Is Carney’s victory good for wind in Canada?

• Mark Carney led the Liberal Party to election victory in Canada
• The party has distanced itself from Carney’s forerunner Trudeau
• It wants to unlock investment in projects, including renewables
• Carney wants the grid to be less susceptible to Trump disruption

From toxic to triumph in four months.

Last Monday (28th April), Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney led the Liberal Party to victory in the country’s federal election.

The Liberals did not win the majority that Carney wanted, but it nonetheless represents a major turnaround for the party that was until 6th January led by Carney’s divisive and increasingly unpopular forerunner Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau resigned in early January just two weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president. After ten years in power, Trudeau had faced a host of ethical scandals and criticism over his failure to tackle issues such as the rising cost of living. His departure enabled Carney to take over as prime minister in March, while his subsequent disappearance in the election meant the Liberals could focus on a post-Trudeau future.

This change also enabled Carney to distance himself from Trudeau-era ‘green’ policies, such as the deeply unpopular consumer carbon tax. One of his first moves as prime minister was to axe the tax on 1st April 2025. This neutralised one of the opposition Conservative Party’s key policy talking points in the election campaign.

Change at the top has also led to shifts in the Liberal Party’s energy policies, but what is that going to mean for the growth of renewables in Canada?

Renewable energy policies

The Liberals won the election with pledges to keep reducing emissions and unlock investment in energy and infrastructure projects. Its key pledges include:

• Invest in strengthening Canada’s east-west electricity grid to make the country’s energy mix more self-sufficient and less susceptible to disruption from the US. This would boost connectivity for low-emission power sources, including wind farms.
• Speed up the approvals process for major infrastructure projects, including in the energy sector, so that decisions are made within two years rather than five. This mandates one environmental decision and review per project.
• Expand tax credits to support the rollout of ‘projects of national interest’, which is set to include renewables generation, and critical minerals extraction.
• Reduce barriers to indigenous companies and communities accessing capital and provide them with the funding to invest in infrastructure projects. Canada’s indigenous communities frequently collaborate with renewables developers on wind, solar and storage projects.

In short, Carney pledged last month to “build Canada into an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy”. This is similar to the approach of Trudeau, who passed comprehensive climate legislation and introduced regulations to limit pollution by oil and gas companies, but also spent C$4.5bn ($3.4bn) in 2029 to buy the Trans Mountain oil pipeline project in 2019 and bolstered Canada’s status as a major oil exporter.

Caroline Brouilette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said Trudeau “accomplished more on climate policy than any other Canadian Prime Minister so far” in January comments around his departure. Carney’s approach appears similar to Trudeau’s in that he wants an ‘all of the above’ energy dominancr strategy, but Carney may benefit from a Trump-era world where more countries and companies are watering down their goals for renewables growth and net zero.

For example, he is likely to face less short-term political pressure than Trudeau to take aggressive action on climate change simply because of the changed global political and economic climate. And during Trudeau’s decade as prime minister, growth in Canada’s total renewable energy capacity was disappointing.

Overall, renewables capacity in Canada grew 15% from 96GW in 2015 to 110.5GW in 2024, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. This included a 64% rise in wind capacity from 11.2GW in 2015 to 18.4GW in 2024, and threefold growth in solar capacity from 2.9GW in 2015 to 6.1GW in 2024.

That would accelerate under Carney if he can make a success of faster permitting, new tax credits, and investments in transmission infrastructure designed to make Canada’s grid more resilient to Trump. But none of those are easy, there are few easy quick fixes, and is approach is evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

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