The Energy Regulation and Markets Review - Stikeman Elliott

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Energy efficiency and conservation
Canada
At the federal level, the government has established an Office of Energy Efficiency (‘the
OEE’), which offers a number of grants and incentives to encourage energy efficiency.
The OEE’s initiatives have included efficiency standards, home retrofitting, and the
labelling of consumer products.
There are also various efficiency and conservation initiatives at the provincial
level. In Ontario, the provincial government has created a Conservation Fund to fund
electricity conservation initiatives. The Conservation Fund supports a wide variety of
electricity conservation projects, including programmes that allow electricity users to
take advantage of commercially available energy-saving measures and incentives.
iii Technological developments
Ontario has established a Smart Grid Forum that is composed of members of the utility
sector, industry associations, public agencies and universities. The purpose of the forum
is to make recommendations that focus on removing barriers to smart grid development
in the province.
VI
THE YEAR IN REVIEW
A pressing issue in Canada is facilitating the delivery of Canada’s abundant energy
resources to the rest of the world. This is exemplified by the controversy over the proposed
Keystone XL pipeline in the United States, which would deliver crude oil from the Alberta
oil sands to the refineries along the Gulf Coast. In October 2011, the NEB granted a 20-
year licence to export 10 million tonnes of LNG per year from British Columbia, and a
new C$5 billion export terminal in Kitimat is expected to begin shipping LNG to Asia
by 2015. Meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell plc purchased a marine terminal near Kitimat
with a view to exporting even larger quantities of LNG with its Korean and Japanese
partners. Various proposals have been tendered to increase crude oil transport capacity
to the west coast of Canada, including projects by Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, Canadian
National Railway Co and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. In March 2012, the Canadian
government announced measures to streamline the regulatory process for these projects.
Continued discoveries and development of unconventional gas resources in North
America have the potential to dramatically change the continent’s energy landscape
in ways that could not have been predicted a few years ago. Among other things, the
potential for low cost gas-fired electricity generation has brought into question the
wisdom of Hydro-Québec’s current ‘big hydro’ projects and Ontario’s plans to refurbish
and expand its nuclear generating fleet; however, environmental questions about shale
gas extraction still linger, and Canadian jurisdictions are beginning to grapple with the
need to set new guidelines for practices such as hydrofracking.
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