Two Saturday evenings ago, something unprecedented happened in the Province of Alberta. Provincial residents received an emergency alert notification asking them to conserve electricity use as Alberta’s electricity system, operated by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), was in a level 3 grid alert. Extreme cold, which brought with it low wind, combined with a few unanticipated outages from natural gas generators, left Alberta on the cusp of relying on load shedding to maintain the stability of its grid. Just before the emergency alert was sent out, the last resource keeping us going was energy storage.  

Please bear momentarily with some technical details. Energy storage resources are grid-connected assets, such as batteries, that can take in energy at one time—charging—and give it back at a later time—discharging. This storage ability has different uses, but most simply it lets us store energy from times of low demand and use it at different times of high demand. Just like power lines let us move energy across space, energy storage lets us move energy across time. Most other supply chains, like fossil fuels, agriculture or even simply product manufacturing have long used storage in the form of storage tanks, grain elevators, or warehouses. Storage allows these supply chains to be optimized and avoids the complexities and difficulties of needing to supply products in real time to directly match demand.

While lithium batteries, similar to the ones in our phones, laptops, and increasingly EVs, are the bulk of contemporary energy storage installations, energy storage can take many other forms, such as pumped hydro, compressed air, thermal storage, flow batteries, and more.

Returning to the emergency alert on January 13, in the hours leading up to it, storage was playing a critical role for the grid by providing “operating reserves.”  This means that the province’s 190 megawatts of storage capacity was standing by, ready to discharge in the case that the AESO needed them during an emergency or reliability event. By charging during times of low demand and discharging in times of high demand, storage can optimize how electricity from our generators makes it to customers, relieving strain on the system in the process. As demand on the grid ticked up and Alberta’s generators were unable to keep up, storage resources were called on to fill in the gap.

Unfortunately, due some of the legacy structures of our electricity market and regulations, storage is still a relatively nascent resource in Alberta and could only hold off the emergency alert for an hour or two. The emergency ultimately passed without serious consequence but it’s a powerful sign that something needs to change. Increasing Alberta’s energy storage would help the province meet peak demand, potentially avoiding the need for future emergency alerts.

Storage can also provide far more than just reliability—it is also a boon for affordability. Storage takes low-cost electricity, charging when demand is low or when renewables are plentiful, and discharges at higher-priced times, such as when demand is high and renewable output is low. More competition during high-priced times brings down the cost of high-priced hours and stabilizes the cost of electricity, to the benefit of Albertans and our economy.

Other provinces have recognized these benefits and are acting to enable investment in storage, at scale.  Ontario is a good example. The province is currently building over 2,500MW of battery storage to meet critical capacity needs while ensuring Ontario’s clean electricity advantage is maintained. Going further, Ontario is advancing long-duration storage projects like the Ontario Pumped Storage Project and Marmora Pumped Storage Project that have the potential for greater reliability upsides including the ability to run for long periods of time.

Ontario has a diverse grid with a variety of resources on it: nuclear, gas, renewables, hydro, and more. Storage works well with all these resources. Indeed, much of the world’s existing pumped hydro storage was built in the 1970s and 1980s to provide a flexible complement to nuclear power, which isn’t meant to ramp up and down. Storage can optimize all resources while providing electricity when it is needed most, and Ontario’s pursuit of energy storage exemplifies this.  

Nova Scotia is similarly investing in up to 400MW of storage, which will help it to develop its behemoth offshore wind resources and ease its transition off of coal power. This is especially significant considering the smaller size of the province as the result will be even more storage per capita than Ontario. Even our neighbours in Saskatchewan are building a 20MW battery near Regina.  

Alberta can realize these benefits too. The province has 190MW of batteries installed now, but there are presently just under 3,000MW of standalone storage in development, with more storage in development paired with solar, wind, and gas facilities.

However, the legacy structure of our system inhibits the amount of storage able to be developed on Alberta’s grid. One example is that storage is currently charged as both a load and generator, leading to it being allocated at high system costs to operate. This doesn’t accurately reflect how storage uses the grid, as, unlike load or supply, storage isn’t adding new consumption or new energy into the system, but it can optimize the system for both. We see other markets around the world recognizing this and allowing for substantial investments in storage. Without updates to our market here, much of this investment may be left on paper.

Alberta has done some good work toward incorporating storage with the passing of the Modernizing Alberta’s Electricity Grid Act in 2022, otherwise known as Bill 22. It acknowledges that storage is a unique resource, distinct from load and generation. Unfortunately, this legislation is not yet proclaimed and implemented.  

However, the fact remains that energy storage is a critical part of Alberta’s grid, now and in the future. The challenge moving forward will be updating legacy rules and structures to liberate the development of storage in our electricity market.  

With a few relatively simple changes to how storage is treated, investment in storage can be supercharged. Implementing Bill 22 and creating a cost allocation structure for energy storage resources are not the only things to be done, but would accomplish much, and can be done right now.  

Storage isn’t the only part of a reliable grid, but it is a crucial piece. With the stakes for creating a reliable, affordable, and sustainable grid this high, we can’t leave anything on the table. The recent emergency is unlikely to be the last one.

As 2024 begins to take shape, one reoccurring question I hear on the street and on my podcast is: What happened to Canada?

The question was posed to me after school libraries in Peel, a municipality west of Toronto, purged thousands of books published before 2008 in the name of “equity.” And it happened, many times, when the government froze the bank accounts of truckers protesting pandemic measures.

With each new development and each new conversation, I’ve been forced to wonder: What has happened to my country? How did we go from being a proudly pluralistic liberal democracy to a polarized nation that memory holes The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and de-banks those who reject the party line? 

I never used to get asked about what happened to Canada.

We’ve long been viewed as a model country. But recently, the social fabric has frayed dramatically, and in a remarkably short period of time, with the culture wars apparent in Europe and the United States playing out here in extreme ways.

The next question on many people’s minds is: How did we get here?

A housing crisis

To understand Canada’s cultural and political decline, one must begin by looking at economics. It is significant that over the past decade or so, ordinary Canadians have been priced out of affordable housing. In Vancouver, where I grew up, home ownership is out of reach for all but the top earners, with one report showing that the minimum annual income needed to buy a house is $246,100. Rents have skyrocketed too, decoupled from local incomes. In Toronto, where I live, the median individual income is $39,200 a year, while the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,594 per month. 

This math clearly does not add up, and it generates a level of ambient desperation that’s as unhealthy for individuals as it is for society—particularly when combined with inflation, high food costs, and the rise of gig and contract labour, with more than a third of Canadians now precariously employed.

One in four Canadians report that meeting basic financial needs has been difficult, or very difficult, in the past year.

This struggle to make ends meet also contributes to our epidemic of social isolation, with many working long hours, leaving little time for friends, community, public service, arts and culture, or faith.

For obvious reasons, these conditions also impact Canadians’ ability to start a family, delaying the life cycle, and, at scale, contributing to a birth rate that’s been steadily declining since 2009, with our country now well below population replacement at 1.4 children per woman. (Statistics Canada has warned we are in danger of becoming a “lowest-low” fertility country, with a rapidly aging population that places stress on the labour market, health care, and pensions.) Behind such a statistic stand legions of lonely souls who were told growing up that if they worked hard and respected the law they could afford a decent life and a family if they wanted one.

It would be difficult to overstate just how much rage Millennial and Gen Z Canadians feel about the collapse of this social contract—and just how much resentment exists towards older generations, who failed to preserve it.

A powerful ideology

Enter identitarian moralism, often referred to as “woke” politics. 

During the same decade or so that housing affordability was tanking in Canada, an ideology arrived that took a radical posture on social issues while maintaining the economic status quo. 

This new line of thinking originated at elite American universities and spread to Canada through social media. It presents itself as leftist but eschews key leftist concepts such as class analysis, universalism, and the importance of free speech. Instead, it views politics through the lens of identity, focusing on equalizing outcomes between identity groups, as well as on problematizing language, criticizing social, cultural, and interpersonal norms, and building up a vast administrative class to advance such efforts.

Critically, it presents its ideas as moral imperatives, trading persuasion for campaigns of public shaming.

It is a political project that’s been widely embraced by economic elites in Canada, from individuals to corporate and governmental leaders, including Justin Trudeau. Though clearly well-intentioned in some instances, in practice it serves to assuage the guilt of the haves and to signal their virtue to the have-nots. (See the prevalence of Indigenous land acknowledgments at public events in Canada. This exercise makes participants look and feel good but does nothing to improve the living conditions of Indigenous people.)

Identitarian moralism, as it happens, has also appealed to a vocal and understandably pessimistic segment of the have-nots—chiefly a class of young, educated knowledge workers, whose economic prospects have markedly declined. As other writers have pointed out in the past, this ethos provides a low-effort outlet for feelings of powerlessness. The causes of Canada’s decline are multifold, complex, and difficult to address. Calling someone a bigot online is relatively easy.

A failing media and intellectual class

A robust media might have played a critical role in analyzing these developments, airing out debates on solutions, and giving voice to those shut out of the Canadian Dream.

But during this same period, as in many other countries, our media has been in freefall, with the advertising business model collapsing. In response, our government has implemented high-profile, aggressive interventions into the industry, awarding millions in press subsidies that have both failed to stem the tide of outlet closures and have likely undermined public trust in the media. Add to that, Bill C-18 has resulted in Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram dropping Canadian news, hampering the ability of digital start-ups to find an audience and further imperiling an already fragile media ecosystem. 

Our press corps faces mass layoffs and precarious employment—and is increasingly made up of those from financially privileged backgrounds, or else the aforementioned disillusioned knowledge workers. Both groups have largely adopted the identitarian ideology and its jargon (regardless of whether their outlet leans Left or Right), further alienating an already distrustful public. 

A creeping censoriousness, driven by social media mobs and amplified uncritically by our media, has only intensified this dynamic.

Against this backdrop of widespread fear over lost reputations and livelihoods, it’s hardly surprising that Canada’s intellectual class has failed to push back. Who could wonder that the literary community, for instance—made up of writers whose average annual income hovers somewhere around $10,000—has remained largely silent, with few speaking up to defend freedom of expression.

All of this is why the pandemic proved so utterly explosive. Canada’s answer to this once-in-a-century crisis was public policy that exacerbated these underlying tensions. Long lockdowns and school closures polarized society even further, protecting, and even enriching, the well-off and those able to work from home, while driving the rest to desperation.

A national crisis sparks a polarization spiral

It was into this combustible moment that Justin Trudeau—already perceived by many as privileged and out of touch with working Canadians—stepped in to trigger an election in the fall of 2021, making vaccine mandates a wedge issue, pathologizing a number of unvaccinated Canadians as racists and misogynists, and, when truckers took over the capital, deploying the Emergencies Act, originally intended for wartime, against them. 

It was a political calculation that had devastating social consequences, ripping communities and even families apart.

During this charged moment—as Lean Out predicted in early 2022—Canadian society transitioned from a tense society to a high-conflict one.

Investigative journalist Amanda Ripley, author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, defines the phenomenon as “an us-versus-them conflict that seems to have a life of its own. Where the facts stop mattering very much and it becomes all about the fear of the other side.” In high-conflict societies, the discourse gets simplified, and “the complexity of real life and real problems gets crystallized and gets spliced in half…There’s good versus evil.”

We are now seeing such polarization play out throughout Canadian society, most recently around the Israel/Hamas war.

In high conflict, the polarization spirals as each side reacts to the loudest and most outrageous actors on the opposing side, and ratchets up rhetoric accordingly. Thus, the culture comes to be defined by the most extreme voices on the margins, while the Exhausted Majority checks out.

Interrupting this spiral is extremely difficult, as the conflict is magnetic. And each fresh outrage serves to amplify this magnetism.

But understanding the dynamics of polarization can help us to resist the spiral, and to break out of binary thinking by complicating dominant narratives. It can also help us to take a step back from news and politics, and to focus on more life-affirming and energizing pursuits, like family or hobbies.

Then, with a fresh perspective and renewed optimism, we can return to debates armed with a curiosity about the primary social dysfunction that made polarization possible in the first place, namely economic inequality.

That is the work for 2024—for all of us, journalists and citizens alike.