"Beneficial" electrification…

"Beneficial" electrification is electrification that lowers - or at least does not materially increase - system costs AND results in the reduction of carbon emissions. Policies to promote electrification must be carefully considered if beneficial electrification is to be achieved.

Electrification will impose significant costs on the system and on electricity consumers unless electrification programs promote the adoption of highly efficient electrical equipment (eg, heat pumps as opposed to boilers in commercial settings).

Electrification strategies must also recognize that existing resources (like gas-fired cogeneration or boilers) that remain in place can provide system flexibility that lowers costs -- by allowing users to consume electricity off-peak and switch to gas during peak electricity demand, mitigating the need to add peak capacity to the grid. However, maintaining and operating the resources that provide this flexibility imposes a cost on the owners of these resources, and so they should be compensated for the system benefits their operational flexibility creates.

Finally, it should be noted that, given Ontario's current generation mix, like-for-like electrification (an electric boiler supplanting a gas boiler), under the grid operating conditions expected to prevail over the next several years, will result in incremental gas-fired generation, and so will not result in lower global emissions, and therefore does not represent beneficial electrification.