Taxpayers will bear the financial burden of the expensive transition to EVs in Canada
Alberta’s energy regulator recently warned people to stop using kitchen appliances because the electricity grid was at risk of blacking out.
Albertans were told to stop cooking on stoves and washing clothes in warm water.
You know, modern life, circa 1955.
The government also told us not to charge electric cars.
If we’re being told to stop using toasters, how are we going to charge our government-mandated EVs? The Trudeau government is banning the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035.
This plan is a non-starter for two key reasons:
The EV mandate will likely cost taxpayers a shocking amount of money, and Canada doesn’t have the electricity to power these vehicles.
Let’s look at costs first.
Multiple levels of government have pledged about $57 billion to corporations that make EVs, including billions for Volkswagen and Honda.
That’s the corporate welfare cost, with governments dumping taxpayers’ money into the boardrooms of Berlin and Tokyo.
Then there’s the sticker price of the EVs.
If the Trudeau government forces Canadians to buy only these types of new vehicles, it will sharply increase costs for people.
The cheapest new EV in Canada sells for about $41,000, with a vehicle like a Nissan Leaf eligible for a $5,000 rebate from the feds.
Last year, Canadians bought about 1.7 million new vehicles, the majority of which were cars, SUVs, and light trucks. If those vehicles were all EVs, the rebates would cost about $8 billion.
With the cheapest new gasoline-powered sedan selling for about $21,000, and with no rebate costs to taxpayers, there’s a strong sticker shock in that price difference for both the person buying the car and taxpayers.
What about power bills?
The average Canadian household uses about 10,861 kWh of electricity per year. The average electric car uses about 4,310 kWh of energy per year, according to EVBox, a company that produces electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
If the average family had one EV and charged it at home, their electricity use would jump by about 40 percent.
Where is the electricity for these EVs coming from?
Calculations done in British Columbia show that if everyone switched to an electric car in B.C., the province would need about nine new Site C Dams. Site C cost about $16 billion and took about 10 years to build. Creating nine new Site C Dams tomorrow would cost about $144 billion.
In Alberta, hydro dams aren’t happening, and building a regular nuclear reactor costs about $15 billion and takes about 10 years to complete.
Alberta is home to about three million vehicles, and if they were electric, that fleet would use about 12.9 million mWh of power per year. The province would require about three nuclear plants to charge those vehicles.
Who’s paying that tab? Taxpayers? Folks opening their power bills?
We’ve seen this bad movie before.
Around 2015, the Ontario government signed contracts to buy “green” energy, and people faced surging power bills, some eclipsing $1,000 per month.
Ontario’s auditor general found people overpaid their power bills by $37 billion because of government meddling with the electricity system.
Today, record numbers of working families across Canada are visiting food banks and about half of Canadians are within $200 every month of not being able to make the minimum payments on their bills. They can’t afford higher power bills.
If Albertans are being told to eat cereal for supper to save the electricity grid today, how will they find the energy and money to charge the Trudeau trolley parked in the driveway tomorrow?
We don’t know all the inevitable costs of Trudeau’s EV mandate, but everything we do know indicates that we can’t afford it.
Kris Sims is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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