Renewable energy in Canada has been steadily growing for the past decade to make up more and more of the country's electric energy production.
The finding is the result of ongoing research by the Canadian Industrial Energy End-use Data and Analysis Centre (CIEEDAC) at Simon Fraser University. In 2015, CIEEDAC’s database on renewables showed that 20% of Canada’s primary and secondary energy came from hydro, biomass, wind, solar PV, and other less numerous renewables (cieedac.sfu.ca/db_renew_new).
Among the findings: Wind power has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past decade, both in terms of quantity and quality. Since 2005, more than twice as much wind capacity (10.5 GW) was installed compared to hydro (4.3 GW) in Canada. And while wind power has a lower capacity factor, this too has been improving to now be in the range of 35%-40% (NREL Transparent Cost Database, en.openei.org/apps/TCDB), meaning roughly equal electricity generation could be possible from both of these new capacities.
Ontario and Quebec have been the principal provinces to install large amounts of wind.