Environment Committee on Nov. 20th, 2025

[Jeff Turner]

We recently released a report that quantified health savings. We're talking about billions of dollars. In fact, we're talking about $4 billion, and $6 billion until 2035. Savings will certainly increase after 2035, given that the rate of EV adoption will increase after that date. So the savings will go up even more until 2050.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Can you send us those figures? Do you have anything concrete for my Conservative colleagues, who don't understand that there's a public health, death, premature death and hospitalization issue? Do you have any numbers on that?

[Jeff Turner]

Certainly. I can send you our report as well as a study done by the Atmospheric Fund. That agency worked with Health Canada to quantify these savings and study in depth the types of diseases involved, the types of benefits and how much they might increase until 2050.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

If you could submit that, it would be appreciated.

We often hear that we're going to run out of power and that we're not going to be able to meet the demand. However, in China, a developing country, 50% of new vehicles sold are electric. Yes, I'm talking about China.

In your opinion, is it feasible, even desirable, to meet that demand for electricity? How much more electricity is needed? Do you think a developed country like Canada will be able to meet the additional demand?

[Jeff Turner]

Thank you for your question.

I think those are great examples of the transformation that we've seen in other countries. Some countries are going from not having a developed electricity system at all to suddenly seeing rapid development in that space. If you look back 100 or 150 years here in Canada, you see that we did not have an electricity system.

Yes, it is a significant transformation. We are talking about significant low growth over time, but there are two elements that work in favour and mean that electric utilities actually like transportation electrification.

First of all, it's not going to happen overnight. Some people like to talk about what would happen if everybody switched to an EV tomorrow; that's simply not going to happen. Even if we hit 100% of new sales in 2035, it would take until about 2050 before the entire fleet was electric; that fleet turnover time gives utilities a long runway to react to this transition.

More importantly, utilities see EVs as a very flexible load. Most people want an EV with 500 kilometres of range, but they drive only 50 kilometres a day, and it takes about one to two hours per day to charge for that. Most people plug in at 6 p.m. and unplug the next day at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. There's a lot of flexibility in when that charging can happen, and that's really the key ingredient that allows utilities to turn EVs into a net benefit in the grid. It's a flexible load that can accommodate and shift away from when the grid is already at full capacity and maximize the use of variable sources of renewable energy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you very much.

I now give the floor to Mr. Bexte.

Mr. Bexte, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, witnesses. I really appreciate your being here today. It takes a lot to come to the committee, and I appreciate it a lot.

There's a lot to unpack here.

Mr. Turner, you were talking about grid upgrades. As a quick question, in terms of forecasting the cost for grid upgrades, how often do we hit the low forecast, generally, in modelling exercises?

[Jeff Turner]

That's a great question.

I think it varies, depending on the forecast. We've had the opportunity of forecasting EV adoption since about 2018, and we often provide a range of estimates. I would say that there was a period when we found that the pace of adoption was closer to the higher end of our forecast, and in other cases, more recently, we're actually trending a little bit towards the lower end.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Okay, thanks. It's $90 billion on the low end and $200 billion on the high end, and the likelihood of which one it's going to be is unknown.

[Jeff Turner]

Actually, it's $40 billion on the low end, while $90 billion is our central assumption.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Could you break out the difference of the cost of added transmission versus generation?

[Jeff Turner]

Yes. We have those numbers in our report. I don't have them off the top of my head, but generally speaking, generation is the largest component. In the near term, local distribution is probably the nearest pain point, and transmission is somewhere in between. It obviously varies considerably across the country.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Local distribution is a big problem with the lack of supply of transformers and the impact to residential service.

Ultimately, there is going to be 100% adoption. This is a mandate. There's no question that there is no choice if the government continues with this process, and people become very concerned when there are no adequate, suitable options, especially in rural Canada and remote Canada. The cost of accelerating this transition is going to be borne by the ratepayers, because there will be a mismatch.

Could you talk about anything that could mitigate that mismatch in supply versus demand? I'm talking the grid and the electricity supply.

[Jeff Turner]

I can, absolutely.

I think the key ingredient is for utilities to be prepared for this transition. That means rigorous load forecasting and grid upgrades in some cases, but crucially, it means designing programs that encourage off-peak charging and take advantage of flexibility in the times when charging can happen.

The vast majority of Canadians, if they can charge at home, are going to charge at home overnight, and that's actually a really good time to maximize utilization of the fixed assets on our grid, sell more kilowatt hours for the same fixed costs and spread those costs across a larger customer base.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Would that be motivated by a subsidy or...?

[Jeff Turner]

I'm talking about EV adoption. If it is accelerated, it can accelerate those benefits in terms of—

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Do you mean EV adoption motivated by a subsidy or a penalty or...?

[Jeff Turner]

This works across the board. In the case of utilities being prepared for adoption, I would say that it's having some kind of market certainty in having these targets that they can design around.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

This market certainty, then, is driven by subsidy or penalty.

I would have to say that goes directly to what some other colleagues have compared to the China example, and I would absolutely not want to be in the China circumstance, with the compulsion and then with their environmental record, for all of the manufacturing supply chain process related to that.

I think you're suggesting that there's a long runway to build the grid, but I don't think that runway is long enough. We don't send the right signals to be able to get the right things built in the right time, so what are the alternatives if we get a mismatch?

[Jeff Turner]

I would say that's not what we're hearing from electric utilities so far. They look at this and see that there's significant load growth. They need to make the case for these investments.

I think an interesting experiment is to go to the website of any electric utility in Canada. The chances are that you'll probably find that utility has a page on their website telling their customers about EVs and how great they are, answering questions and probably providing rebates. That does not tell me that these utilities.... They're acknowledging that there's work to do, but they're not pumping the brakes on this transition towards EVs. If anything, we're seeing the opposite.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Picking a perfect example of BC Hydro, I used to live in Fort St. John and heard Site C being talked about for three or four decades before it really got going. How many Site C dams are we going to need just for B.C. to adopt this?

[Jeff Turner]

I think the key ingredient, again, is the fact that EVs can charge off-peak when there's spare capacity on the grid to begin with. If you do this right, the load growth is actually much more manageable.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Account for what you predict as the load growth. How many more Site Cs do we need?

[Jeff Turner]

I don't have that number off the top of my head—

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Guess....