The loud fights and quiet conversations driving the quest for a clean power grid in Canada

Jonathan Wilkinson, the federal minister of natural resources and energy, has said that developing the clean electricity grid of the future — the cleaner and bigger grid we need to support a a net-zero economy — is a "nation-building project akin to the building of the railway."

Comparisons to Canada's great accomplishment of the 19th century require some caveats now. But setting aside the worst elements of the railway's construction, the comparison suggests both the importance of the work and the effort that will be required to finish it. From conception to the last spike, the national railway project took 14 years to complete.

So how's it going so far?

"I think it's going better than what a lot of people might think when they hear different things in the media," Wilkinson said in an interview last month.

The minister said this at the end of a year that saw no small number of stories about federal-provincial conflicts over electricity. A new year of headlines began in earnest this week when the Alberta government tried to drag the federal government's clean electricity regulations into a debate about the province's grid and its ability to withstand a recent cold snap.

But maybe the great nation-building project of the 21st century isn't going so badly after all. Or maybe it doesn't have to.

In one respect, Canada is already a long way down the track toward building the kind of clean grid it needs. Approximately 80 per cent of the electricity used in Canada comes from non-emitting sources.

But Canada's grid also isn't a single, integrated system. Each province governs its own grid and interprovincial integration is limited. And that 80 per cent figure hides some important regional differences.

More than 90 per cent of the electricity consumed in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba comes from non-emitting sources. But less than 20 per cent comes from non-emitting sources in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

"I think the biggest challenge is the disparity across the provinces in terms of starting points," said Blake Shaffer, an economist at the University of Calgary who specializes in electricity markets. "This isn't sort of a 'woe is me Alberta' comment. It's more of a reality check, that it's massively transformative for Alberta and Saskatchewan and to a slightly lesser degree, Nova Scotia."

Eliminating the remaining emissions from Canada's electricity supply is also only half of the job. Total electricity generation will have to be 1.6 to 2.1 times greater by 2050 as the population grows and as electricity becomes the dominant energy source for powering cars and home heating.

Greening the grid faces many obstacles — local opposition to energy projects, affordability concerns, a lack of grid connections between provinces. To that end, the Canadian Climate Institute has promoted the idea of "electric federalism" — of the federal government using its convening authority and fiscal resources to drive change and ease the transition.

Wilkinson came to federal politics with a background in provincial government. He was a negotiator for the province of Saskatchewan during the Charlottetown Accord process and later managed federal-provincial matters for Roy Romanow's NDP government. That experience evidently has informed his approach to the resources portfolio.

At his initiative, the federal government in 2022 began establishing a series of "regional tables" on resources and energy with provinces — official forums where federal and provincial officials could discuss priorities and potential collaboration. Seven provinces had signed up by the end that year, two notable exceptions being Alberta and Saskatchewan.