When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico’s electricity grid in 2017, communities went without power for months. They turned to rooftop solar, battery storage, and microgrids to ready their homes and businesses with low cost, local energy supply. When Hurricane Fiona caused another island-wide blackout in 2022, those systems kept the lights on.
Following devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022, households, farms and businesses embraced rooftop solar at extraordinary speed, driven by high electricity costs and an unreliable grid.
These examples are no longer unique. Around the globe, local, smaller-scale energy resources are delivering affordable, reliable energy quickly and close to where it is needed.
This September, leading Canadian clean energy associations and think tanks — including ours — submitted a letter to the federal government calling for implementation of its emerging national electricity strategy to deliver on three mutually reinforcing objectives: double electricity supply, double electrification and double energy efficiency by 2050.
Doubling electricity supply is important, but equally ambitious complementary goals of doubling electrification and productivity are necessary. Mismatch between supply and demand drives up cost. It is only together, that these objectives provide Canada with a clear mission for building a more efficient and affordable energy system.
To get more out of our existing electricity infrastructure, Canada needs a rulebook that puts demand-side resources on equal footing with new supply. Unlocking demand-side resources (that is, resources on the utility customer site) would deliver affordability, resilience and speed while we build. Utilities and regulators need to see and value what customers can contribute to the electricity system through energy efficiency, demand response, rooftop solar and batteries.
The rulebook should enable utilities to invest in demand-side programs and procure customer-side resources, with appropriate cost recovery and incentives, while ensuring customers are fairly compensated for the grid services they provide. Where they can meet the same system need, these resources can avoid, defer, or reduce investments in generation, transmission and distribution, lowering costs for utilities and customers while making electrification more reliable and easier to scale.
Buildings are where electrification happens: heat pumps, electric vehicle charging, thermal storage, rooftop solar and batteries are in, or on, buildings. That makes buildings essential to creating a reliable, affordable, low-carbon energy system.
When the benefits to the electricity system are valued, building retrofits become an investment opportunity, not a subsidy-driven activity. Beyond consuming electricity, homes and buildings can actively help manage when electricity is needed, reduce pressure on the grid and support a more resilient energy system.
The government’s recent commitment to $2-billion to retrofit one million homes — including multi-unit residential buildings — is a welcome investment in the national electrification strategy goals. But even with that and other recent home retrofit funding announcements, we need to push our ambition further by recognizing demand-side resources.
Otherwise, Canadians risk paying for more electricity infrastructure than we need. Efficiency, flexibility, and distributed energy resources can help meet growing demand while keeping costs as low as possible, for governments and Canadians.
Those benefits need to be accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford to invest upfront. Renters, low-income households, condo residents, and small businesses need opportunities to benefit from energy efficiency, flexibility, and distributed energy resources. Getting this right can lower costs, protect consumers, build public trust, and ensure the benefits of a modern electricity system are broadly shared.
The payoff extends beyond affordability. Canada needs to reduce emissions faster, and investing in retrofitting our existing buildings is one of the few climate actions that delivers a powerful triple dividend: lowering utility costs while helping Canadians adapt to a severe weather and reducing emissions.
Our country is right to focus on doubling electricity supply, but building more generation is only part of the answer.
The tools and technologies exist to create the affordable, secure energy system Canadians deserve. Implementing our national electrification strategy can bring this to life — and it starts with this fall’s budget 2026.
