The federal government is set to carve out a bigger role for itself in electricity policy – an area of mostly provincial responsibility, but one that Ottawa has identified as pivotal to national economic interests as Canada competes for low-carbon investment.
New spending commitments to help modernize and expand the capacity of the country’s power grids will be a major component of a federal budget aimed at keeping pace with massive clean-energy investment in the United States, according to government sources.
Policy levers that the government has been considering, the sources say, include some combination of tax credits, grants, financing mechanisms and the pursuit of joint funding agreements with provinces. There is growing recognition that grid investment is currently nowhere near what is needed to meet electricity demand that is expected to at least double as electricity is increasingly used to fuel transportation, heat buildings and power industry.
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