Good afternoon, chair, ladies and gentlemen and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

My name is May Wong. I'm the senior vice-president of strategy, planning and sustainability for Capital Power. I'm joined by Daniel Jurijew, our VP of regulatory, siting and stakeholder engagements for SMRs. Capital Power appreciates the opportunity to appear before you and provide our perspective on Canada's electricity grid and network.

We are a North American power producer headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta. We currently operate over 9.2 gigawatts of capacity at 32 facilities across Canada and the U.S. Roughly half of this capacity is in Canada, where we operate facilities in Alberta, Ontario and B.C. and employ more than 700 people.

We have invested and continue to invest in a range of technologies to provide reliable, affordable and clean power solutions to customers. These include our $1.35-billion Genesee re-powering project in Alberta that is nearing completion and that has enabled us and Alberta to be off coal. We are also investing in efficient natural gas and batteries in Ontario and pursuing renewable energy developments across North America. We have established a goal of achieving net zero by 2045 and continue to actively explore and assess technologies such as CCS and SMRs. We're committed to meaningful engagement with indigenous communities and pursuing opportunities for economic participation in our existing and future developments.

The focus of our remarks today will be to highlight what we believe are key considerations in developing the framework necessary to attract and sustain the scale of investment in generation capacity to meet expected load growth and achieve decarbonization for our grids and to ensure continued reliability and affordability. We would note at the outset that the central themes of our remarks—reliability, affordability and respect for regional differences—also feature prominently in the Canada electricity advisory council's final report that was released this week.

Every province and territory is unique in the way it has structured its operation, oversight, planning and participation across the different components of the electricity systems. There are two aspects of particular importance.

First, differences in natural resources across provinces have driven differences in the supply mix to meet provincial demand and support affordable and competitive rates. They also present different opportunities and challenges for provinces' pathways to decarbonization.

Second, provincial systems vary in terms of how decisions are made regarding the timing and types of generation additions or retirements and how the costs and risks of generation investment decisions are allocated. This is a fundamental distinction between Alberta's system and systems in other provinces. Generation investments are made by a range of parties on an at-risk basis with no guarantee of a return on investment or backstop recovery by ratepayers.

These differences and circumstances in the regions need to be recognized and respected as part of any review or path forward for Canada's electricity system. They also highlight the need for collaboration among governments, industry, indigenous communities and other stakeholders to consider policies to advance decarbonization while ensuring that reliable and affordable objectives in each province are maintained.

The impressive volume and speed of renewable additions in the last few years have created challenges for system operators. This energy transition period highlights the importance of having a reliable source of power that can provide firm and dispatchable capacity over extended periods. This is why the combination of flexible generation technologies, such as natural gas and energy storage, will continue to be critical in supporting our grid's reliability, as levels of renewable penetration continue to increase until technologies such as long-duration storage, CCS and SMRs can be deployed at scale.

We are now moving beyond energy transition into energy expansion as demand from data centres, electric vehicles and broader electrification will drive even higher growth of demand. The need for additional reliable baseload and dispatchable capacity at all times and all hours will become even more critical.

To meet longer-term decarbonization objectives, a full portfolio of decarbonization technologies will be needed. The components that we need for our approach include policy and regulatory frameworks to enable and accelerate development and deployment of newer technologies, provide clarity and certainty regarding future carbon pricing at the industrial level, appropriate support to mitigate cost challenges and support for the network infrastructure required.

Projects in Canada will be competing with projects around the world; therefore, we need to provide timely resolution and clarity for policy frameworks to provide the confidence and certainty to move forward.

This concludes my opening remarks. I look forward to any questions that honourable committee members may have.