Corporate Knights: There will be a significant increase in North American electricity demand in the next 10 years. Will Canada have a role in providing continental energy security by increasing renewable energy exports to the United States?

Tanaka: Yes. Canada has huge hydropower potential, and should focus on increasing solar and wind capacity within the country that could be connected to the U.S. market. Some further recommendations that we are making concern enhancing the security of electricity within Canada. The connection, not only north to south but east-west as well, is one particularly difficult challenge because it involves a huge up-front investment. It is a necessary and long-term expenditure, but setting up an effective federal energy policy that concerns the energy grid is a difficult task for the Canadian government. I think there are plenty of mechanisms for facilitating this process at a national level, but we want to see more in that direction.

CK: What policy steps should the federal government take to improve the Canadian grid?

Tanaka: We always advocate stronger international cross-border connectivity, which Canada should pursue more stringently with the U.S., but the priority should be pushing the provinces towards a more coordinated grid policy. It’s quite natural that these regional governments are concerned with their own business, so the federal government must fill this void with longer-term, national planning. Energy connectivity within the country is a national security issue. The recent tsunami tragedy in Japan really exposed the security risks involved in not having an interconnected country-wide grid. As the different Japanese regions were not in a national network, the affected areas were exposed as extremely vulnerable to stoppages and outages of electricity by lost power plant capacity, in that case nuclear power. This created huge problems that could have been mitigated by better grid infrastructure.

CK: If you were addressing the Canadian premiers of each province at their energy meeting and you were making one recommendation to Canada, what would that be?