The Mowat Centre, a public policy research centre in Toronto, is calling on Canada to become a global energy superpower, not by exporting raw resources but through technological advancement – not a simple matter, the group says.
Canada’s current approach to energy technology investments is piecemeal and fragmented, the centre says in "Smarter and Stronger: Taking Charge of Canada’s Energy Technology Future." With some exceptions, it says, "governments rely on a mix of short-term and overlapping boutique energy research and development (ER&D) programs. These have a mediocre track record when assessed on the basis of measurable outputs, such as Canada’s (poor) performance in developing new energy technologies." Instead, becoming an energy technology leader should be a concrete policy commitment from both orders of government, and spanning the whole energy system, from supply to end-use.
The report finds that direct-push policies—that is, directly funding ER&D projects within established priority areas—are the most effective tool for accelerating energy technology development, and that Canada’s current policy mix is severely underutilizing this approach. The present Canadian energy technology policy portfolio, heavily biased toward indirect-push and direct-pull policies, is not suitable for achieving significant improvements in ER&D outputs.
Among other things, the centre recommends merging the current suite of energy-related programs run through various departments into a federal Department of Energy. That would include moving the federal Canmet labs into the new DOE and ensuring that their mandate fits into the new comprehensive ER&D strategy. The Ontario Ministry of Energy should move away from its "disproportionate" focus on electricity to a system incorporating all energy forms, and make ER&D a foundational pillar in provincial energy policy.
Canada remains one of the top ER&D funders in the world, the report finds. It is tied with Japan in second place among the International Energy Agency (IEA) peers by ER&D investment intensity (ER&D spending as a share of GDP), after Finland. Unfortunately, such funding is largely short term, and "thinly spread among countless uncoordinated programs that lack useful performance measures and are disconnected from outcomes."
The Mowat Centre is located at the School of Public Policy & Governance at the University of Toronto.