Federal nuclear export vision has merit – but must not drive up energy bills for Canadians

CALGARY — David Pickup, director of the Pembina Institute’s Electricity program, made the following statement regarding the federal government's newly announced Nuclear Energy Strategy.

“In today's strategy, the federal government has set out an ambitious plan to build a pan-Canadian nuclear supply chain and export industry to meet growing international demand for nuclear energy with Canadian technology, resources and expertise. This is a new and notable goal that has merit in terms of export potential and diversification of Canada's trading partners.

“It is important that achieving this vision does not come at the expense of everyday Canadians and the energy bills they pay. Today's announcement appears to indicate that the federal government wants to underwrite this new nuclear export vision by bolstering domestic demand for nuclear power. In doing this, the federal government and the provinces must ensure the bigger goal as laid out in the also recently announced federal Electricity Strategy — of rapidly growing Canada’s grids in a way that provides both reliability and affordability — is not compromised. Nuclear has an important role to play, but must be appropriately balanced with other, lower-cost options to meet power demand both now and into the future. If options such as wind and solar continue to face roadblocks — notably in the prairie provinces — Albertans and Saskatchewanians will be locked into needlessly higher power bills for the next two decades and beyond.

“As part of today's announcement, Minister Hodgson argued that a credible path to growing Canada's electricity grids needs to include nuclear. It is equally true that there is no credible path to affordable power for Canadians that does not also include large amounts of lowest-cost generation, such as wind and solar. Ontario is proving that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive. With Ontario’s latest electricity procurements, renewables won contracts based on cost alone. If Ontario continues with these procurements, it can chart a path towards 2050 that includes significant nuclear expansion — which comes at a cost-premium to ratepayers — that is tempered by the short- and medium-term build out of lowest-cost wind, solar, and storage.

“In other words, across all of Canada’s provinces, plans for nuclear in the 2040s and beyond should be complemented by wind and solar expansion in the 2020s and 2030s. Balancing these will be integral to ensuring the federal government and the provinces deliver on the promise of the federal Electricity Strategy — to give Canadians the same access to low-cost, secure, electrified energy solutions, such as EVs and heat pumps, that many of their international peers are increasingly moving toward and benefitting from.”

Quick facts

Globally, nuclear energy generation is projected to double by 2050, keeping pace with overall demand growth, to contribute around 9–10% of the total electricity supply, according to the International Energy Agency (STEPS scenario).
Renewable energy (wind and solar) contributes 15% of global electricity supply today and is projected to grow seven times larger, to reach 73% of supply by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency (STEPS scenario).
Canada’s electricity demand will grow significantly over the coming decades, with roughly 30% growth by 2035 and 57% by 2050, according to the Canada Energy Regulator. In a net-zero scenario, this growth is even faster: 40% by 2035 and 113% by 2050.
In the next decade, global investment will shift from fossil fuels towards low-emissions power generation — including renewables and nuclear — grids and storage, and end-use electrification, according to the International Energy Agency.
The Ontario government and IESO launched the LT2 in August 2024, representing the largest competitive energy procurement in Canada’s history. In the energy and capacity rounds, all selected projects were solar, wind or battery storage.

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