Process:

As part of Accenture’s Community Consulting Project, volunteer consultants were tasked with providing a comprehensive market report on the Canadian energy sector and its sub-components (industries). The project scope broadly focused on the twelve sub-components listed in the ecosystem radar highlighted in this report.

The following document details the twelve sub-components listed in the ecosystem radar below: their stakeholders, external forces, and trends and opportunities. It also demonstrates their impact on the environmental climate, as the sub-components chosen for study represent a broad range of incumbent and non-incumbent energy sources. Finally, the report concludes with analysis and recommendations on the most opportune energy sub-components in Canada. 

Research was conducted using a variety of sources, including but not limited to government documents, reports from national and international non-profits, corporate reports, and publicly available academic research.

Recommendations:

Our recommendations consist of a ranking of the best electrification opportunities for investment in Canada, which come directly from the Balanced Scorecard analysis tool used in the Analysis section, and complementary energy opportunities. Complementary energy opportunities are not energy sources but are still strong investment opportunities in the energy sector.

Our rankings of the best electrification opportunities in Canada are as follows:

1. Onshore wind energy, largely due to its low cost and low environmental impact
2. Utility scale solar energy, due to its low cost and environmental impact
3. Natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS), largely due to the high demand and strong governmental support
4. Run-of-river hydroelectric, due to its low cost, low environmental impact, and lack of intermittency

Our recommendations of the best complementary energy opportunities for investment are as follows:

1. Utility-scale energy storage, due its increasing demand as intermittent energy sources become more prominent
2. Hydrogen energy, specifically green hydrogen, due to its low emissions and diverse range of applications
3. Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS), due to its ability to keep the incumbent fossil fuel industry viable as Canada pushes towards its net-zero by 2050 goal