Dunsky in Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia has long been a Canadian leader in the energy transition. It was notably the first to create a dedicated province-wide energy efficiency agency, EfficiencyOne, and it’s doubled its share of renewables over the past 15 years.

With an eye to achieving 80% renewables by 2030, the province has recently picked up the pace. Dunsky is honoured to work alongside so many key players on so many facets of its transition: from planning the grid to expanding DER adoption to decarbonizing buildings and transportation, and more.

System-wide: A New Era for IRP

Dunsky is supporting the newly created Nova Scotia IESO to shape the province’s future Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process. This includes assessing past IRP development practices, benchmarking them against other jurisdictions, engaging stakeholders across Nova Scotia, and identifying best-practice approaches to guide future planning efforts for the province’s evolving electricity system.

At the same time, we are working alongside Nova Scotia Power and key stakeholders to develop a provincial Roadmap to effectively integrate Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) that will benefit the electricity system and customers. This roadmapsets out a coordinated vision to plan, enable and integrate DERs across the province.

Local Action: Enabling Electrification and Decarbonized Transportation

Beyond system-wide plans, Dunsky is currently supporting local efforts to advance electrification and enable customer choice.

For the Government of Nova Scotia, we recently completed additional research to complement a province-wide EV charging needs assessment we first conducted in 2023-24. The work includes a deployment roadmap that accounts for costs, equity, grid impacts, and highway charging gaps, and was grounded in stakeholder input.

At the municipal level, Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) engaged Dunsky to identify strategies to enhance the SolarCity PACE-style program and estimate program participation and cost impacts, ensuring it remains effective and aligned with HalifACT climate goals under today’s changing economic conditions.

We support many other clients across the province, including Halifax Water (fleet decarbonization), Halifax Port Authority (decarbonization planning), the Ecology Action Centre (vehicle-grid integration research), and Nova Scotia’s Department of Energy and Mines (evaluating community solar programs). These, in addition to other recent projects for E1, the Clean Foundation, Net-Zero Atlantic, NS Business Inc, Eastward Energy and the Town of Bridgewater.

Scaling clean energy beyond the province

Organizations in Nova Scotia are also looking beyond the province. For EverWind, Dunsky assessed Scope 1–3 emissions for its Point Tupper green hydrogen and ammonia project, including impacts on Nova Scotia’s grid as well as emissions reductions from exporting green ammonia to Europe.

Supporting Actors Large and Small

Of course, our work in Nova Scotia extends well beyond these examples. Over more than a decade of engagement in the province, we have had the opportunity to witness and support the steady growth of Nova Scotia’s clean energy ambitions. As the province continues to advance its clean energy transition, Dunsky looks forward to providing thoughtful, evidence-based support that reflects both deep local knowledge and cross-sector experience to help the province reach its goals.