Alberta’s electricity system is undergoing a massive transformation. Reshaping the sector is a confluence of developments driving electricity demand growth, including: emerging industries, population growth, and electrification.

At issue is the pace and scale of projected demand growth, and the province’s ability to maintain reliable and affordable service for customers across the system as these pressures evolve.

To ensure cost-effective and efficient service, utilities will need to implement new solutions to service new customers, manage intermittent generation, and address shifting loads in order to ensure optimization of the system. However to do this, they require capabilities that currently don’t exist.

As the Government of Alberta looks to develop a new, dedicated Distribution Policy, the leadership of the Lab’s Alberta’s Electricity Future initiative, members of its Leadership Council and Working Groups collaborated to recommend outcomes the policy should seek to drive, as well as opening moves and subsequent steps that would help it unlock those outcomes.

This report contains the advice presented to the Minister of Affordability and Utilities and other ministry personnel on May 29, 2025.