Energy Future Forum

About the Project

Launched in 2019, the Energy Future Forum (EFF) is a multi-year, pan-Canadian initiative working to address climate action and our energy future. Its mission is to:

Develop practical measures that help Canada meet or exceed our emissions targets;
Maximize our energy advantage;
Deepen shared prosperity; and
Enhance national unity and Indigenous reconciliation.

EFF includes leaders from business and government, along with academic, environmental and Indigenous organizations, consisting of participants from five regions. EFF is determined to see this collaborative effort map out an ambitious set of actions that are environmentally sound, economically beneficial and publicly acceptable.

EFF 2.0

The task of effecting a successful energy transition is not moving with sufficient alacrity. Speeding things along is the focus of EFF’s recent pivot, which we’re calling “Getting to and Past Final Investment Decision: What’s required to advance Canada’s economic growth and environmental sustainability goals.”

Key focus areas

 PPF has developed a strategic framework as a systematic assessment tool to study the four major obstacles ahead of unlocking investments and major projects in Canada, while moving rapidly toward and past the Final Investment Decision.

These are:

Project financing – Alignment and co-ordination: Designing and aligning effective, predictable financing instruments to enable project financing in a world where industrial policies are competing for capital. This theme will be responsive to the uniqueness of financing complexities and challenges that different energy sub-sectors face (e.g., market versus non-market structures)
Enabling energy infrastructure systems: Ensuring necessary policy co-ordination to enable projects to connect smoothly with suppliers and customers, becoming functional at the lowest cost and emissions possible.
Environmental and economic regulatory approvals and permitting: Transitioning from ‘ragging the puck’ to a ‘hurry-up offense’ through measures like firming up timelines, establishing a projects management organization office, and creating energy corridors.
Indigenous economic participation: Facilitating Indigenous ownership and other forms of participation through improved, more flexible and accelerated access to capital, as well as minimum procurement commitments. EFF 1.0 focused on making the case for aggressive decarbonization of incumbent energy systems, alongside accelerating the pace of implementing a larger and even cleaner electricity sector. We put forth strategic recommendations around carbon management, Canada’s high ESG gas proposition, Indigenous ownership, regulatory reform, a real electricity transition, emissions trading and carbon markets, a low carbon export sector and much more.