in capital savings if the retrofits are deep enough. There is also a large amount of industrial electricity consumption that occurs during the winter peak, and which could be responsive to seasonal load management and “time of year” pricing – for example, a manufacturing plant could scale back production from Christmas to the middle of February, and make it up in the spring. Here, again, the capital savings to the electricity system could add up to tens of billions of dollars.

Inevitably, though, any future grid that supplies an electrified building sector in a temperate climate will have a winter peak – in the Climate Dollars scenario, electricity consumption is higher in winter in every province. This will result in idle solar and wind capacity in the spring and the fall, idle capacity that will be available at very low cost to innovators who can devise applications for it.

Canada’s energy-supply mix in 2050

In the Climate Dollars scenario, oil and gas demand falls to nearly zero by 2050. The fuels we use for heating and cooling, vehicles, industry and agriculture are replaced by electricity, and that electricity is generated predominantly from wind, hydropower and solar.

• Wind turbines total 178 gigawatts of installed capacity with a national grid in place to balance demand, 235 GW without.
• With no new large hydropower dams in the scenario beyond projects that are already committed, installed hydro capacity remains steady at about 80 GW.
• Solar panels come in at just over 50 GW, 36.4 from utility-scale solar farms and 14 from rooftops in every part of the country.
• Total electricity end use increases from less than 600 to more than 1,000 terawatt-hours per year, including about 550 TWh in homes and commercial buildings, 150 TWh from road transport and nearly 330 TWh from industry and agriculture.

To chart a course to this renewable, decarbonized future, Climate Dollars modelled each of the separate, provincial grids that Canadians have relied on for nearly a century. The scenario includes detailed electricity supply and demand projections for most individual provinces, with an integrated analysis of the electricity supply for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Highlights include:

• modest overall growth in energy and peak electricity demand in British Columbia and Quebec, with hydropower readily available and today’s heavy use of electric resistance heating creating opportunities to boost efficiency through heat pump conversions;
• increased reliance on wind resources in Alberta and Saskatchewan that are close to population centres and play a central role in decarbonizing the grid;
• more than a doubling of electricity consumption in Alberta and Ontario, with rising peak consumption in Ontario underscoring the opportunity to boost efficiency with cold-climate heat pumps and building retrofits;
• greater reliance on ground-source heat pumps in the three Prairie provinces;
• low overall energy consumption in Newfoundland and Labrador as the fossil fuel industry winds down, creating an opportunity for the province’s abundant hydropower resources to attract energy-intensive industries; and
• modest electricity demand growth in the Maritime provinces, where electric heating is already quite prevalent and the rise in peak demand is not as sharp as elsewhere.

Building new nuclear capacity increases the overall cost of decarbonization. A high-nuclear future in Ontario that includes proposed new plants at Bruce and Wesleyville costs $55 billion more than Climate Dollars’ lower-cost reference scenario, which includes only the spending already committed to rebuild old reactors.

Corporate Knights will release the full Climate Dollars analysis April 24, during Earth Week.

Corporate Knights is able to carry out this research thanks to support from the McConnell Foundation, the Trottier Family Foundation, the Chisholm Thomson Family Foundation and the Graham Boeckh Foundation.

The post How transforming Canada’s electricity grid could drive decarbonization, save billions appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The analysis identifies the investments in our buildings, vehicles and power grids that are needed to shift our energy use to electricity and set a path to a zero-emission economy by 2050.

Climate Dollars charts a practical path over the next 25 years that builds on Canada’s unique strengths and reinforces our sovereignty in a time of deep national anxiety.

Climate Dollars shows how Canada can embrace and succeed at an ambitious, achievable national building project that dramatically accelerates the shift to heat pumps for space heating and cooling and heralds a massive buildout of new renewable energy and energy storage. With rapid, widespread electrification at the heart of the plan, the modelling calls for a fundamental shift from the balkanized provincial electricity systems that grew up around the hydropower dams and enormous but inefficient fossil and nuclear plants – the last century’s glorified steam engines – that distribute centralized power via brittle, hub-and-spoke grids.

The grid of the future is something we’ve never imagined before, and we have to build it at a speed that we never imagined possible – until now. Across much of the world, the rising efficiency and plummeting cost of renewable energy and energy storage is driving investment and national strategy toward an energy future that boosts local economies and increases our resilience in the face of climate disruption, while accelerating emission reductions that can still avert the worst of the global climate emergency.

Canada’s next energy system will be built on tens of thousands of wind turbines and millions of solar panels on rooftops and in solar farms, all interconnected to a grid that enables multi-directional flows of energy and information – a Trans-Canada Transmission Link as central to our future as the Trans-Canada Railway and Highway were to our past.

This economic, technological and cultural transformation is about opportunity and gain, not loss and pain.

This economic, technological and cultural transformation is about opportunity and gain, not loss and pain, a chance to build the Canada we want while leaving no one behind. Ending the emissions that are warming and disrupting our planet can be an essential side benefit of building a future where life is more comfortable and affordable, our communities are more livable and welcoming, and our jobs and businesses contribute to building the future we want.

But we know that this shift will take place against a backdrop of deep urgency – because the climate crisis is gaining momentum. Every new building or renovation that includes fossil fuels commits us to years of additional climate pollution. The average car or light truck stays on the road for 15 years or more, and the majority of today’s new-vehicle purchases are still fossil-fuelled. So while it will take 25 years to complete this work, we won’t get it done without a massive response over the next decade.

The in-depth modelling presents an emergency plan that can renew local and provincial economies and strengthen the Canadian federation while delivering reliable, affordable energy, every hour of every day of the year. Climate Dollars shows that the cost of an effective, comprehensive energy transition is far less than what we stand to pay (in fact, what we’re already beginning to pay) for the impacts of climate change, across Canada and around the world. And there’s every reason to believe that taking action at the pace and scale we need will drive down the cost of the energy transition itself, in some cases very dramatically, as solutions scale up, efficiencies accumulate and unit costs are reduced.

Three cornerstones of the Climate Dollars energy transition

• Shifting Canada’s economy almost completely from fuels to electricity, except for a small volume of petrochemicals produced from fossil fuels, by electrifying buildings, transport, and industry and leaning heavily on heat pumps to drastically reduce the energy consumption of buildings
• Relying on the batteries in many millions of electric vehicles across the country to store renewable electricity when it’s least expensive and release it for distribution during times of day when demand is highest, while positioning Canada to become a world leader in emerging vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology
• Saving $100 billion on the overall plan by completing the Trans-Canada Transmission Link, a strategy that makes it easier for provinces to share electricity, builds a new sense of connection and shared purpose between west and east and asserts strong, confident Canadian leadership in areas of business, technology and trade that are already seen as essential in most of the world

At a time when Canada’s prosperity is threatened by volatile oil and gas markets, and its very existence is being questioned by an even more volatile trading partner, Climate Dollars envisions a more hopeful future.

It presents a set of realistic scenarios to phase the country’s precarious fossil fuel economy down and out and replace it with a far more efficient, electrified system. The scenarios require no new commitments to large hydropower installations. And the analysis shows conclusively that by adding more nuclear generation to our future electricity mix, beyond refits of existing reactors that are already under way, ratepayers would shell out $55 billion more than necessary to decarbonize the Ontario economy.

But the promising future that Climate Dollars envisions depends on fast, strategic decisions in these key sectors:

• In the power sector, Corporate Knights modelled the transition that each provincial grid will have to go through to accommodate the electrification of buildings, transportation and industry by 2050. Our Canadian-owned electricity system will be transformed by average investments of $34 billion per year. For each province, the modelling looked at the unique factors that will shape electricity supply and demand, including climatic conditions, current and future sources of renewable electricity supply, and available electricity savings. The Trans-Canada Transmission Link reduces the cost of decarbonizing the grid by about $100 billion and emerges as the key ingredient that balances the costs, benefits, jobs and business-development opportunities across provinces and regions. Clean energy already employs more Canadians than fossil fuels, and in contrast to the flat job creation projected for oil and gas, clean energy employment is set to soar for both domestic and export markets.
• In buildings, the shift to heat pumps will unlock the affordable, reliable heating and cooling Canadians need while helping to limit the remaining demand to be met by an expanding electricity grid. National homebuilding strategies can also boost affordability and limit new energy demand by factoring in demographic trends that strongly favour apartments and condominiums, not single-family homes, for new dwelling units. While heat pumps will do the heavy lifting in decarbonizing the buildings sector, energy retrofits could save additional tens of billions in investment in the electricity supply system – and the cost of an accelerated national retrofit program could be cut by as much as 50% with a more systematic, integrated approach to the work. Capital investments in the transition to carbon-free energy stimulate local economies and job creation, and nowhere is this more true than in the buildings sector, where the jobs are created everywhere there are buildings.
• In transportation, for Canada’s growing fleet of 23 million personal vehicles and seven million commercial trucks, electrification is the key to decarbonization, given that a typical gas-powered internal combustion engine emits more than twice the weight of the vehicle in annual greenhouse gas emissions. Measures to reduce the number and length of vehicle trips will help moderate the growth in demand for carbon-free electricity, but the Climate Dollars scenario focuses primarily on electric vehicles and the charging infrastructure they will need. With the price premium on EVs set to fall sharply through 2035, Canadian drivers are on track to reap a $1.2-trillion clean energy dividend on fuel through 2050, after subtracting the cost of the electricity to run the vehicles. But fulfilling that potential will mean quadrupling capital investment over the next crucial decade.

The Climate Dollars analysis lays out an ambitious path to decarbonization at a moment when Canadians are being encouraged to think big about the future we want to build. The cost of reconfiguring the country’s electricity systems over the next quarter-century is consistent with other projections of the cost of a national energy and climate transition that is already under way. The capital expenditures this transformation will require are just a small percentage of what Canadians and their governments invest in buildings, vehicles and equipment each year. And they’re far less than the annual spending that built out our present-day hydropower dams, electricity grids and early nuclear power stations in the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s.

Corporate Knights will release the full Climate Dollars analysis April 24, two days after Earth Day 2025.

ABOUT CLIMATE DOLLARS

The Corporate Knights Climate Dollars project views the zero-emissions challenge through the lens of capital investment. With the goal of measuring the deficit between current climate-related investments and the funding required to meet the country’s climate goals, it’s an important step in showing how Canada can meet its 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas emissions-reduction targets.

In 2020, Corporate Knights estimated that putting Canada on a path to zero carbon would require capital expenditures of $150 billion per year throughout the 2020s and beyond – a fraction of that year’s gross domestic product of $2.6 trillion (in today’s dollars). Subsequent estimates by a variety of institutions and organizations echoed our finding that capital investments in the range of 5% to 8% of GDP would be sufficient to meet net-zero targets by 2050.

But five years later, the momentum we need is still severely lacking. And bringing Canada’s emissions to anything approaching zero, net or otherwise, by mid-century will require a radical departure from the trend over the past 30 years. Corporate Knights launched Climate Dollars in November 2023 by measuring the capital expenditures needed for decarbonization, the current levels of investment, and the business and policy strategies that will be needed to close the gap.

Corporate Knights is able to carry out this research thanks to support from the McConnell Foundation, the Trottier Family Foundation, the Chisholm Thomson Family Foundation and the Graham Boeckh Foundation.

The post Three big shifts that can transform and modernize Canada’s economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Yet after billions of taxpayer dollars have been invested, the EV industry in Canada is facing headwinds. Chief among these are U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian goods, followed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s equivalent retaliatory tariffs on $30 billion worth of American goods starting on February 4, escalating to include another $125 billion worth of imports in three weeks.

For a country with an automotive sector that exports 91% of its parts to the U.S., the threats feel existential. They may also be seen as a betrayal of the centuries-long economic and cultural partnership between two neighbours sharing one of the world’s longest and most porous borders.

Adding to these international headwinds are three other obstacles within the EV industry: 1) high costs, 2) limited battery range and 3) sparse battery charging infrastructure. These concerns continue to affect firms here in Canada, with big automakers like Stellantis juggling high inventory, slow sales and falling revenue.

These challenges have sparked skepticism about the future of EVs in Canada and whether the federal and provincial governments’ multi-billion-dollar investments in the industry are wise.

Canada needs to consolidate its EV innovation ecosystem by integrating the upstream of its domestic supply chain assets with the downstream of its technology commercialization and adoption.

– Charles Conteh and Tia Henstra

As researchers who study Canada and other countries’ innovation policy initiatives amid breakneck changes in technologies and markets, we argue that Canada has every reason to ratchet up its commitments in the months and years ahead.

Along with artificial intelligence, EVs represent the emergent frontier of advanced manufacturing in the digital age. Winners of this innovation race will stand to dominate the global market for the foreseeable future.

Canada has every reason to be optimistic about EVs

Despite current challenges, EVs remain the future of the automotive sector. Even conservative estimates suggest that by 2040, around three-quarters of new car sales will be fully electric globally.

Canada’s position in the EV industry is stronger than recent news coverage indicates. The country ranked first among 30 countries in a 2024 EV battery supply chain report, outperforming even China. This ranking reflects Canada’s vast reserves of critical minerals essential for EV battery production and its burgeoning battery manufacturing sector. Over the past few years, Canada has attracted significant investments from manufacturers like Umicore, Northvolt and Volkswagen-owned PowerCo.

Canada has reasons to be optimistic about EV and energy storage demand. While concerns about U.S. protectionism loom, Canada’s commitment to zero-emission vehicles ensures fiscal incentives and policies that will likely boost short-term demand.

On the environmental, social and governance front, Canada outperforms many of its global competitors in battery manufacturing. Though by no means perfect, the country’s climate change policy ambitions, clean electricity grid and commitment to sustainable mining position it as a global leader in the EV space.

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Canada’s robust innovation ecosystem for advanced manufacturing is another key strength. A prime example is the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network (OVIN), which commercializes advanced automotive technologies and manages the development, testing, piloting and uptake of transportation and infrastructure technologies. The network operates seven regional technology development sites across Ontario, including in Waterloo, Hamilton, Windsor-Essex, Durham and Toronto.

By serving as a bridge between government, industry and researchers, OVIN has become a model for multi-level governance, with projects jointly funded by the federal and provincial governments and close working relationships with municipalities. As the EV industry navigates economic and policy challenges, initiatives like OVIN are crucial for driving long-term growth and competitiveness.

Canada must calibrate and consolidate its EV ecosystem

While Canada’s automotive innovation ecosystem is generally robust, it requires some calibration to overcome current challenges and claim the next frontier of the global EV race.

In particular, Canada needs to consolidate its EV innovation ecosystem by integrating the upstream of its domestic supply chain assets with the downstream of its technology commercialization and adoption.

In other words, this means getting more critical minerals to market and making sure a substantial portion of the materials mined in Canada are processed and used domestically to build batteries and vehicles, so the entire EV production cycle benefits Canada’s economy.

Such an endeavour will require Canada to establish the right policies, regulations and financial support to tap into its vast reserves of critical minerals to supply the country’s battery plants.

It is the presence of these reserves that made Canada attractive to the automakers in the first place. Leveraging them wisely will be critical for the country’s long-term success in the EV industry.

Charles Conteh is a professor of public policy and administration at Brock University.

Tia Henstra is a research assistant for the Niagara Community Observatory at Brock University.

This story first appeared in The Conversation; it has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

The post Why Canada must protect its EV strategy amid a looming trade war appeared first on Corporate Knights.

There was a lot to choose from – something that may not be immediately apparent in the aftermath of the U.S. election and news that 2024 will almost certainly be the hottest on record.   

But it’s true: Canada and the world made enormous strides addressing climate change and building a cleaner economy. Here are the top 10 stories from 2024:  

Electric vehicle sales in Canada continued to rise 

You may not know it from news coverage, but sales of electric vehicles in Canada are at their highest level ever. And they keep rising: market share for EVs in Canada has roughly tripled over the past three years, with the latest quarterly data showing sales at 16.5% nationally. In fact, gas vehicle sales in Canada peaked in 2017 and have been falling ever since.  

The question ahead is one of pace, with Quebec rapidly taking the North American crown for EV adoption. More than one in three vehicle sales in la belle province were electric last quarter –substantially higher than runner-up California.  

Globally, it was the same story: EVs rising  

The trend is even more pronounced globally, where EV sales are set for another record year. A big part of the story is China – the world’s largest auto-market – where the latest data show EVs taking more than half the market. That has contributed to a peak in oil consumption in the country last year, according to the latest official estimates. 

Taken together, the rise of EVs is expected to cut global oil demand by six million barrels per day by 2030, according to the International Energy Association (IEA). 

Peak fossil fuels by 2030

On a related note: the IEA projected that global demand for fossil fuels will peak before 2030, thanks largely to the rapid electrification of the economy. Other forecasts, including those from oil and gas companies, have come to a similar conclusion. Global declines in the demand for fossil fuels will have important implications for Canada and the long-term competitiveness of the oil and gas sector.  

Clean electricity continued to soar 

As fossil fuels decline, they’re quickly being replaced by an age of clean electricity. The IEA expects roughly $2 trillion in clean energy investments in 2024, nearly double the amount invested in fossil fuels. More than 40% of electricity worldwide was non-emitting in 2023, and more than 90% of the growth in net power capacity came from wind and solar. 

Provinces and territories made big moves on clean electricity 

In Canada, we saw big progress on clean electricity across the country, despite some more high-profile disputes. Ontario is ramping up electrification with a goal to become a clean energy superpower. Hydro-Québec is investing up to $185 billion over the next decade to expand clean energy and electrify the province. Quebec inked a deal with Newfoundland and Labrador last week that would see a massive amount of new clean electricity come online in future years. British Columbia is charging ahead with enough new wind projects to increase power supply by 8% – with more to come in future years. The federal government recently committed up to $1 billion in Indigenous-led wind power in New Brunswick, on top of other clean energy investments. And in Saskatchewan, the federal government is investing more than $265 million in clean electricity, including Indigenous-led renewable projects.  

The cost of clean energy continued to drop

The cost of clean energy continued to drop worldwide, especially in solar and battery technologies. In the first half of this year alone, for example, solar photovoltaic prices dropped 20%, according to the IEA. Solar module prices were cut in half over the past year. And grid-scale battery storage prices declined by nearly 10%.  

That can’t help but have positive impacts on affordability here at home. On that front, new research released this year showed that the transition to clean electricity can save people money: most households in Canada can expect to save up to $1,100 each year by switching to more efficient technologies such as EVs and heat pumps by mid-century. That echoes earlier research from the Canadian Climate Institute that found that the switch off fossil fuels can save people money on energy costs over time.  

Indigenous nations led on clean energy 

Indigenous Peoples continued to lead the way on climate and clean energy in 2024. The Oneida battery storage plant – the largest facility of its kind in the country and a 50/50 partnership with the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario – is set to power up next summer. Likewise, an energy storage project led by the Malahat First Nation on Vancouver Island will produce enough battery power for tens of thousands of homes and support hundreds of local jobs. Indigenous Peoples are partners or beneficiaries in nearly one-fifth of Canada’s electricity generation – and almost all of that is renewables.   

This year also brought important new policy research on an Indigenous electrification strategy, Indigenous participation in clean energy, and Indigenous housing and clean technologies.  

Canada has made progress cutting emissions 

The latest estimates from the Canadian Climate Institute show that Canada’s emissions saw a modest drop in 2023 and now sit around 8% below where they were in 2005. Climate policies are working – with industrial carbon pricing leading the pack. Canada’s emissions would be higher today without the actions taken to date by all levels of government since 2015. By 2030, existing climate policies are expected to prevent 226 megatons of emissions – the same amount as current emissions from Quebec and Ontario combined. But getting closer to Canada’s emission targets still requires more action. Governments can deliver even deeper emission cuts by following through and finalizing developing and announced policies.  

Big progress electrifying buildings 

This year also saw Quebec committing to 100% renewable energy to heat all buildings, except in the industrial sector, which will mean a big transition away from fossil fuels to highly efficient electric heat pumps. This type of planned transition in the building sector is necessary to protect consumers from higher costs and stranded assets. Likewise, Vancouver avoided a reversal of its nation-leading rules that effectively banned gas for heating most buildings.    

Oil and gas sector makes progress cutting methane 

Emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector remain a critical challenge for climate policy, making up more than 30% of national emissions. But one area that has seen progress is methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. Cutting methane is a no-brainer and widely considered to be the cheapest and easiest way to slash emissions from the sector. This fall, British Columbia announced it had already cut methane emissions in half from the sector, exceeding its mandated 2025 target, and Alberta has done the same. The federal government has drafted regulations that would reduce oil and gas methane 75% by 2030. There are important caveats, with recent research finding higher estimates of methane than previously thought, but progress has generally been encouraging.    

Taken together, it’s been a year of surprisingly good news in the realm of climate and clean energy. That’s not to diminish the challenges ahead – but let’s not lose sight of the progress that’s been made. And let’s redouble our efforts in 2025. 

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute. 

The post 10 good-news stories on climate and clean energy in 2024 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Sharifi says that she was not the only tenant in her building, located in Toronto’s east end, to make such a request. Other EV owners submitted similar pleas and all were told that the board had other priorities.

They are far from alone in their frustration at the lack of accessible, on-site chargers for people living in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs). Insufficient on-site charging in MURBs has become a significant gap in the EV ecosystem. Currently, 72% of EV charging in Canada occurs at home. Workplace and public charging stations make up the balance.

But as more Canadians replace their gas car with an electric one – 65,733 new zero-emission vehicles were registered as of the second quarter of 2024, an increase of 37.9% from the same period last year – the clamour for chargers located in apartment and condo parking stalls will only get louder.

Louise Lévesque, senior policy director with Electric Mobility Canada (EMC), says that the anticipated rise in requests for on-site charging facilities has now arrived. “We’re there, and we need to address this,” Lévesque says, although she acknowledges a recent uptick in charging infrastructure installation in the condominium sector, which she attributes to tenant advocacy.

It’s unequal. If you’re living in an apartment building, you can’t benefit from the economics of driving an EV just because you can’t install a charging station.

– Louise Lévesque, senior policy director with Electric Mobility Canada

Even so, Lévesque says, efforts to make residential buildings “EV-ready” – equipped to handle a higher electrical load and with circuitry in place to hook up to chargers – are not moving fast enough. EMC submitted recommendations to the federal government two years ago advising that one million MURBs be EV-ready within the next five years. Canada will not come close to reaching that target.

Access to EV charging is an equity issue

As many as one in three Canadians lives in a condo or apartment rental; in urban centres, the share is much higher, reaching 60% in the Montreal and Vancouver metropolitan areas. Americans are in a comparable position: nearly a quarter of all housing structures in the United States have more than one dwelling unit.

Noting that in the United States some 50% to 80% of all battery-electric car-charging sessions take place at home, Eleftheria Kontou, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois, argues that “the current limited access to home charging in many cities constrains electric vehicle adoption, slows down the decarbonization of U.S. transportation and exacerbates inequities in electric vehicle ownership.”

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According to a report by Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors, EV uptake is concentrated among more affluent people. Access to charging in multifamily buildings is an equity issue, the report’s authors write, given the greater prevalence of low-income and racialized people in multifamily buildings relative to single-family homes.

Lévesque echoes that finding, adding that EV adoption rates will continue to track upward over the next few years but that the buyers will be predominantly homeowners. “I think that’s sad,” she says. “It’s unequal. If you’re living in an apartment building, you can’t benefit from the economics of driving an EV just because you can’t install a charging station.”

Lévesque says that municipalities and the charging industry are getting creative in response to residents’ need for easy access to chargers, such as locating charging hubs in parking lots close to high-rise clusters.

Better days ahead for EV charging infrastructure

Property owners and condo boards often cite cost and electrical systems that can’t handle the additional load from EVs as the biggest obstacles to investing in charging equipment. Power sharing, where multiple cars can share a single circuit, can help ease the energy burden, Lévesque says. Government subsidies are also available to retrofit buildings so that they are EV-ready, although provincial support is wildly inconsistent from one jurisdiction to the next.

Still, progress is evident in places such as the City of Vancouver, which raised the percentage of EV-ready parking stalls required in new MURBs from 20% to 100% in 2018. Three years later, Vancouver launched an incentive program to accelerate EV-ready retrofits in existing rental buildings.

The City of Toronto requires that 100% of residential parking in new construction and 20% to 50% of non-residential parking be EV-ready.

As for recalcitrant condo boards, a new movement is underway called “the right to charge.” If adopted as legislation, the right to charge means that boards and property owners can be compelled to make their buildings EV-ready. For example, in the State of Illinois, the new Electric Vehicle Charging Act requires that 100% of parking spaces at multi-unit dwellings be ready for EV charging, with a conduit and reserved power capacity to easily install charging stations. The new law also gives renters and condo owners in new buildings a right to install chargers without unreasonable restriction from landlords and homeowner associations.

According to the Dunsky report, installing charging infrastructure adds an increasingly sought-after amenity that can make a building more valuable. Lévesque agrees: “If you’re selling your condo and you can tell a future buyer that your parking spot is EV-ready or has a charging station, that adds value,” she says. “More and more people will be interested in not having the hassle of getting all that installed and going through the whole process of getting approvals – it’s all done already.”

Sharifi no longer needs to charge her EV at the shopping mall closest to her condo: she installed a charger when she moved into her townhouse last August. And despite the board’s refusal to budge on the issue, Sharifi does not suffer buyer’s remorse. “I save thousands of dollars a year on gas,” she reports. “In all this time, I’ve never had an oil change or needed maintenance work.” 

Sharifi also believes that the board will eventually come around. “There are a lot of new buildings going up in that neighbourhood. All of them offer an EV-ready parking stall. They’re going to have to do this.”

Victoria Foote is a writer and editor who specializes in clean energy and climate.

The post Lack of charging stations in high-rise buildings is cutting off access to EVs appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In China, you can purchase the compact BYD Seagull for ¥90,000, or about $17,000 Canadian. In Switzerland, the similarly sized Dongfeng Nammi Box runs about $27,000. But in the U.S. and Canada, the cheapest EV is the three-door hatchback Fiat 500e, which comes in at $40,000. That’s a 48% surcharge for living in the wrong country. Or, more precisely, for keeping cheap, Chinese-built EVs out.

There was some hope that cheaper EVs were on their way, but that was extinguished this summer when Washington and Ottawa announced 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, essentially guaranteeing they will not be available anytime soon.

Support for this decision has been nearly universal – from industry, unions and partisans across the political spectrum, who say it will protect a nascent domestic EV supply chain, which has been promised more than $50 billion in public subsidies in Canada (and nearly 10 times that in the United States) and all the jobs and economic ripple effects the auto industry provides. North America’s auto industry, it appears, is simply too big to fail.

Just as the integrated auto industry benefited from massive Canadian and American bailouts during the financial crisis 15 years ago, these tariffs can be thought of as a preemptive bailout, a tacit admission that local producers cannot compete with Chinese automakers, which both governments say have the unfair advantage of cheap labour and government subsidies.

Only this time, the bailout is being paid for by the consumer – who will shell out tens of thousands of dollars more for an EV – and the climate, which will be forced to absorb additional carbon due to the slower uptake of more expensive EVs.

We can’t lose sight of the fact that getting affordable electric cars into people’s hands isn’t something that is optional. It is essential to achieving our climate goals.

— Nate Wallace, clean-transportation program manager at Environmental Defence

The opportunity cost of keeping out Chinese EVs

If inexpensive Chinese EVs were available in Canada, they would supercharge EV adoption, adding an estimated 1.8 million zero-emission EVs to our roads over the next decade and lowering our carbon emissions by almost 28 million tonnes. These ultra-low-cost EVs would also free up more than $5.3 billion in family budgets – money that will now be spent on more expensive EVs, gas cars and gasoline instead.

These numbers, crunched by Corporate Knights’ director of research Ralph Torrie and shared with the Toronto Star, show the opportunity cost of keeping Chinese EVs out of Canada, all in the name of protecting the local auto manufacturing industry. The figures demonstrate how tariffs will imperil our climate targets, drive inflation and dampen economic growth by eating up billions in disposable income, Torrie says.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump has said that the tariffs are a “tax on a foreign country” and will, in effect, make China pay for “ripping us off and stealing our jobs.”

Economists across the political spectrum, however, say that tariffs will actually drive prices up – in other words, stoke inflation. “We didn’t go to Trump University, thinking that China will pay these tariffs,” says Nate Wallace, clean-transportation program manager at Environmental Defence. “They’re a tax on Canadian consumers with the explicit intent of raising prices.”

Meanwhile, trade with China in other goods is booming, reaching more than $100 billion last year. Tariffs on EVs only single out a particularly essential climate-change-fighting technology for punishment.

“There will be fewer EVs and more emissions,” Wallace says.

What’s worse, the tariffs could end up failing to achieve their goal of fostering a local EV industry. Some who have seen Chinese EVs up close – including the CEO of Ford Motor – say they are so advanced and so cheap, legacy automakers might never catch up. In other words, Chinese EVs are on track to dominate globally, and these tariffs could end up doing nothing but forestalling the inevitable.

The number one barrier to EV adoption: sticker price

In the United States, EVs have become the focal point of culture wars around climate change. But in Canada they had the magic power to bring erstwhile opponents together, with environmentalists and business leaders, Liberals and Conservatives, unions and management working to encourage the development of a domestic EV supply chain to reduce carbon emissions and provide a new generation of blue-collar jobs.

The tariffs, however, shattered this alliance, definitively putting economic development ahead of emission reductions.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that getting affordable electric cars into people’s hands isn’t something that is optional. It is essential to achieving our climate goals,” Wallace wrote in a submission to the Canadian government calling for lower tariffs.

Road transportation is responsible for 17% of carbon emissions in Canada and 22% in the U.S. Globally, thanks to EVs, the transportation sector is one of the few that’s on track to reach net-zero by 2050. But North America lags behind.

If Americans or Canadians are ever given the opportunity to buy these vehicles, I think they would sell a lot stronger than a lot of Western automakers would think – and I think that’s really terrifying for them.

— Kevin Williams, reporter for InsideEVs

The number one barrier to EV adoption is sticker price. Despite many studies showing that the overall cost of owning an EV is cheaper in the long run than a gasoline-powered car, they remain significantly more expensive upfront in the North American market.

In China, however, EVs have achieved price parity with cars powered by internal combustion engines across price points – from the cheapest models to the most luxurious – and the results speak for themselves: China leads the world in EV sales, with more than one-third of all new cars powered by batteries. In fact, more than 60% of all EVs bought globally are purchased in China.

For mass adoption to take off in Canada, EV prices would have to drop by one-third to one-half, according to a Scotiabank analysis released last year. This is also how much cheaper Chinese EVs are today. Yet EVs in North America are only getting more expensive. The two cheapest models on the market – the Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf – were recently discontinued.

“The only reason why low-priced electric vehicles from China pose any kind of threat to this industry is because the legacy automakers in North America have so far refused to bring affordable electric vehicle models to market,” Wallace wrote.

Tim Burrows, president of the EV Society, a Canadian non-profit that promotes EVs as a climate solution, says the tariffs on Chinese EVs appear at first glance to be jumping the gun. “There are no vehicles that it’s going on in Canada,” he says. “We don’t have Chinese EVs, and we have no EV industry to protect yet.”

Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and now the UN’s special envoy for climate action and finance, has questioned the lavish U.S. and Canadian subsidies to the auto industry to spur EV manufacturing, saying the money would be much better spent subsidizing heat pumps for households that can’t afford them.

But Burrows sees how tariffs are necessary to prevent cheap Chinese EVs from flooding the market. Our auto industry, he says, needs time to catch up: “The Chinese didn’t just show up with cheap, well-made EVs. They started 15 years ago. We’re just starting out.”

Burrows and other EV advocates take issue with the lack of a sunset clause in the tariffs. If they were in place for a limited time – say, two to five years – with a clear end date, the tariffs would allow enough time to develop a North American supply chain and bring more inexpensive models to market. But as things stand now, they say that the tariffs coddle the domestic auto industry, which hasn’t shown any urgency in offering more EVs for sale.

Or, as Wallace puts it: “No accountability mechanisms exist to apply downward pressure on EV prices, whether it be regulatory requirements or market-based competition.”

Chinese vehicles kick their bad reputation

Because Chinese car brands aren’t available in Canada and the United States, few people can say with authority whether they’re any good, or if they’d sell. Kevin Williams is one of those people. An Ohio-based reporter with InsideEVs, he travelled to Beijing to test-drive Chinese EVs and says they’re so good, Western automakers are “cooked.”

“Chinese EVs are competitive in ways that go beyond just price,” he says. “They’re stylish, they’re well-made, and they work really well.” Williams, who has not minced his words after test-drives of lacklustre American EVs, says Chinese vehicles have bucked their reputation for inferior quality. “For a long time, Chinese cars really weren’t great,” he says. “That isn’t true anymore.”

In the early 2000s, a lot of Chinese cars were simply cloned versions of Western cars that had been reverse engineered. Then in the late 2000s, automakers in China pivoted to EVs – or “new energy vehicles,” as they’re called there – and invested far more in their development. Now, 15 years later, Chinese manufacturers sell more EVs than all other car companies combined.

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“They’ve been doing a lot of research and development and refining their product to the point where now they’re one of the biggest automakers in the world,” Williams says. “It didn’t happen in a vacuum. They didn’t just all of a sudden start making solid vehicles. It took a minute.”

Detroit-area company Caresoft, which takes apart cars to analyze how they’re built, tore down a BYD Seagull and was impressed with the quality of its construction, especially for the price point. The company was similarly impressed with other Chinese EVs and wrote that “the automotive landscape is set for a significant shift, driven by the rapid evolution of China’s electric vehicle industry [which] should serve as a wake-up call to legacy automakers.”

Williams says that if they were available in Canada and the U.S., there’s no doubt Chinese EVs would find eager buyers. “Most consumers don’t care where the product comes from,” he says. “If Americans or Canadians are ever given the opportunity to buy these vehicles, I think they would sell a lot stronger than a lot of Western automakers would think – and I think that’s really terrifying for them.”

In the 1980s, Japanese cars were cheaper and better than North American options and were being snapped up at a rapid clip. Then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan imposed Japanese import quotas to allow the domestic auto industry time to catch up, and four years later, after Japanese companies agreed to open factories in North America, the quotas were dropped.

Now, Japanese cars are ubiquitous. And North American cars still exist – and they’re vastly more reliable than they were before competition arrived.

Throughout history, the greatest automotive innovations have been a result, oftentimes, of the government challenging automakers to improve.

— David Tracy, editor-in-chief of The Autopian

All EV supply chains lead back to China

One of the only places on earth where Chinese EVs can compete head-to-head with Western vehicles is Australia, which has a free trade agreement with China. In Australia, Chinese-built EVs now control 80% of the EV market, and Chinese brands are the most popular, behind only Tesla.

John Cadogan, a veteran Australian automotive journalist and qualified mechanical engineer, is far less enthusiastic about Chinese EVs, calling them “a functional appliance.” He says they’re good for people who can’t afford more expensive models but can’t compete on quality. “When you make anything cheaply, inevitably quality issues such as endurability and performance suffer,” he says. “Consumers are finding that out.”

But the line between Chinese EVs and others isn’t as clear as you might think. Regardless of where they’re assembled, all EVs rely on numerous parts from China. From semiconductors to battery cathodes, even the raw minerals in batteries and the rare earths in electric motors, all cars – and especially EVs – are reliant on a supply chain controlled by China. “It’s becoming very hard to differentiate what’s Chinese-made and what’s not,” Cadogan says.

As a result, as soon as EVs start rolling off the line in the U.S. and Canada, they’ll still be drawing from the Chinese supply chain, and that won’t change until new mines and refineries are up and running, a process that typically takes more than a decade.

A missed opportunity to expand the power grid

With tariffs in place, and few used EV options on the market, budget-conscious Canadians will be pushed back into the internal combustion engine market. This means another eight years on average of paying private-sector oil companies to fuel up rather than (mostly) publicly owned utilities.

According to Corporate Knights analysis, utilities would receive $3.5 billion in additional revenue over the next decade from the charging of Chinese EVs alone – badly needed funds that could be used to expand the grid to support electrification of the economy.

Without Chinese EVs providing inexpensive options, EV sales aren’t growing fast enough to meet the federal government’s legislated 60% target by 2030 and 100% by 2035. Estimates put out by the Parliamentary Budget Office show that EV prices would need to drop by one-third to meet the first target.

Coincidentally, the cheapest Chinese EVs retail in Europe for about one-third less than the cheapest EVs available in Canada. And while the 100% tariff in the U.S. and Canada leaves no room for negotiation or improvement, the EU’s 38% tariff has already been dialled back on several models, following an investigation into state subsidies.

Being more open to addressing specific grievances with Chinese EVs could create an incentive for China to improve its labour and environmental practices while increasing access to cheaper EVs in Canada. In France, for example, EV rebates are dependent on the car’s carbon footprint – only vehicles made with clean energy qualify.

Are the government and industry up to the challenge?

On the other hand, dropping the tariffs entirely and allowing Chinese EVs to flood the market isn’t a great option either. It would not only cede a critical industry to a geopolitical rival; it would mean looking the other way on the objectionable labour practices and underregulated pollution the Chinese EV supply chain relies on.

Instead, government regulations – that is, limiting rebates on expensive EVs – could be necessary to drive down prices, says David Tracy, an automotive engineer and editor-in-chief of The Autopian, a car-focused online publication.

In the past, when the market has failed to protect consumers and the environment, the government has stepped up to make a difference, he says. “I’m all about competition. But as someone who is well versed in automotive history, I’ve seen how really challenging automakers has led to great things. Throughout history, the greatest automotive innovations have been a result, oftentimes, of the government challenging automakers to improve,” he says.

Fuel economy regulations in the U.S, for example, yielded cars that are more powerful, more reliable and more efficient than ever. “And that doesn’t happen naturally,” Tracy says. “I think if we just went by the market, it’s possible we’d still have carbureted automobiles without airbags.”

Marco Chown Oved writes about climate change for the Toronto Star. With files from Ralph Torrie, director of research at Corporate Knights.

This story is jointly published with the Toronto Star.

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