Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin
President, WaterPower Canada
On November 5th, 2019, 11,000 scientists from across the globe released a joint statement officially ringing the alarm on our climate emergency. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It follows years of research, publications, and government summits all focused on the increasing urgency to address climate change. Many countries are already experiencing their first and successive waves of climate change impacts today. We, in Canada, are of course not immune and are starting to see how climate change will affect our lives in very significant ways.
While Canada is certainly a world leader in putting measures in place to mitigate and adapt to climate change, the time frame for implementation is sometimes a deterrent in seeing real change. Because climate change requires strong and meaningful actions now, the need for cleantech has never been greater. Waterpower, Canada’s original cleantech, is poised to play a large role in our country’s energy transition.
In fact, thanks in large part to the electricity provided by waterpower, our electricity grid is already 68% renewable today with energy from water, wind, and the sun. Add to this the fact that waterpower effectively acts as the system’s dependable backbone, and you have a winning recipe.
That being said, not too many people know that this cluster of renewable energy cleantech works extremely well together. It can do much more to decarbonize our grid nationally. In fact, even though waterpower has been around for more than a century in Canada, we could still more than double our production with a mix of redevelopment and new projects. There’s a lot of flowing water in Canada!
Electricity from waterpower in Canada is abundant, affordable, and will be as much a part of Canada’s future as it has been of its past.
