From shared vision to real-world solutions: 4 lessons from Alberta’s Electricity Future’s first three years
Canada’s electricity systems are changing quickly.
Demand is growing across all consumer types, customers are looking for more choice and flexibility, and new technologies are changing how and where electricity is generated, stored and used. As a central service, decisions being made about electricity systems today will shape Alberta and Canada’s competitiveness, affordability and reliability for decades to come.
But some of the biggest barriers to modernizing our electricity systems to meet the future aren’t rooted in technology — they’re related to how decisions are made, how we value certain features or characteristics about how our energy is produced, how we
incentivize businesses to update their models to accommodate new priorities and ambitions, and the tradeoffs we’re willing to accept. In a word, the challenge is systemic.
And not only is it systemic — the barriers often sit in between organizations, jurisdictions, incentives and ways of thinking. They emerge when different parts of the system are working toward different goals, or when everyone agrees that change is needed, but no one entity alone can make it happen.
That’s the challenge Alberta’s Electricity Future (AEF) set out to tackle three years ago.
Today, the Energy Futures Lab is pleased to share Maximizing Momentum: Results and Paths Forward (2023–2026), a narrative report capturing the initiative’s early achievements, the impacts it continues to enable, and what comes next.
More than a catalogue of activities, the report tells the story of a deliberate intervention in systems change: building a shared vision, identifying the barriers standing in its way, bringing unlikely collaborators together to develop solutions, and creating pathways toward implementation.
At the initiative’s heart is a simple idea: some problems can only be solved by changing how the whole system assesses, plans and works together—not by optimizing any one part of it in isolation.
In its first year, AEF brought more than 50 organizations and individuals together to co-develop a long-term vision for Alberta’s electricity system, and subsequently tested it with more than 350 people. The initiative identified ten systemic barriers to achieving that vision and developed solutions spanning demand-side management, distributed energy resources, integrated planning, local market mechanisms, energy affordability and non-wires solutions.
“We started by asking people to imagine the electricity system Alberta needs for the future,” reflects AEF Project Director Maureen Kolla. “It was a bigger task than I think most expected. But the harder work was understanding what stands in the way of that future—and creating the conditions for people with very different perspectives to work through those barriers together. That shift, from a shared ambition to a practical portfolio of solutions, is one of the most important things we’ve accomplished in the initiative’s first round.”
Already, tangible signs of progress are emerging. In 2024, The Government of Alberta’s Ministry of Affordability and Utilities approached AEF to develop recommendations for a first-time electricity distribution policy for the province, which are expected to inform planned provincial consultations in 2027. Utilities and community organizations helped co-develop two energy poverty solutions. And the first Alberta Non-Wires Solutions Summit brought utilities, customers, non-wires solutions providers, regulators and government together to identify five bottlenecks to wider adoption of non-wires solutions in Alberta.
Equally as important are the lessons that emerged from the work.
LESSON 1
Trust matters more than consensus. Collaboration doesn’t require everyone to agree on every point. It requires a process people trust enough to be candid about their differences, explore the reasons behind them and develop solutions they’re willing to test. As the report puts it, “collaboration isn’t about achieving consensus—it’s about creating a process people trust.”
LESSON 2
Timing matters as much as ideas. Practical solutions need more than technical merit. Their prospects depend on whether they reach decision-makers when a policy window is open, whether they address real system constraints, and whether the people needed to advance them have been involved along the way.
LESSON 3
A non-partisan platform can be an active force for change. A trusted space outside any one organization’s mandate can help people challenge established assumptions, work through tensions and consider options that might otherwise struggle to gain traction.
LESSON 4
Inclusion takes deliberate work. Bringing diverse perspectives to the table is only the beginning. Building trust across different interests, cultures, experiences and mandates takes time—and is essential to developing solutions that respond to the needs of the wider system.
“Collaboration isn't about achieving consensus—it’s about creating a process people trust.”
These lessons matter well beyond Alberta. Across Canada, electricity systems face the challenge of accommodating growing demand, supporting economic development and electrification, and maintaining affordability and reliability while modernizing infrastructure. Technical innovation is essential, but so is the ability to align the people, policies and institutions that determine whether promising solutions can be adopted at scale, and at an unprecedented pace of change.
“Modernizing Alberta’s electricity system isn’t just an engineering challenge,” remarked Energy Futures Lab CEO Alison Cretney. “It demands a fundamental rethink of how we make decisions, share risk and work across diverse interests. Our Alberta’s Electricity Future initiative is showing that when people have a trusted place to work through challenges together, we can break through entrenched ways of thinking and unlock collective action that propels Canada forward — not only economically, but also for thriving communities and building a more resilient, sustainable future for generations to come.”
Canada is facing increasingly complex questions about how to build infrastructure, support economic growth, maintain affordability and reliability, and respond to rapidly changing energy needs. The ability to bring people with different interests, expertise and mandates together to develop practical pathways forward is becoming an increasingly important part of the toolkit for navigating that complexity.
The Energy Futures Lab is grateful to the many organizations and individuals who have contributed to the initiative’s first three years — and particularly to Natural Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program, whose support helped make the work possible, alongside support from our other phase funders and workshop sponsors.
“To build the electricity system Canadians require, we need practical solutions, strategic investments and strong partnerships. Initiatives like Alberta’s Electricity Future help identify ways to strengthen reliability, keep electricity affordable, and ensure our grid can support economic growth and new opportunities across the country,” commented Hon. Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson. "By working together to address barriers and advance innovative solutions, we are building a stronger, more competitive and energy-secure Canada."
The publication of this report marks a turning point, rather than an endpoint, for the initiative.
The next phase will be focused on moving the solutions developed through AEF toward implementation readiness—and ultimately into real-world decisions, investments, pilots and policy.
There is still plenty of work to do. But after three years, we have something valuable to build on: a shared direction, stronger relationships across the system, a portfolio of practical solutions, and evidence that even in a polarized environment, meaningful progress is possible when people are willing to work together.
Read Maximizing Momentum: Results and Paths Forward (2023–2026) to explore what we’ve learned—and where Alberta’s electricity future goes next.
Comments