Manitoba Hydro has finally published its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which provides a 10-year plan for the province’s electricity and fossil gas needs. In the IRP, Manitoba Hydro came up with ten possible development plans, which were then narrowed down to five and put through a risk assessment. These options have different combinations of resources (such as gas-fired power, wind, and energy efficiency) added over the next 10 years to meet the 2035 target of additional capacity.
Ultimately, Manitoba Hydro recommends the development plan with 750 megawatts (MW) of new fossil gas-fired power, 600 MW of wind, 550 MW of energy efficiency savings, and 310 MW of demand response and curtailable rate measures.
This heavy reliance on new gas-fired power, in combination with a lack of action to reduce fossil gas for space heating, is concerning and warrants a deeper look into the analysis underpinning this outcome. This is consistent with the Crown corporation’s history of resistance to developing alternatives such as wind power.
We looked into the lengthy report and its 10 appendices, and wanted to unpack three major issues with this IRP. These are (1) the reliance on fossil gas for power and heating; (2) the underestimation of renewables and energy storage; and (3) the undermining of ground-source heat pumps.
1. The IRP Reinforces Reliance on Fossil Gas, Rather Than Supporting the Transition
The IRP charts a path for Manitoba that continues reliance on fossil gas for space heating (while downplaying its emissions impacts) and expands fossil gas-powered electricity. For space heating, the plan praises the supposed benefits of fossil gas, with Hydro’s president and CEO declaring that “our natural gas system for heat … provides 1.4 times the capacity of the electrical system on our coldest days—at 1/40th of the debt—and accounts for only 5 per cent of total provincial GHG emissions.”
This claim is simply incorrect: an appendix from the very same report notes that “space heating accounts for approximately 13% of provincial GHG emissions, with nearly 90% of that resulting from natural gas heating.” (It is likely that he was referencing residential emissions, but that requires much more specific language than he used.) The dismissal of alternatives to fossil gas heating is further discussed below in the section on ground-source heat pumps.
The IRP also continues Manitoba Hydro’s defence of the $3 billion, 750 megawatt (MW) fossil gas-fired power plant that it has proposed to build in Brandon by appealing to the apparent readiness of biomethane, frequently describing the project as “natural gas/biomethane-fuelled combustion turbines.” Yet biomethane is not remotely scalable, risks entrenching harmful agricultural and land-use practices, and could worsen the crisis of methane leakage.
Likewise, the IRP appeals to negative emissions technologies being used to offset emissions generated from continued fossil gas consumption, despite the consistently dubious performance of offsets and the enormous electricity demand of newer approaches like direct air capture (which the IRP seems to significantly downplay in its modelling).
And the claim that the fossil gas plant will only be used for between 0.5% and 5% of the year—already a tenfold difference in potential emissions and fuel costs—is by no means guaranteed given the rising threat of drought and extreme weather that will strain power demand for heating and cooling. In 2022, average use of simple cycle gas turbines (which is what the plant in Brandon would use) in the US reached 20% during peak months; older gas-fired peaker plants are also being brought back into service to meet the surge in electricity demand from AI data centres in the US.
Finally, throughout this IRP, there is no consideration paid to the consistent underestimation of upstream methane leakage by industry compared to independent analysis, which is especially worrisome given that methane has a global warming potential about 80 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
2. The IRP Significantly Underestimates the Potential Contributions of Alternatives While Overestimating Their Costs and Timelines
The parallel issue to Manitoba Hydro’s advocacy of fossil gas is its simultaneous marginalization of alternative options including wind power, solar power, and battery energy storage. For example, this IRP reports battery energy storage costs of about $3,000 per kilowatt (kW), which is about $500 per kW higher than recent industry disclosures and project cost estimates in Ontario. It also understated the expected lifespan of a battery project, claiming only 15 years of asset life despite most battery projects now contracted and under warranty for 20 years. As Ontario quickly moves to install 3,000 MW of energy storage by 2028, Manitoba Hydro plans only a 5 MW pilot project by 2034.
The IRP also downplays wind power’s potential, consistently including a footnote any time that wind power is mentioned that states that only 20 MW of every 100 MW of installed capacity counts when planning for peak wintertime requirements. However, this ignores the essential role that battery energy storage can play in firming up wind power’s generation and ensuring sufficient energy for peak demand hours. Put differently, batteries can capture excess wind generation during off-peak hours—which typically happens at night—and discharge the stored energy when wind generation dips and demand peaks. Further, the province’s vast hydroelectric reservoirs can be leveraged to store water when wind generation is high and release it when it’s low, boosting reliability and capacity at a system level. Such considerations are wholly precluded from the IRP’s analysis.
Similarly, Manitoba Hydro’s plan underestimates solar power (despite depicting solar twice on the report’s cover graphic). The IRP disregards any potential contributions of solar to provincial electricity generation, claiming that its “energy production profile does not pair well with Manitoba Hydro’s system needs.” Once again, this results from a narrow focus on whether a given resource can provide electricity during peak wintertime hours. However, Manitoba has very high solar potential, which could add clean electricity during summer months (in combination with batteries to meet evening demand) and in turn ensure greater water supply for hydroelectric generation in the wintertime. Unlike other energy cost modelling, Manitoba Hydro did not produce estimates of combined solar and storage projects.
And despite the Manitoba government’s recent signing on to a memorandum of understanding about a national east-west transmission system, there is no attention paid to the potential benefits of integration with neighbouring provinces and comparing costs of such transmission infrastructure with the proposed $3-billion gas plant. Along with providing access to surplus electricity in emergency situations, this transmission infrastructure would help position Manitoba for future exports of excess wind and solar power. Overall, Manitoba Hydro’s failure to consider and model wind and solar generation in combination with battery storage and interprovincial transmission lines continuously underestimates the potential of these resources, and instead leads them to conclude that fossil gas is the only reliable option available.
3. The IRP Undercuts Efficiency Manitoba’s Work on Ground-Source Heat Pumps and Networked Geothermal
Perhaps one of the most unexpected positions in the IRP is its explicit criticism and downplaying of ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs). GSHPs, also called geothermal heat pumps, are an essential technology for reducing peak wintertime electricity demand that Efficiency Manitoba has been a national leader in advancing; specifically, GSHPs should be initially targeted for installation in rural areas outside Winnipeg that rely on highly inefficient electric resistance heating, freeing up electricity for transitioning buildings off of fossil gas down the line. This move by Manitoba Hydro is additionally confounding given how heavily Manitoba Hydro is relying on Efficiency Manitoba’s work to achieve capacity savings.
The IRP claims that GSHPs are insufficiently economical and that electricity would be better used to power transportation and negative emissions technologies like direct air capture. From what we can tell, this conclusion was reached through a series of decisions made during the IRP process:
- The IRP likely underestimates the “Seasonal Coefficient of Performance,” which provides an estimate of the year-round energy efficiency of GSHPs. Despite Natural Resources Canada using a coefficient of 3.0—and other studies reporting even higher coefficients if systems are properly designed and installed—Manitoba Hydro decided to only use a 2.0 coefficient, which means it has a 50% efficiency benefit over electric resistance heating. This assumption of reduced efficiency relative to other research disadvantages the technology in its analysis; Natural Resources Canada, for example, reports a 65% efficiency benefit over an electric furnace.
- Manitoba Hydro hired an unnamed consultant to provide an “independent view” of GSHPs relative to electricity generation resources including a fossil gas-fired power plant, a hydroelectric dam, and a small modular reactor (of which there are no real-world examples). This analysis determined that installing GSHPs in single-family homes with electric resistance heating would be twice as expensive as a new fossil gas-fired power plant, and therefore the former is preferable. Given that Manitoba Hydro did not make the consultant’s analysis public, it is difficult to assess this claim and whether various scenarios (such as prioritizing installation of GSHPs using horizontal closed-loop systems in rural areas, which tends to be cheaper than vertical drilling) were evaluated.
- Without providing detail or evidence, Manitoba Hydro cited a “similar analysis” to argue that networked ground-source heating systems are even less economical than replacing electric resistance heating in a single-family home, despite plenty of other studies indicating that this shared heating approach can achieve significant efficiencies—and despite the Province committing to examining how existing Crown corporations could lead this work.
- While the IRP acknowledges an analysis by Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors that had described GSHPs as “the ideal heating source for Manitoba’s cold winters,” it dismisses this work by citing a Canadian Climate Institute report. Manitoba Hydro claimed that the Canadian Climate Institute “did not foresee a role for GSHP systems.” However, this is not readily apparent in the report itself, which projected that 72% of Manitoba’s residential heating by 2050 would come from heat pumps—including from GSHPs.
Instead of planning to replace highly inefficient electric resistance heating (both furnaces and baseboards) and eventually fossil gas heating, Manitoba Hydro instead suggests that continuing to rely on fossil gas for heating “will allow our finite electricity supply to be used for more impactful emission reductions across other sectors in the province (for example, in transportation).” Yet a targeted approach of replacing electric resistance heating—which is mostly used in rural and Northern parts of the province—would free up additional electricity that could be used for other purposes, including transitioning residential heating off of fossil gas. Like with electric vehicle charging and industrial processes, there are also demand response measures to help limit peak electricity load from heating, including pre-heating spaces and smart thermostats.
Instead of acknowledging these realities, Manitoba Hydro seemed to overgeneralize the application of GSHPs in the province and disregard their potential for electricity capacity savings in the short-term.
Conclusion: The 2025 IRP Fails to Adequately Assess Clean Alternatives and Advance a Path to Net-Zero
In the 2025 IRP, Manitoba Hydro opted to double-down on fossil gas for electricity generation and space heating, marginalize alternatives like wind power and battery energy storage, and undercut one of the best tools available to reduce fossil gas consumption: ground-source heat pumps. The plan lacks urgency about the threat of climate change and the need to reduce emissions as quickly as possible.
But now that the IRP has to go through a review by the Public Utilities Board, there is still time and opportunity for it to be changed. Contact the Premier and your MLA to voice your concern with this IRP and call on them to withdraw their support for this development trajectory and commit to meaningful climate action through a large-scale buildout of wind and solar power, battery energy storage, GSHPs, and building retrofits (all of which would provide far more good, long-term jobs for Manitobans than fossil fuels). This approach would advance provincial energy independence, strengthen Manitoba’s reputation as a low-emissions electricity producer, and lay the groundwork for a transition that is genuinely just and equitable.