National Overview · 2023
Canada's electricity generation mix
Where the tabs above go deep on one source at a time, this is the big picture: what Canada actually runs its grid on today, and how that's shifted over the last decade. Figures are for 2023, the most recent year with a full source breakdown.
Between 2010 and 2023, Canada's total generation grew 6.6% while renewable generation grew 12.6% — meaning renewables gained share even as the grid as a whole expanded. Nearly all of that renewable growth came from wind and solar; hydro's own output barely moved, since it was already running most of its available capacity.
Sources: Canada Energy Regulator, Statistics Canada / Energy Fact Book, International Trade Administration
Where This Is Headed
Canada's climate targets — and how far there is left to go
Two different numbers get called "Canada's climate target," and they're not the same thing. Both matter, and neither is close to done.
Electricity-Sector Target
A net-zero electricity grid
Announced at COP26 (2021) as a 2035 goal. The final Clean Electricity Regulations that actually govern this set the binding target at 2050 instead — fossil generation is allowed to continue past 2035 under emissions limits, with full decarbonization required by 2050.
The dark segment on the right — about a fifth of the grid — is what still needs to close, mostly by retiring or fully abating natural gas and coal generation, over the next ~24 years.
Economy-Wide Target
40-45% emissions cut by 2030
Canada's 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan targets a 40-45% cut in economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels — covering transportation, buildings, and industry, not just electricity. Decarbonizing the grid is a precondition for this, since it's what makes electrifying everything else (EVs, heat pumps) actually reduce emissions rather than just move them.
The Actual Comparison
Emissions by generation source
Full lifecycle emissions — mining or drilling the fuel, building the plant, running it, and eventually decommissioning it — not just what comes out of the smokestack. IPCC-harmonized median figures, 2014, the standard reference set for this kind of comparison.
Nuclear and wind sit essentially tied at the bottom of this list — both around 40x cleaner than natural gas per kWh. Biomass is the one renewable that isn't dramatically cleaner than fossil fuels on paper; where its wood fuel actually comes from is what determines whether it's genuinely low-carbon or not, which is exactly the fight covered on the Biomass tab. Individual plants can fall outside these medians — a badly-sited hydro reservoir or a coal plant with carbon capture can each land far from their category's typical number.
Sources: IPCC AR5, Annex III, Life-cycle GHG emissions of energy sources, Government of Canada — Clean Electricity Regulations
Wind → Grid → Home
How a wind farm actually powers a house
An animated energy-flow diagram, not a live SCADA feed — this illustrates how the system works, it doesn't monitor a real one. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
Figures on this diagram are typical/illustrative examples, not a spec sheet for one real project — voltages like 34.5kV and 230kV are common North American conventions, but turbine rating, cut-in speed, and average wind speed vary by manufacturer, project, and site.
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Wind Resource
Wind is air moving under pressure differences created by uneven solar heating of the earth. Its energy content rises with the cube of wind speed, which is why siting matters more than almost anything else in a project: a small gain in average wind speed produces a much larger gain in output.
Site to Grid Connection
The approval pathway for a wind project in Canada
Development is regulated mostly at the provincial level, with federal oversight where a project touches federal lands, fisheries, migratory birds, species at risk, or Indigenous rights. Click a stage to expand it.
Real Project Example
Mersey River Wind — Phase 1 Construction Timeline
A 33-turbine, 148.5 MW project by Roswall Development near Milton, Queens County, NS — built in two phases. Phase 1 covers 20 Vestas V150 turbines (120m towers) plus the project substation and transmission line to the Milton substation; the remaining 13 turbines follow in Phase 2. Construction began fall 2025, with power expected to reach customers through Renewall Energy by spring 2027.
Source: merseywind.ca/construction
The 9-stage pathway above is a general guideline compiled across provinces — actual sequencing, timing, and which permits apply vary by project, province, and site. The Mersey River Wind timeline is that specific project's real published schedule, not a template every project follows.
Sun → Grid → Home
How solar power actually reaches a house
An animated energy-flow diagram, illustrative rather than a live feed. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
Figures on this diagram are typical/illustrative examples — panel wattage, efficiency, and voltages vary by manufacturer, project scale, and site. 34.5kV and 230kV are common North American grid conventions, carried over from the same collector/substation/transmission infrastructure wind and solar both connect through.
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Solar Resource
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Site to Grid Connection
The approval pathway for a solar project in Nova Scotia
Community and utility-scale solar in NS follows the same provincial/federal split as wind, but with its own process wrinkles — smaller projects use a streamlined interconnection agreement, and the province's Community Solar Program adds a subscription/equity layer most wind projects don't have. Click a stage to expand it.
Real Project Example
Sydney Community Solar — Project Milestones
A 2.4 MW DC ground-mount community solar project in Sydney, Cape Breton, NS. Owned by AI Renewable Flow-through Fund, developed and built by SolarBank as EPC contractor. Expected to generate ~2,730 MWh/year — enough for roughly 221 homes — while avoiding an estimated 1,900 tonnes of CO2 annually. Total project investment: $4.57M.
Sources: PRNewswire (SolarBank, Jun 2025), PRNewswire (PowerBank, Sep 2025)
The 9-stage pathway above is a general guideline — actual sequencing and which permits apply vary by project size, municipality, and whether a project is a private community solar garden or a utility-scale array. The Sydney project's milestones are drawn from public company announcements, not a single official construction schedule, so treat the dates as reported progress markers rather than a fixed timeline.
Water → Grid → Home
How hydropower actually reaches a house
An animated energy-flow diagram, illustrative rather than a live feed. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
Figures on this diagram are typical/illustrative examples — head, flow rate, and voltages vary hugely by site and station size. 34.5kV and 230kV are common North American grid conventions, carried over from the same collector/substation/transmission infrastructure every source on this page connects through.
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Water Resource
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Site to Grid Connection
The approval pathway for a hydro project in Nova Scotia
Greenfield hydro sites are rare in NS today — nearly every viable river was developed decades ago. The live story here is usually refurbishing century-old dams through a regulator that now demands a full refurbish-vs-decommission comparison, not permitting a new one. Click a stage to expand it.
Real Project Example
Ruth Falls Main Dam — Refurbishment Regulatory Timeline
A three-unit, 7.2 MW hydro station on the Sheet Harbour Hydro System, part of NS Power's small hydro fleet. The main dam — built in 1925 — needed refurbishment after a 2015 dam safety review found structural deficiencies. What followed is a genuinely instructive case study in how much a legislative change mid-project (the 2019 modernized federal Fisheries Act) can extend timelines and costs on existing infrastructure.
Source: Nova Scotia Energy Board Decision 2025 NSEB 6, M11927 (Jun 18, 2025)
The 9-stage pathway above is a general guideline — greenfield hydro would follow a process closer to wind's. The Ruth Falls timeline is drawn directly from a public regulatory decision; as of that decision the project was still unresolved, held in abeyance pending a federal fisheries permit — a genuinely open case, not a tidy success story.
Heat → Grid → Home
How geothermal power reaches a house
An animated energy-flow diagram, illustrative rather than tied to a specific project. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
This diagram illustrates a conventional geothermal power plant (the kind found in Iceland or California) — Nova Scotia does not currently have one. NS sits on a passive continental margin with a geothermal gradient of roughly 17°C/km, versus 200°C/km+ in genuinely volcanic regions, so utility-scale geothermal electricity isn't economically viable here today. NS's real geothermal activity is ground-source heat pumps for building heating/cooling — a different technology entirely — plus early-stage resource assessment. See the Development Flow tab for where that stands.
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Geothermal Resource
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Site to Grid Connection
The development pathway for geothermal power
This 9-stage pathway describes how geothermal power plants get developed generally — it isn't specific to Nova Scotia, because no NS project has reached most of these stages yet. See the real-world example below for where the province actually stands today. Click a stage to expand it.
Real Nova Scotia Example
Where NS Geothermal Actually Stands: Resource Assessment & Community Capacity
No geothermal power plant exists or is under construction in Nova Scotia. The real activity today is upstream of that: mapping where the resource might even be viable, and building the community-level capacity to eventually pursue it. Net Zero Atlantic's GeoCAT program is the clearest current example — a federally funded initiative working directly with Mi'kmaw and rural communities on early-stage geothermal project development.
Sources: Government of Nova Scotia, OERA, CBC News (Nov 2022), Net Zero Atlantic
The 9-stage pathway is a general description of how geothermal power projects reach construction elsewhere in the world — nothing about it is NS-specific, since no NS project has gotten past early resource assessment. Presenting it any other way would overstate how developed geothermal power actually is in this province.
Current → Grid → Home
How tidal power reaches a house
Modelled on FORCE, Canada's tidal stream test site in the Bay of Fundy — illustrative of the technology rather than any single deployed device. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
This diagram skips a separate collector-system stage — unlike a multi-unit wind or solar site, a single tidal berth typically runs one export cable straight to shore, and FORCE's onshore substation handles both step-up and switching in one facility. Figures are illustrative; see the Development Flow tab for what's actually been deployed at FORCE.
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Tidal Resource
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Site to Grid Connection
The development pathway for tidal power in Nova Scotia
Unlike the other tabs, this pathway isn't a generic global template — Nova Scotia's tidal industry is genuinely centred on one site, FORCE in the Minas Passage, so the process below reflects how development actually works here specifically. Click a stage to expand it.
Real Nova Scotia Example
FORCE — Berth History, Minas Passage
Canada's tidal stream test site has been running since 2009, and its history is a genuinely candid one: more turbines have been damaged, abandoned, or removed than have delivered steady power. It's also not over — the province re-opened procurement in 2025 and awarded two new berths, so the site is currently in an active rebuilding phase rather than a settled success or failure.
Sources: FORCE, Wikipedia, The Globe and Mail, Government of Nova Scotia (Nov 2025)
The 7-stage pathway describes how a tidal project moves through Nova Scotia's actual licensing process today. The FORCE timeline below is presented honestly, including its failures — a fair account of tidal energy in this province has to include them, not just the resource's potential.
Fuel → Grid → Home
How biomass power reaches a house
Modelled on Nova Scotia Power's Point Tupper plant near Port Hawkesbury, NS's largest biomass generator. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
Nova Scotia's biomass electricity comes from a small number of large point-source plants rather than distributed sites, so this diagram skips the multi-unit collector network the other tabs show and goes straight from one boiler-turbine complex to the substation. What counts as "residue" versus whole-tree harvest for fuel has been genuinely contested here — see the Development Flow tab.
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Forest Biomass Resource
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Site to Grid Connection
The development pathway for biomass power in Nova Scotia
Biomass is the one source on this site that's already fully built and operating at scale here — the pathway below is less about permitting a new plant and more about the fuel-supply and regulatory fight that's followed it since. Click a stage to expand it.
Real Nova Scotia Example
Point Tupper — Nova Scotia's Biomass Plant
Nova Scotia Power's $200M+ biomass plant at Point Tupper, next to the Port Hawkesbury Paper mill, has run since 2012 — but almost every year of its life has involved some version of the same fight: how much wood it should burn, where that wood should come from, and who decides. It's a useful case precisely because it isn't simple.
Sources: Halifax Examiner, CBC News, Nova Scotia Forest Matters, Government of Nova Scotia
This timeline includes the plant's real controversies deliberately. Biomass is officially counted as renewable in Nova Scotia's electricity mix, but whether it should be — and how it's sourced — has been a genuine, ongoing public debate, not a settled question.
Fuel → Grid → Home
How fossil-fuel power reaches a house
Modelled on Nova Scotia Power's conventional steam-boiler fleet — coal at Lingan, Point Aconi and Trenton, oil and gas at Tufts Cove — still the single largest slice of the province's generation mix. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
Like biomass, fossil generation comes from a handful of large point-source plants rather than distributed sites, so this diagram goes straight from one boiler-turbine complex to the substation rather than showing a collector network of many small generators. Coal is the dirtiest of the three fuels shown here and is legally required to be gone from Canadian grids by 2030 — see the Development Flow tab for how Nova Scotia is actually getting there.
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Fossil Fuel Resource
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Site to Grid Connection
Retiring, not permitting: fossil power's pathway in Nova Scotia
Every other tab on this site describes how a new plant gets built. This one runs the opposite direction — fossil generation is already built and dominant, and the "pathway" below is the regulatory process for phasing it out on a legally binding schedule. Click a stage to expand it.
Real Nova Scotia Example
Lingan, Trenton & Point Aconi — Nova Scotia's Coal Fleet
Nova Scotia Power runs eight coal-fired units across four plants, employing around 350 people directly. A 2018 federal-provincial equivalency agreement let the province keep burning coal past the original 2030 national deadline in exchange for emissions targets, but even that flexibility has an expiry date — and NS Power's own retirement schedule keeps slipping.
Sources: CBC News, Global Energy Monitor, IRPP, CBC News
Retiring firm, dispatchable capacity is harder than retiring an intermittent source — NS Power has repeatedly delayed coal closures because it needed guaranteed replacement power lined up first. The plan on file today isn't full closure: three Lingan units are set to convert to heavy fuel oil in 2030 and keep running to 2050, burning peak-demand fuel that can be as emissions-intensive as coal itself.
Fuel → Grid → Home
How nuclear power reaches a house — just not this one
Nova Scotia has never had a reactor of its own, so unlike every other tab here, this diagram isn't modelled on an NS Power asset. It's modelled on Point Lepreau, the CANDU-6 station on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick — Atlantic Canada's only nuclear plant, and the closest real example to Nova Scotia's grid. Click any stage (or the legend below) to select it, then press Enter to zoom in for a labelled close-up.
Nova Scotia's nuclear electricity comes from a small number of large point-source plants rather than distributed sites, so this diagram skips the multi-unit collector network the other tabs show and goes straight from one boiler-turbine complex to the substation. What counts as "residue" versus whole-tree harvest for fuel has been genuinely contested here — see the Development Flow tab.
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Uranium Fuel
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Site to Grid Connection
Why there's no nuclear pathway in Nova Scotia
Every other tab walks through an active development process. There isn't one to walk through here — no utility has filed to build a reactor in this province, and none is currently proposing to. What follows instead is why: the real, structural reasons nuclear hasn't happened in Nova Scotia, laid out as honestly as the biomass and tidal tabs treat their own complications.
Regional Example — New Brunswick
Point Lepreau — Atlantic Canada's Only Reactor
Point Lepreau is the nearest real nuclear plant to Nova Scotia, and its history is a useful counterpoint to how this site frames renewable projects: a single CANDU-6 unit, planned to last 25 years, that instead became a case study in cost overruns and downtime during the very refurbishment meant to extend its life.
Sources: Wikipedia, CBC News, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Nuclear power does occasionally reach Nova Scotia anyway, indirectly — the Maritimes' interconnected grid means NB Power's output, including Point Lepreau's, can flow across the provincial tie line depending on demand and pricing. It just isn't generated here, and no one has proposed changing that.