Energy
What doubling the grid really means

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
” imagine if someone said in the next 25 years and 11 months, we must twin every single freeway, highway, grid road, street and alleyway, across the entire country, at the same time. And along the way, we have to replace up to 89 per cent of the existing infrastructure, as well, because it is no longer considered adequate “
Recently my daughter called me while on her way back from a Costco run in Regina, heading home to Weyburn.
She noted that it appears they are twinning the highway between Regina and Weyburn. Indeed, they are, I explained. And several years later, they’ll probably get it all the way to Weyburn. Maybe by the time I retire, if I live that long, they’ll get as far as Estevan.
Indeed, those timelines are likely pretty close to reality, if the twinning of Highway 16, from Saskatoon to Lloydminster, was any indication. I used to drive from Saskatoon to North Battleford to get the newspaper I was working for printed, with road construction for much of that. And it took several more years to complete the Battlefords to Lloydminster portion. I was fortunate enough to be present at the ceremony for that. It was significant enough that Premier Lorne Calvert came out.
Twinning a major highway is a substantial undertaking. Historically, Saskatchewan could usually only afford to work on three separate areas at a time, typically doing 20 kilometres per year in each stretch. That was all the provincial finances could handle.
By adding an additional two lanes, you are effectively doubling the capacity of that major piece of infrastructure. It’s not easy, not cheap, and not fast.
Now imagine if someone said in the next 25 years and 11 months, we must twin every single freeway, highway, grid road, street and alleyway, across the entire country, at the same time. And along the way, we have to replace up to 89 per cent of the existing infrastructure, as well, because it is no longer considered adequate.
You’d probably think they were living in a dreamland, or quite possibly stark raving mad.
And yet this is precisely what the federal government is proposing, nay, demanding, of Canadians from St. Johns to Victoria to Tuktoyaktuk.
In order to save the world from anthropogenic (manmade climate change) and attain a “Net Zero by 2050” economy, we must increase the size of the electrical grid by a factor of 2.5x. And for Saskatchewan and Alberta, who on any given day get up to 88 and 94 per cent of their power, respectively, from fossil fuels, they must also replace that existing gas and coal power generation with non-emitting sources, at the same time as they’re building out the truly massive expansion.
The first reference I saw of the federal Liberal government’s intentions of this was in the 2023 budget, which noted expanding the electrical grid by a factor of 2.2 to 3.4 times. By August, when they released the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations, the government seemed to settle on a factor of 2.5 times for the high demand scenario.
So in the highway twinning example, that would be adding three lanes, not two, to every two lane highway, grid road, street and alleyway. For an existing four lane highway, you would need to add six lanes. For a six lane freeway like Ontario’s 401, you’d need to add an additional nine lanes, finding the right of way space, concrete, rebar, gravel, and asphalt for all of this. Again, all at the same time, in 25 years and 11 months.
There are several thrusts that the federal government is pushing. First, by 2035, they want to totally eliminate gasoline and diesel from new light vehicle sales. There’s currently only eight retail hydrogen fueling stations listed by the federal government and Shell in the entire country. There could be more, but they’re not listed. Realistically this means battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs). But nearly all of those EVs will require charging at home each night (and especially during winter, pre-conditioning those batteries, keeping them warm).
So every residence in the country will require 30 amp chargers for cars, and 80 amp chargers for pickups.
But the government is also now moving away from fossil fuels for home, heating, too. This was indicative of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pause on the carbon tax for home heating oil (primarily used in Atlantic Canada, although I grew up in a house with that system). To do so, the feds are offering “free” installations of heat pumps (which are wholly inadequate at -30 temperatures, let alone the -44 seen in Alberta in mid-January). And those could be up to another 50 amps, per heat pump.
And that’s just residential, never mind commercial or industrial.
The Clean Electricity Regulations are meant to force fossil fuel power generation to go away. And since wind frequently drops to nothing, and the sun goes down every day, the only real alternative is massive expansion of nuclear power across Canada. We’re talking small modular reactors by the dozen in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and to a lesser extent, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
On Jan. 30, SaskPower announced a formalized agreement with General Electric-Hitachi for small modular reactors. But when I asked how many they plan on building, the CEO wouldn’t say. But he did speak of increasing the provincial grid from 5,400 megawatt now to 13,000 to 15,000 megawatts.
Hydro Quebec just released their plans to double their grid. Yet, perhaps miraculously, they’re not saying how many, if any, new dams will need to be built.
This doubling of the grid (actually 2.5x, but that’s not easy to say), means we’re going to need not only additional generation, but transmission lines, distribution lines, back alley pedestals, and wiring to every home, business and factory in the country. Where the materials come from? The contractors and workers? Will Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) be universally trampled on by eminent domain orders, for the good of the planet? Or will it be a continuation of Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything Syndrome (BANANAS)?
A very real example is the Trans Mountain Pipeline. The original was built in something like 16 months, from scratching dirt to oil flowing. The expansion is taking a hell of a lot longer. Work started in 2018, and it is still not done. Any change in the plan had to go back to the Canadian Energy Regulator. Some First Nations fought it every step of the way.
Now do this for every single piece of existing power infrastructure. Wrap your head around that for a minute.
This supposed energy transition, from fossil fuels to electric everything, does not work if you cannot build out the electrical infrastructure, everywhere, and essentially all at in the next 25 years and 11 months. Either the timelines need to be stretched to a generational scale, or more realistically, the whole concept needs to be entirely rethought.
As Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has said more than once, “We will not attempt the impossible when it comes to power production.”
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online, and occasional contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].
2025 Federal Election
Don’t double-down on net zero again

From the Fraser Institute
In the preamble to the Paris Agreement, world leaders loftily declared they would keep temperature rises “well below 2°C” and perhaps even under 1.5°C. That was never on the cards—it would have required the world’s economies to effectively come to a grinding halt.
The truth is that the “net zero” green agenda, based on massive subsidies and expensive legislation, will likely cost more than CAD$38 trillion per year across the century, making it utterly unattractive to voters in almost every nation on Earth.
When President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement for the first time in 2017, then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was quick to claim the moral high ground, declaring that “we will continue to work with our domestic and international partners to drive progress on one of the greatest challenges we face as a world.”
Trudeau has now been swept from the stage. On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order that again begins the formal, twelve-month-long process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement.
It will be tempting for Canada to step anew into the void left by the United States. But if the goal is to make effective climate policy, whoever is Canada’s prime minister needs to avoid empty virtue signaling. It would be easy for Canada to declare again that it’ll form a “coalition of the willing” with Europe. The truth is that, just like last time, that approach would do next to nothing for the planet.
Climate summits have generated vast amounts of attention and breathless reporting giving the impression that they are crucial to the planet’s survival. Scratch the surface, and the results are far less impressive. In 2021, the world promised to phase-down coal. Since then, global coal consumption has only gone up. Virtually every summit has promised to cut emissions but they’ve increased almost every single year, and 2024 reached a new high.
Way before the Paris Agreement was inked, the Kyoto Protocol was once sold as a key part of the solution to global warming. Yet studies show it achieved virtually nothing for climate change.
In the preamble to the Paris Agreement, world leaders loftily declared they would keep temperature rises “well below 2°C” and perhaps even under 1.5°C. That was never on the cards—it would have required the world’s economies to effectively come to a grinding halt.
The truth is that the “net zero” green agenda, based on massive subsidies and expensive legislation, will likely cost more than CAD$38 trillion per year across the century, making it utterly unattractive to voters in almost every nation on Earth.
The awkward reality is that emissions from Canada, the EU, and other countries pursuing climate policies matter little in the 21st century. Canada likely only makes up about 1.5 per cent of the world’s emissions. Add together Canada’s output with that of every single country of the rich-world OECD, and this only makes up about one-fifth of global emissions this century, using the United Nations’ ‘middle of the road’ forecast. The other four-fifths of emissions come mostly from China, India and Africa.
Even if wealthy countries like Canada impoverish themselves, the result is tiny — run the UN’s standard climate model with and without Canada going net-zero in 2050, and the difference is immeasurable even in 2100. Moreover, much of the production and emissions just move to the Global South—and even less is achieved.

One good example of this is the United Kingdom, which—like Prime Minister Trudeau once did—has leaned into climate policies, suggesting it would lead the efforts for strong climate agreements. British families are paying a heavy price for their government going farther than almost any other in pursuing the climate agenda: just the inflation-adjusted electricity price, weighted across households and industry, has tripled from 2003 to 2023, mostly because of climate policies. This need not have been so: the US electricity price has remained almost unchanged over the same period.
The effect on families is devastating. Had prices stayed at 2003 levels, an average family-of-four would now be spending CAD$3,380 on electricity—which includes indirect industry costs. Instead, it now pays $9,740 per year.
Rising electricity costs make investment less attractive: European businesses pay triple US electricity costs, and nearly two-thirds of European companies say energy prices are now a major impediment to investment.
The Paris Treaty approach is fundamentally flawed. Carbon emissions continue to grow because cheap, reliable power, mostly from fossil fuels, drives economic growth. Wealthy countries like Canada, the US, and European Union members have started to cut emissions—often by shifting production elsewhere—but the rest of the world remains focused on eradicating poverty.
Poor countries will rightly reject making carbon cuts unless there is a huge flow of “climate aid” from rich nations, and want trillions of US dollars per year. That won’t happen. The new US government will not pay, and the other rich countries cannot foot the bill alone.
Without these huge transfers of wealth, China, India and many other developing countries will disavow expensive climate policies, too. This potentially leaves a rag-tag group led by a few Western European progressive nations, which can scarcely afford their own policies and have no ability to pay off everyone else.
When the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017, Canada’s doubling down on the Paris Treaty sent the signal that it would be worthwhile spending hundreds of trillions of dollars to make no real difference to temperatures. We fool ourselves if we pretend that doing so for a second time will help the planet.
We need to realize that fixing climate change isn’t about sanctimonious summits, lofty speeches, and bluster. In coming weeks I’ll outline the case for efficient policies like innovation, adaptation and prosperity.
2025 Federal Election
Poilievre Will Bring in ‘One and Done’ Resource Approvals, and Ten Specific Projects Including LNG Canada Phase II

From Energy Now
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced that he will create a new ‘One and Done’ rule for resource projects: a one-stop shop, with one simple application and one environmental review. Poilievre also announced that he will rapidly approve 10 projects that have been stuck for years in the slow federal approval process. That will include Phase II of LNG Canada, a massive natural gas liquefaction project in Northern British Columbia. Many other projects will also be encouraged, all with an aim to bolster Canada’s economic independence against the Americans.
ONE-AND-DONE RULE will:
- Create a ‘One Stop Shop’ – A single office called the Rapid Resource Project Office will handle all regulatory approvals across all levels of government, so businesses don’t waste years navigating bureaucratic chaos and coordinating between multiple departments with different processes. We will cooperate with provincial governments to get all approvals into this single office.
- One application. End duplication – There will be one application and one environmental review per project, ensuring efficiency without sacrificing environmental standards. Instead of multiple overlapping studies that stall projects, governments will work together to deliver a single, effective review.
- One-year maximum wait times for approvals with a target of six months. There will be a target goal of decisions on applications in six months, with an upper time limit of one year, giving businesses certainty, cutting delays, and getting shovels in the ground faster.
“After the Lost Liberal decade, Canada is poorer, weaker, and more dependent on the United States than ever before, especially as a market for our natural resources,” said Poilievre. “My ‘One-and-Done’ rule will quickly and safely unleash Canada’s natural resources by rapidly approving the projects Canadians need more of now: mines, roads, LNG terminals, hydro projects, and nuclear power stations, so we can stand on our own two feet and stand up to the Americans.”
When completed, LNG Canada Phase II will double LNG output from 14 million to 28 million tonnes annually, creating hundreds of jobs in construction, operations and maintenance, and generating new revenues to fund the social programs that Canadians depend on. A new Conservative Government will also repeal C-69, the No Pipelines–No Development Law, and lift the cap on Canadian energy that would prevent LNG Canada Phase II from ever proceeding. Mark Carney has confirmed he will keep both C-69 and the cap in place.
Conservatives will also establish the Canadian Indigenous Opportunities Corporation (CIOC), to offer loan guarantees for local Indigenous-led resource projects.
A new Conservative government will also rapidly review nine other projects to find the hold-ups and accelerate federal decisions to get industry moving, workers working, and dollars flowing back to Canada. The full list of projects is at the end of this release.
Mark Carney and Steven Guilbeault’s “keep-it-in-the-ground” ideology–which maintains Bill C-69, the energy production cap, and the industrial carbon tax–will continue to stifle development in Canada, leading to job losses and increased reliance on foreign imports. Carney has said that “more than 80 per cent of current fossil fuel reserves … would need to stay in the ground.”
“The choice is clear: a fourth Liberal term that will keep our resources in the ground and keep us weak and vulnerable to Trump’s threats, or a strong new Conservative government that will approve projects, unleash our economy, bring jobs and dollars home, and put Canada First—For a Change.”
Some of the priority projects a Poilievre government will work with proponents and First Nations to approve:
- LNG Canada Phase II Expansion Project (BC): Aims to double LNG output but faces power supply challenges and output limitations related to the emissions cap.
- Suncor Base Mine Extension (Alberta): Expansion of an existing mine anticipated to produce 225,000 barrels per day of bitumen froth. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2020.
- Rook 1 Uranium Mine (Saskatchewan): A development-stage uranium project expected to be a major source of low-cost uranium. Approval process started in 2019 with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
- Springpole Lake Gold (Ontario): A proposed gold and silver mine with an on-site metal mill. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2018.
- Upper Beaver Gold Mine (Ontario): A proposed underground and gold and copper mine. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2021.
- Northern Road Link (Ontario): A proposed all-season, multi-use road in northern Ontario. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2023.
- Crawford Nickel Project (Ontario): A proposed nickel-cobalt mine with an on-site metal mill. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2022.
- Troilus Gold and Copper Mine (Quebec): A proposed gold and copper mine. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2022.
- Sorel-Tracy Port Terminal (Quebec): A proposed new port terminal in the industrial-port area of Sorel-Tracy. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2022.
- Cape Ray Gold and Silver Mine (Newfoundland): A proposed gold and silver mine with a milling complex. Under assessment with the IAAC since 2017.
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