Stronger support and incentives for utilities to take advantage of new energy sources and technologies is a key step on the path to achieving Canada’s net zero climate targets. In addition to freeing Canadian utilities to facilitate the uptake of electricity storage, solar energy generation, and promoting EV cars, as suggested by Hari Suthan, Canada’s utilities should also be given the flexibility to play a role in shaping Canada’s transition to a hydrogen economy. Canadian utilities should be able to experiment with integrating existing technologies and infrastructure to produce, store and transport hydrogen.
Lifting solar, storage and electric vehicle constraints on utilities is the kind of thinking we need to do, fast, to meet our climate goals. Now that we have the broadest consensus ever that something needs doing, it’s time to figure out how.