Behind-the-meter solar could create 80,000 jobs by 2050

This article was published by The Energy Mix on Jan. 26, 2024.

By Mitchell Beer

Behind-the-meter solar could meet up to 3.7 per cent of Canada’s electricity demand, save money for power utilities, reduce home energy use, and create more than 80,000 jobs in 2050, but only with better financing and supportive policies, concludes a first-ever national market assessment produced last year.

Expanding behind-the-meter (BTM) installations from one in 200 homes today to one in three by 2050 “will do much more than reduce GHG emissions,” Montreal-based Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors writes [pdf] in the executive summary of a report to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA).

“Canada will also secure significant benefits with respect to a reduction in energy burden for adopting customers, cost savings in the electricity system, and economic development opportunities.”

In the most ambitious of the report’s three future scenarios, BTM solar deployment supports 20,000 jobs in 2030 and more than 80,000 by 2050, nearly two-thirds of them in local installation, engineering, and sales.

Dunsky delivered the full report to CanREA last fall and published the executive summary in mid-December.

With Canada on track double its electricity demand by 2050, to about 1,200 terawatt-hours (TWh), the report frames the contribution of behind-the-meter solar as “critical to achieving net-zero GHG emissions in a cost-effective manner”. But to align with that target, it says BTM resources will have to scale up 20- to 40-fold by mid-century.

The report projects future BTM installations based on three future pathways:

• A Business as Usual scenario that continues current policies like the federal Greener Homes program, investment tax credits and accelerated capital cost allowances for renewable energy, and provincial and municipal programs;

• A middle range where financial support expands and low-cost financing options are more widely available;

• A “market transformation” scenario with expanded policy support, better permitting systems and interconnection processes, and solar mandates for new homes.

The executive summary makes no reference to the costs or benefits of pairing behind-the-meter solar with battery storage, as some other jurisdictions and at least one Ottawa-area engineer are doing.

Dunsky projects that the supports already available today would boost BTM deployment from 1.2 gigawatts today to 18.8 GW in 2050. Increased financial support would increase that to 22 GW; market transformation to 37 GW. Residential deployment rises to one in 12 homes under business as usual, one in nine with better financing, and one in three in a transformed market.

The percentage of non-residential load met by BTM solar increases from 0.5 per cent today to between 3.2 and 3.7 per cent across the three scenarios.

But those gains will only happen with a “comprehensive policy framework” that includes expanded incentives, low- and zero-interest financing, a modernized grid, inclusion of BTM solar in system planning, and more. Dunsky says a major BTM expansion must be phased carefully, to protect the industry from boom and bust cycles while ensuring the grid can take advantage of the new supply.