Tidal Energy Law in Canada: Hindering an Untapped Potential for International Primacy

Environmental Law, Socio-economics: Justin G. Fisch (2016)

Appeal Vol. 21

Link: https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/appeal/article/view/15658

In recent years, countries around the world have been making significant strides toward building or renewing their energy infrastructures based on clear renewable portfolio standards (“RPS”), in which they set targets for renewable energy production within a given timeframe (1). Early in the spring of 2015, for example, Costa Rica made news for having powered its entire country off of renewable energy alone for three full months (2). Every morning, Icelanders turn on their lights without emitting an ounce of carbon into the atmosphere, thanks to the country’s strong geothermal and hydro energy grid (3). When it comes to riding the wave of renewable energy, Canada is no exception: the country produces almost 60 percent of its total energy from renewable sources, primarily hydropower (4).

Despite such promising numbers, however, drastic discrepancies exist among provinces. On one hand, Quebecers enjoy over 90 percent of their electricity from renewable sources (5). On the other, Nunavummiut (6) depend wholly on diesel-fueled generators to power their lives, while the territory’s system does not benefit from a single input of renewable energy (7). As renewable energy sources are geographically specific, Canada has struggled to diversify its infrastructure, depending primarily on hydropower installations developed from the 1950s to the 1970s to meet its renewable energy targets. The Prairie provinces, the Maritime provinces, and the Arctic territories are among the jurisdictions with the lowest amount of renewables in their energy mix (8). Yet, a tremendous untapped resource—42,000 megawatts (MW), enough to provide over 70 percent of Canada’s present annual electricity consumption (9), to be precise—exists just offshore of the maritime and arctic regions. That untapped resource is tidal energy.