Ottawa is proposing to water down its clean electricity regulations in the face of intense opposition from some provinces by further opening the door for natural gas power plants to keep burning well beyond the promised deadline for net-zero power in 2035.
In response to objections brought by provinces and electrical grid operators, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is now considering allowing new gas plants to operate with no limits past 2045, as well as loosening restrictions on existing plants.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "made a commitment to a net-zero grid in 2021,” said Keith Brooks, programs director at Environmental Defence. “But provinces like Ontario and Saskatchewan, they have gone ahead (and started building new gas plants) in a direct challenge to federal regulations, and now the federal government seems to be waffling.”
In a statement Friday, Guilbeault said the changes are meant to “enhance the flexibility” of electricity operators in the provinces while “maintaining” Canada’s objectives to reduce emissions causing the climate crisis.
While these changes will likely still mean reduced carbon emissions from electricity generation in provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, which rely on fossil fuels for the bulk of their power, they could be so loose as to allow emissions to actually rise in provinces like Ontario, which currently derives about 10 per cent of its power from natural gas, critics allege.
“If these regulations allow new plants to be contracted, constructed and run completely unmitigated out past 2045, and the existing fleet is allowed to continue to operate for its 20-year end of life period as well, there’s no limit on emissions for quite some time,” said Brooks.
“It’s important that this 20-year lifespan not be extended,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a huge problem.”
According to a summary of consultations released Friday, the changes that Ottawa is considering include:
Allowing greater use of natural gas power when electricity demand spikes;
Lifting a hard cap of 450 hours per year for natural gas plants without means to prevent emissions, and replacing it with a limit based on annual emissions;
Allowing for the “limited use” of offsets for gas plants that exceed their emissions limits;
“Slightly” extending the exemption for gas plants currently being planned and built, which aren’t subject to the regulations until 20 years after they come online. This originally applied to plants that came online before 2025; the government is proposing to extend that by an unspecified amount of time.
While some climate experts welcomed the changes, others raised concerns that they would allow emitting power plants to continue without restraints in the midst of the climate crisis.
New Democrat MP Laurel Collins, the NDP’s climate critic in Parliament, called the changes “disappointing” because they weaken what she sees as a critical climate policy for the federal government.
“This is them, yet again, creating more loopholes,” Collins said. “This is a critical piece of our climate policy and getting clean electricity by 2035 … It is essential if we have any hope of meeting our climate targets.”
It’s not yet clear how these changes would impact overall emissions from the electricity sector, which the Liberal government in Ottawa has pledged to reduce to “net zero” by 2035. The original version of the regulations already fell short of that goal. Guilbeault told the Star last year that there would have been fewer than 10 megatonnes of “residual” emissions from the country’s power grids by 2035 under the first proposal — about 20 per cent of overall electricity emissions based on 2021 figures.
The federal government maintains it can still attain net-zero emissions from electricity by 2035 through other policies outside of these regulations, which have sparked heated criticism from provinces like Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. They argue the regulations will drive up electricity bills and possibly strain power grids.
In a written statement, Dustin Duncan, the minister responsible for Saskatchewan’s provincial power utility, told the Star that Friday’s proposed changes are “an admission” the federal regulations “are unaffordable and technically and logistically unattainable.” Duncan said the regulations infringe on provincial authorities and should still be scrapped entirely.
The Ontario government welcomed the changes but indicated it's still not satisfied over concerns the regulations could affect the reliability of the province’s power grids. “More work is still needed to ensure these regulations address all of the concerns identified by Ontario’s expert system planners,” read a statement from Ontario Energy Minister Todd Stone’s spokesperson, Palmer Lockridge.
Alberta's environment minister, Rebecca Schulz, added in her own statement that the regulations are still not "feasible or realistic" based on the 2035 timeline for implementation.
Why is natural gas used?
Natural gas was once considered a transition fuel because it produces less carbon when burned. It was favoured as a way for heavy industry like power generation to reduce emissions and stop burning coal. But research over the last few years has shown that because natural gas is mostly made up of the particularly potent greenhouse gas methane, leaks during extraction and along the pipeline network make the gas worse for the climate than coal.
While efforts are underway to plug those leaks, satellite monitoring and flyover measurements show they are far greater than has generally been understood.
All of this adds up to an argument to phase out natural gas as quickly as possible, rather than prolong its use, environmentalists say.
Meanwhile, the grid operator in Ontario has contracted three new gas plants, in St. Clair, Windsor and Napanee, none of which would be built fast enough to be grandfathered into the regulations as they were originally proposed, and would have had to cease operation by 2035, except during peak or emergency periods.
These plants, and others announced in Saskatchewan, could be allowed to run for a full 20 years under the proposed changes to the regulations, a prospect that worries clean energy advocates.
“Allowing unabated gas-fired generators to come online after Jan. 1, 2025 (the previous cut-off date) risks locking in gas emissions and higher electricity costs for decades,” said Scott MacDougall, director of electricity at the Pembina Institute.
Other clean energy advocates said the changes were necessary to ensure the targets were achievable in every province, and that the electricity regulations were never going to achieve net zero on their own.
“The clean electricity regulations were never a silver bullet for this,” said Evan Pivnick, clean energy program manager at Clean Energy Canada.