A summary and commentary note by some colleagues and myself on Ontario's Electrification and Energy Transition Panel's (EETP) report. On January 19, 2024 the report of the EETP, Ontario’s Clean Energy Opportunity, was released. The EETP was first established in April 2022, with the membership finalized in November 2022, as a short-term advisory body to help Ontario’s economy prepare for electrification and the energy transition. The EETP received input from over 200 parties, including extensive engagement with energy stakeholders and Indigenous partners from March to July 2023 as well as an open call for written comment. The report states that “The Panel’s key objective has been to develop recommendations that lay out the next steps for Ontario to navigate the transition towards a clean energy economy and to propose principles that should guide this work in the long term.” The result is a 141-page report with 29 recommendations.
The EETP report is vast in scope. It makes a wide set of recommendations from government planning to industrial strategy, and from distributional impacts to engaging with the public and Indigenous partners. A dominant theme throughout the report and recommendations is the need for much greater Indigenous inclusion, economic reconciliation, and participation and partnership in the clean energy economy. Implementing all the recommendations in the report would be a massive undertaking and would set in motion a significant change in Ontario’s energy system planning, production, consumption, and funding as well as economic transformation.