Canada’s electricity sector offers strong employment prospects across a wide range of jobs to support all stages of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. Since 2017, employment in the electricity sector has grown faster than the overall Canadian economy, with continued expansion expected, especially under a low carbon pathway.
Abundant, affordable, and reliable clean electricity will be the energy of choice to power national economies and the world’s leading companies. Clean electricity is a strategic and competitive advantage for Canada to attract investments in many of the industries and technologies that will drive the low-carbon economy. It has an abundance of resources that contribute to its clean electricity production, including hydroelectricity, nuclear, wind, biomass, and solar. Major capital investments are expected in the sector to meet growing demand for clean power, which will drive even stronger job growth.
Current actions
- The Smart Renewables and Electrification Pathways Program (SREPs) is a $4.5 billion initiative to support grid modernization, energy storage, and renewable energy technologies. It targets regional priorities to reduce fossil fuel reliance and strengthen the electricity grid, while also supporting Indigenous-led clean energy projects.
- The Government of Canada’s Clean Economy Investment Tax Credits include several measures to accelerate the transition to a net-zero economy, with a significant focus on the electricity sector through the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit (CE-ITC) and the Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit (CT-ITC). The CE-ITC, whose enabling legislation completed First Reading in the House of Commons on November 18, 2025, will provide a 15% credit on eligible capital costs for investments in clean electricity property, such as generation, interprovincial transmission, and stationary electricity storage systems. The CE-ITC will be available for qualifying entities—including taxable Canadian corporations, designated Crown corporations, certain trusts, the Clean Growth Fund and Canada Investment Bank, municipal corporations, and Indigenous governing bodies—on projects initiated after March 28, 2023, and completed before 2035. To receive the full credit, projects must meet prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements; otherwise, the rate is reduced by 10 percentage points. The CE-ITC complements other clean economy credits (e.g., for clean technology and hydrogen) and is designed to mobilize private investment and expand Canada’s clean electricity grid.
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Under the Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program, the Government of Canada funded the following projects to advance workforce development in clean energy and renewables:
- Clean Tech Training for Indigenous and Urban Community Members: This project provided hands-on learning opportunities to help people get jobs in the clean economy. It trained 971 individuals in areas such as solar installation and sustainable agriculture and worked with 86 employers.
- Resilient Communities Empowering Worker Transitions: This project focused on training workers for jobs in clean energy. Over a 20-week period, participants installed solar energy systems in different locations, supporting a shift towards more sustainable energy sources.
- Growing an Agile Workforce for a Low Carbon Future: This project trained workers for jobs in Canada’s clean energy sector. It placed 521 individuals in clean energy jobs and developed reports to help understand job market needs.
Economic overview
- Strong and growing labour demand: As of 2022, the electricity sector employed more than 110,000 people and is a key pillar of Canada’s economy. Between 2023–2028, Canada’s electricity sector expects 28,000 job openings (12,000 from expansion demand and 15,700 from retirements). Long-term projections suggest 130,000 additional job openings between 2028–2050, with about 60,000 of these resulting from expansion demand.Footnote 1 Nearly 50% of 34 core electricity sector occupations identified by Electricity Human Resources Canada are expecting labour demand growth and supply shortages.
- Advanced technologies: Uptake of new technologies, implementation of clean energy initiatives, and progress towards Canada’s climate change targets requires a skilled and adaptable workforce. Several technologies are impacting Canada’s electricity sector workforce, including electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, batteries to store electricity for later use, hydrogen fuel cells, and small modular reactors (SMRs).
- Competitive wages: The sector generally offers competitive wages, surpassing average earnings in the wider economy, and has high average tenure among its workforce, reflecting good employee retention. Progress is being made to attract more women to the sector, and there is ample opportunity to keep diversifying the workforce. Both employers (53%) and educational institutions (74%) have implemented policies to increase gender diversity.
Renewable energy and electricity career examples
The electricity sector involves hundreds of occupations including:
- Electrical and power systems engineers
- Renewable energy systems designers and installers
- Smart grid and digital infrastructure managers
- High-voltage system safety and maintenance specialists
- Wind turbine technicians
- Solar photovoltaic (PV) installers
- Environmental and regulatory compliance officers
Top occupations in demand include electrical engineers, powerline technicians, utility arborists, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and network engineers.
Anticipated workforce opportunities
-
28,000
new clean electricity job openings expected by 2028 -
Electricity sector jobs grew
5.5%
from 2019–2022 (ten times faster than overall Canadian employment) -
15 years
of job creation, accounting for thousands of jobs, based on a joint SMR plan launched in 2022 by ON, SK, NB, and AB