Electric Vehicles on the Road in Canada
2022% increase since 2010
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Panel by panel and garage by garage, home and business owners, communities, and utilities are steadily greening Canada’s energy systems. In the past five years, our clean energy capacity—the measure of how much clean power our plants could produce—has grown ninefold, and investment followed a similar path. Credit Ontario’s and Québec’s wind and solar efforts for the lion’s share of this accomplishment. Meanwhile, in British Columbia, run-of-river hydro might not be generating the most electrons in Canada, but it is by a wide margin generating the most jobs.
The energy revolution isn’t just about how and where we produce clean power. It’s also about being innovative in how we use it. Although electric vehicles have not yet taken off in significant numbers in Canada, these are early days. As more models come available and charging infrastructure expands—and governments introduce and strengthen policies to support both—we anticipate electrified transportation powered by renewable energy sources will play a big role in Canada’s energy shift.
Similarly, low-carbon fuel standards in British Columbia are spurring a small but growing market for renewable liquid fuels that are mixed in with the gasoline and diesel Canadians are already using. These policies reduce emissions without requiring people to change their habits. For instance, British Columbia’s fuel standard reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 900,000 tonnes in 2012, a quarter of the province’s emissions reductions since 2007.
To read more about the Clean Energy’s growth over the years, check out Tracking the Energy Revolution- Canada 2014 edition here.
