May 27, 2026, article by Tim Weber, Co-Founder and CEO of Diverso Energy posted on LinkedIn
Panel discussion at the Ontario Geothermal Association Conference, May, 2026. Source: Tim Weber
As Canada accelerates toward an “Age of Electricity,” a fundamental question is emerging: how do we electrify buildings at scale without overwhelming affordability or the grid itself?
While participating in a government relations panel at the Ontario Geothermal Association's annual conference in Toronto last week, word came through that Prime Minister Carney had unveiled Canada's national electricity strategy: a commitment to double the country's grid capacity by 2050. The room was full of people who had spent careers making the case that tapping the immense energy potential beneath our feet is as critical to Canada's clean energy future as anything we build above ground. The irony wasn't lost on anyone.
New federal direction is welcome as building electrification gains momentum. But as someone spending considerable time with CMHC and Build Canada Homes to get geothermal situated on the policy agenda, I want to add something not yet explicit in the framework: geothermal systems aren't just a building-level technology. At scale, geothermal is grid infrastructure—and our electrification strategy will be stronger for treating it that way.
The Building Decarbonization Alliance presented a paper at the conference that makes a compelling grid-compatible case for geothermal in future policy and growth strategies. The paper reinforced themes that surfaced repeatedly on numerous OGA panels, particularly around affordability, peak demand and the role geothermal can play in creating a more resilient electrification strategy.
The affordability argument hiding inside the grid argument
Brad Carr, CEO of Mattamy Homes, argued in his OGA remarks that the geothermal industry needs to fundamentally shift its narrative away from geothermal as a premium product and toward it being the lowest-cost solution over a home's lifetime. He's right. And I'd go further: the affordability case and the grid case are actually the same argument.
Geoexchanges draw on stable subsurface temperatures year-round. Unlike air-source systems, which work hardest—and draw the most electricity—precisely when the grid is most constrained and expensive, geothermal maintains a consistent, modest load through both winter cold snaps and summer heat waves. The same technology that delivers stable, predictable energy costs to homeowners seeking protection from bill volatility is the technology that helps utilities avoid building expensive peaking infrastructure. Affordability at the household level and efficiency at the grid level aren't competing objectives. With geothermal, they're the same outcome.
During her OGA fireside chat, Diana Stephenson, EVP at Toronto Hydro, described the grid as a living ecosystem. Her utility is confronting Canada’s shifting energy mix by balancing large baseload energy with a growing web of distributed resources. Utilities build to peak demand, and those peaks are spiky and expensive. In contrast, geothermal flattens the peaks and fills in the valleys for homes and buildings. It defers infrastructure investment while making the grid much more efficient and lowering costs for everyone.
As a sustainability and home building leader, Brad Carr also noted that even after 2,500 boreholes and many years of commitment, Mattamy still feels like it's "running a marathon in rubber boots." That's not a criticism of geothermal, it's what happens when commitment runs ahead of the policy framework that would let the rest of the market follow.
What a national framework would actually require
The BDA paper identifies three structural barriers: a delivery model that asks developers to finance and operate something outside their core business; inconsistent regulation across provinces that adds friction to every new market; and weak policy signals that make defaulting to conventional systems the rational choice.
The Energy-as-a-Service model addresses the first; Diverso owns the borefield, carries the capital, and operates the system long-term, removing the burden from the developer. But the second and third require federal action. Brad noted it once took longer to approve a geothermal project than to build it. That's a regulatory problem, not a technology one. A national framework that replaces fragmented municipal and provincial rules with consistent standards would let the industry optimize and scale.
It's also important to note that geothermal can deliver tremendous benefits through a hybrid building scenario. At Diverso, our approach on high-rise and multi-residential development handles all base heating and cooling loads through geothermal, while natural gas often serves domestic hot water, backup generation and peak makeup air. You get most of the carbon benefit of full electrification without the cost and complexity tradeoffs—a “plug-in hybrid” approach that works financially today while preserving a pathway to full electrification tomorrow.
What would complete the picture is federal recognition of community-scale geothermal as non-wires grid infrastructure, with regulatory clarity, financing tools, and building code signals that give developers the confidence to act. Not because a handful of companies are pushing for it, but because it checks every box a national energy strategy should care about: affordability for homeowners, stability for the grid, and a made-in-Canada clean energy model ready to scale.
Canada has built nation-defining infrastructure before—railways, highways, pipelines and electrical grids. As we enter the Age of Electricity, we should also be thinking about the thermal infrastructure that will determine whether electrification remains affordable and scalable for future generations.