Trudeau: Federal Budget for Electric Vehicles and Potential Nuclear Power Boost

On Monday, during a news conference in Victoria, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commented on new and bigger green investments in last week’s federal budget.

Trudeau said that nuclear power is “on the table” as part of Canada’s clean energy transition, however, Ottawa’s latest budget may give a boost to electric vehicle ownership.

“As we get off oil and gas, we’re going to need more electricity, and I know there are a lot of brilliant innovators here in B.C. and across the country who are leaning in on that,” he said during the conference.

“We’re there to invest in a range of pathways so that we can make sure we’re not just protecting the planet but creating a strong and growing economy for years to come.”

In addition to increasing the number of electric vehicles and charging stations available, the budget for 2022 also includes financial incentives to encourage people to buy them.

The federal government aims to expand a current program that provides electric vehicle owners up to $5,000 to help with purchases, and it plans to adopt mandated sales objectives that require 20% of all vehicles sold by 2026 to be electric.

According to Trudeau, the electric vehicle market share will reach 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2035 under the government’s ambitious sales targets.

When asked about nuclear power plans for the future, “Nuclear is on the table, absolutely.” said Trudeau.

“It’s a massive challenge,” said Taco Niet, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Sustainable Engineering. “From an engineering perspective, we don’t want to eliminate any options because it sounds bad or solar panels have runoff of bad chemicals when we build them.”

Considering all of the available options and the existing available technology while charting a path toward clean energy, governments must take nuclear technology’s advancements into account, said Taco Niet.

“One of the things with nuclear that’s interesting as well is the fact that it produces heat, and a lot of our challenges are industrial heat, so there might be a really interesting synergy there.”

There are currently 18 nuclear reactors in Ontario and one in New Brunswick, which accounts for around 15% of Canada’s electricity supply, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Original source material for this article taken from here