Foundation grantee, Clean Energy Canada, recently launched its Tracking the Energy Revolution – Canada report – a follow-up to the its global report published last year. The report is the most comprehensive assessment of our nation’s clean energy performance to date.
Below are their 10 key findings:
- In 2013, the rate of job growth in Canada’s clean energy sector outpaced that of every other sector in the country.
- Canada just had its best year ever; clean-energy generation investment jumped a significant 88 percent over the previous year.
- Ontario welcomed more than half of the nation’s clean-energy investment last year.
- Canada now ranks sixth in the world for investment in new domestic clean energy generation projects.
- Almost half of all new growth in solar PV capacity occurred at the residential and commercial scale, as homeowners and business owners bolted panels on rooftops.
- Contrary to the perceptions of wind power opponents, two separate peer-reviewed studies released last year concluded that wind turbines harm neither human health nor property values.
- About 26,900 Canadians work in clean energy, including Meredith Smith, who builds and maintains wind turbines, and whom Clean Energy Canada declared one of five Clean Energy Champions.
- Last summer, Toronto’s Northland Power assembled the largest non-hydro renewable energy financing deal in history—a USD$5.8 billion agreement to build an offshore wind farm in the Netherlands.
- When one includes large hydro in the mix, there’s now roughly 89 GW of renewable electricity capacity in Canada, ranking us 4th in the world. That’s enough to power more than 35 million homes.
- Canada has shut down 4,600 MW worth of coal power—the equivalent of scrapping 8.7 million vehicles.
Click here to launch the interactive report.