A Carleton University professor said Canada’s electric grid cannot be prepared fast enough to handle the demands to be placed on it in pursuit of net zero carbon emissions..In an interview with Western Standard, business professor Ian Lee said evidence for his stance abounds..“Electricity Canada has actually said the grid is not ready for a three-fold increase, which will be needed if we completed the decarbonize as is proposed. So, it's not just the risk of the grid going down, the cost is going to be enormous,” Lee said..“The Ontario regulatory body estimates to decarbonize the grid in Ontario only will be $400 billion by 2050. The mistake those people going down that road are advocating is they want to put all our eggs of the entire economy, the entire country, all into one singular basket. And it's going to be extremely expensive to get to that state.”.On February 11, Western Standard reported the findings of a Department of Natural Resources report that concluded mandating cars would result in a 23% increase in overall demand for electricity. The report said national costs to upgrade the grid to carry the load were not yet known..Lee guarantees such costs will be high and that if Canada’s 34 million vehicles were all turned electric, it would “bring down the grid.”.“Transportation uses a lot of energy. What governments are doing, and NGOs are doing is pushing us very rapidly to go to an all-electric fleet of pickup trucks, cars, SUVs.”.California is proof of how risky that strategy is, according to Lee..“Every summer, when the air conditioners are on and it’s really hot in California, the government agency that monitors the grid sends out these urgent public announcements, please don't plug in your car, you'll bring down the grid..“And California only has 4% of its cars that are electric. They're not even remotely close to 100%. Forget 100%, they're not close to 25%. What happens in the next 10 years if we completely electrify or mostly electrify the entire transportation fleet?”.Lee says the enormity of labour and financial investment required to augment the grid’s capacity will be enormous, even before the power sources to replace fossil fuels and meet increased future demands are even considered..“Talk about rebuilding the grid isn't a fancy phrase, it rolls off our tongues very easily, [but] that means a person has to get up on a hydro electric boom truck and string new wire for every last hydro electric pole in Canada between cities, across the country, and down every street, because we will be talking about tripling the capacity to completely decarbonize and eliminate all other sources of energy. That's according to Natural Resources Canada,” said Lee..“It's going to take a gargantuan increase in hydroelectricity workers. We don't have enough people right now in long term care homes. We don't have enough teachers. StatsCan says there's almost a million shortfall of unfilled jobs. And now we're talking about hiring literally hundreds of thousands of people that aren't there, to string much higher capacity wire from every hydro electric pole in Canada.”.A Royal Bank study suggested the total cost to get to Net Zero would be $2 trillion. Lee says required changes to the grid would take at least 50 years, not the 27 left before Net Zero 2050 targets..“I'm not denying at all the grid can be rebuilt. The grid can be rebuilt. It's just going to take enormous amounts of money over a very long period of time.”
