It’s in Ontario municipalities’ own interest to step up in defence of the federal government’s embattled Clean Electricity Regulations and protect their “clean grid advantage”, The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) says in a recent post.
The advocacy pitch comes at a moment when climate emissions across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) are up 26% in one year (and 56% over two) due to an increase in natural gas on the provincial grid. Yet the regulations themselves “are under threat due to mounting pressure from special interest groups and certain provinces,” wrote Evan Wiseman, TAF’s senior manager, climate policy.
TAF is weighing in on the CER because “municipalities can’t meet their local GHG reduction commitments without access to clean electricity,” Wiseman told The Energy Mix in an email.
“Without federal regulations, Ontario’s electricity supply is projected to get more carbon intensive with each passing year out to the mid-2040s. Increased emissions from electricity threaten to offset the impact of municipal climate action, leaving climate targets out of reach, he wrote. “Municipalities also carry considerable influence as key stakeholders and implementation partners in Canada’s energy transition.”
When Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault unveiled the long-awaited draft of the Clean Electricity Regulations (CER) last August, senior federal officials stressed they were proposing a “technology-neutral” approach that would allow utilities to choose the electricity sources they depend on. That could include continuing reliance on gas, as long as they could capture about 95% of the facilities’ emissions by the time the regulation took effect in 2035.
“This inclusive approach is important,” officials said, because “affordable, reliable power is going to be the foundation of the net-zero economy.”
At the time, modelling showed the regulations cutting Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by a cumulative 342 million tonnes from 2024 to 2050 and reducing household energy costs by 10%, according to one recent economic analysis, or 12% according to the Canadian Climate Institute. While Canadians could expect to pay more for electricity, a federal official explained, those costs would be “more than offset by the fact that we’re no longer going to be buying gasoline or diesel to power our cars and trucks, we’ll no longer be paying for natural gas to heat our homes and cook our food, and we’ll no longer be using natural gas for things like cement and steel and aluminum,” all costs that are passed on to households in the price of consumer goods.
But none of that number-crunching put a dent in the intense advocacy that followed the release of the draft, with utilities and some provincial governments insisting the plan was neither realistic nor sufficiently flexible. When Ottawa issued an 11-page update on the CER in mid-February, it suggested amending the draft regulations to permit greater use of natural gas “peaker” plants in times of high electricity demand, make it easier for power plants to adopt carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, and allow “limited” use of carbon offsets for facilities that still can’t meet the standard, among other changes.
“This is a totally normal process,” Guilbeault said. “We put out draft regulations. We consult. We listen to what people have to say. And then we adjust. We do that all the time.”
But not so much when GTHA emissions “are forecast to continue growing exponentially”, Wiseman wrote, putting the region’s “clean grid advantage” at risk. “A strong CER will reward municipalities and workers who want to find jobs building and operating clean energy projects, not to mention the new investment and jobs spurred by companies attracted by Ontario’s clean grid,” he said. By supporting the CER at a time when renewable energy is cheaper than gas, “we’re safeguarding the climate and ensuring long-term economic responsibility and resilience of our communities.”
In his post, Wiseman urged other communities to step up in support of the CER before comments closed March 15. In his email several days after the comment deadline had passed, he said cities “can have a big impact just by signaling their support for a clean electricity system, and the use of federal regulations as a backstop to ensure progress in decarbonizing electricity”—even if they don’t weigh in on the technical complexities of the regulation.
“Cities know that a cleaner grid is possible,” he wrote. At the same time, “everyone acknowledges the importance of electricity system reliability, which is why the draft regulations allow for ongoing use of natural gas power plants to balance the grid. While net-zero is the ultimate goal, the regulations allow for significant ongoing emissions to ensure reliability is not compromised,” despite studies showing “multiple practical pathways to 2035 without expanding the use of natural gas.”
