Madam vice-chair, ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, good afternoon.
I would first like to thank you for having invited me to testify here today, and also for giving me this opportunity to practise my French. I would also like to thank the clerk for his very good work.
My name is Patrick Bateman and I am the director of policy and market development of the Canadian Solar Industries Association, or CanSIA. I have been working in the area of renewable energy for 10 years now. I devoted a large part of my career to working with companies in the solar energy area in order to make solar energy production more common and more generalized in all of Canada's provinces and territories.
As stated in the policy objectives in the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change, and as demonstrated in several analyses, including Canada's mid-century long-term strategy, meeting Canada's climate action and clean growth targets and objectives is reliant on maximizing the efficiency of our energy use and minimizing the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of the energy that we use.
Non-emitting electricity generation, including that from the renewable energy sources—solar, wind, marine, and hydro—currently meets approximately 80% of Canada's annual electricity needs. Canada's abundance of existing non-emitting electricity assets and untapped renewable and solar energy potential is Canada's single largest competitive advantage in the challenge of deep decarbonization of our economy.
Canada is committed to a target of 90% of our electricity production being from non-emitting energy sources by 2030. Not only will this ambitious outcome result in material emissions reductions from the electricity sector; it will also provide an emissions-free, reliable, and affordable option for fuel switching in the transportation, buildings, and industrial sectors. This is also termed electrification.
There is no viable alternative for Canada to meet our international obligations under the Paris agreement other than to rapidly increase the proportion of non-emitting electricity in our supply mix and to pursue significant levels of end use electrification.
Solar electricity generation is a supply-mix option that can contribute to this targeted outcome. Many studies are being continually published that document the rapidly declining costs of solar electricity generation. One such study, from Lazard, shows that the cost of solar electricity has declined by 85% since 2009. Many studies show that solar energy will be the lowest-cost option for new electricity generation throughout the world by the mid-2020s. This will also be the case for Canada.
For instance, the CEO of Hydro-Québec, Éric Martel, was recently quoted in Le Devoir . This is what was said:
Hydro-Québec believes that, as of 2024, the cost of locally produced solar energy will rival that of hydroelectricity distributed on its network .
The narrative about solar electricity has quickly been transformed from when it will be cost-competitive to how much cheap solar electricity we can reliably integrate onto our grid. Jurisdictions around the world are demonstrating that high penetrations of variable generation, such as solar, can be reliably integrated. For example, during the first half of 2017, more than 10% of the United States' electricity was met with wind and solar energy for the first time in history. During this time, several states actually met 20% to 40% of their monthly electricity demand from wind and solar. World leaders, including Germany and Italy, currently meet between 7% and 9% of their annual electricity needs from solar energy.
With respect to interties, interties that create larger areas across which to balance variable supply and demand are one tool in the tool box for the system operators in these regions to manage increasing penetrations of variable energy resources. As such, CanSIA believes that strategic investment by the federal government in transmission infrastructure that provides greater linkages between the electricity systems of two or more provinces can support our national climate action and clean growth policy objectives. CanSIA recommends that a key basis on which the decision to invest is made is that the investment will result in significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions and contribution toward our national 90% non-emitting electricity target.
In addition, we would recommend that due diligence on the cost-effectiveness of individual projects take into account current and realistic future pricing for solar electricity and also for storage technologies. There are many examples of long-term investment decisions being justified on outdated pricing for alternative options. Solar plus storage can, and will, cost-effectively fulfill some of the roles that some interties would play in future. Any investment decision should be made with a full and accurate understanding of the various available options.
Finally, it is also CanSIA's view that the electricity system of the future is one that places electricity consumers at the forefront with a wider array of new, clean, smart, and distributed technologies available to them. CanSIA believes that investment in new interties should ensure that Canadian electricity consumers are provided with more options to manage, generate, and store their own electricity as well.
This concludes my remarks.
Once again, I thank you for having given me this opportunity to speak before the committee.
I look forward to any questions you may have.