We also need reliable electricity to solve climate change. To eliminate the pollution making weather more extreme, we must shift the way we use energy, away from fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) and toward cleaner electricity. Our vehicles, our businesses, and our home heating systems will rely more on electricity than on gasoline, coal, oil and natural gas.
We rarely think about our electricity until the power goes off. We want the power on when we need it and when it goes out we want the electricity back on quickly. To feel safe, we need to know that electricity is available when we need it – regardless of the time of day or time of the year, or the power source.
Having reliable electricity takes collaboration between utilities, governments and customers. Our electricity grid is an interconnected system with many connections within our region and beyond
Paired with highly advanced wind and solar, we can use proven technologies like energy storage (batteries and hydro power), new transmission connections with our neighbours, and Internet-based applications (called the Smart Grid) to make our electricity system more reliable. We can learn from other provinces and states that are ahead of us in the transition to clean electricity, and use best practices from our region and around the world.
By focusing on energy efficiency and local renewables, we ensure that more of our electricity needs come from within our region. This means we no longer spend money on imported fossil fuels with volatile pricing. Instead, we invest in local, reliable ways to meet our electricity needs.
By investing in our homes and buildings so they use as little energy as possible (to a standard called Passive House), we create an added layer of security and comfort that keeps us warm in winter, and cool in summer. In fact, a home that is retrofitted to a Passive House can stay warm in the winter for days if the power goes out in a storm. With energy efficiency we also decrease the amount of time our utilities burn coal, oil or natural gas to generate electricity today and we spend less on new electricity sources in the future. We all win with lower pollution and lower energy bills.
With a smart grid, smart meter technologies, and incentive programs, we can time our electricity demand with peak production from wind and solar.
Download the information sheet: Atlantic Vision for Clean Electricity: Reliable.
Solving climate change requires deep social change, including an expanded reliance on non-polluting electricity to power our lives. The key to this transition is ensuring that our modernized and sustainable electricity system is affordable and reliable.
Cleaner electricity can help make us safer, more secure and healthier. We can use it to help make electricity affordable for everyone, reliable for when we need it, and cleaner for our health and for our planet.
The Electricity Vision is focused on the phase out coal-fired electricity and ensures our regional electricity system is 90 per cent emissions free before 2030 as required by federal regulation and climate change policy. These first steps will be accelerated by a federal Clean Electricity Regulation due in 2023 requiring a zero-emitting electricity system by 2035.
Our definition of cleaner electricity has two components. First, cleaner electricity relies primarily on non-polluting sources like wind, solar and hydro technologies and it is used efficiently. These renewable technologies have lower environmental impact than electricity generated from coal, oil and natural gas that generate greenhouse gases when burned causing the global heating that is supercharging our weather. Second, our sustainable electricity portfolio needs to be affordable and reliable.
We know that cleaner electricity is affordable, reliable and sustainable – and it’s ready to be deployed right now. The major barriers keeping us from achieving the clean electricity system we deserve are the outdated laws, rules and targets in our region. We need to come together to update the laws that control how we plan for future electricity systems, in order to ensure a safer, more secure and healthier future with clean electricity.
We need to build electricity connections to allow renewable energy like wind and solar to be reliable at all times of year, by backing it up with existing hydroelectric capacity, storage technologies, and collaboration with our neighbours.
We need to avoid the risks, mistakes and delays that come with continued coal burning, more nuclear energy, and dependence on fossil fuels.
Download the letter from CCNB:
Learn more about how our electricity and energy use changes the climate and what New Brunswickers are doing about it:
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Fredericton, N.B., E3B 4A9
Tel: 506.458.8747
info@conservationcouncil.ca
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