Building wind farms off Atlantic Canada’s coast would be a game-changer that transforms the region into an “energy superpower” and boosts the country’s climate goals — if Canada gets more ambitious.That’s the message from prominent Canadian policy expert Peter Nicholson, who highlights the benefits of offshore wind for the country in an upcoming Public Policy Forum report.
The push to encourage such renewable energy developments to Canada comes as the US offshore wind industry grapples with challenges and setbacks for projects along the US East Coast, with rising material costs and a run-up in interest rates undermining the efforts. Two projects are under construction near Massachusetts and New York while more than a dozen others are planned in US waters — though developers have sought to renegotiate contracts and threatened to walk away from some ventures.
The Atlantic provinces need much more transmission capacity connecting the region with eastern Canada and the U.S. for such an opportunity to be realized, according to Nicholson. Sable Island Bank could accommodate at least 1,000 offshore turbines, enough to generate about 70,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year — capable of powering 6.5 million Canadian homes or almost twice the annual power consumed in Atlantic Canada, according to Nicholson.The economic benefits would be generational, he said.
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