Electricity Transformation Canada will be in Toronto, Ontario, October 19-21. In preparation for Canada’s largest renewable energy tradeshow, Wind Systems talked to CanREA President and CEO Vittoria Bellissimo on what attendees can expect.
ETC is going to be in Toronto again this year. What makes the city ideal for hosting this trade show?
I used to live in Toronto, and now I live in Calgary, so it’s hard to ask me to thump for Toronto, but I will. Toronto is a natural fit for ETC. This will be our second consecutive year in Toronto. We’re building on a record 2025 edition that drew almost 2,900 attendees, over 120 speakers, and 180 exhibitors at the Enercare Centre in Toronto. The province of Ontario is one of the provinces at the center of Canada’s procurement and construction activity.
We’ve seen some really exciting battery energy storage projects just built — Oneida, Hagersville, Napanee, Skyview 2. It’s a really interesting city to host.
And the connection, I think, with Toronto runs deeper than just ETC. CanREA hosted Clean Power Finance Canada Summit in May, and that brought investors, developers and policymakers together to make deals and strengthen partnerships, mobilizing both the financial community and the wind, solar, and energy storage industry. We’re building on that.
Toronto is also a huge city in scale and accessibility. There are direct flights all across the country and internationally, so it really does give ETC the room to grow. There are only so many cities we can host it in because it’s such a big trade show.
Ontario is home to 40 percent of Canada’s population, so hosting in Ontario always makes a lot of sense.
What issues will be discussed at ETC?
This year’s theme is Clean Power Nation, and we’re running it through five program streams: capital procurement and indigenous economic partnership, sourcing and building Canada’s clean power future, enabling the big build, earning the social license to build, and modernizing the infrastructure for Canada’s big build.
Within these five program themes, we’re going to tackle the issues shaping the sector right now. That will include everything from financing; AI and data center demand boom; building a domestic supply chain; Indigenous ownership and financing models; permitting reform; electricity market design in Ontario, Alberta, and Nova Scotia; trade and geopolitics; and more.
Rounding it out are sessions on the more than $200 billion in private capital that federal financing tools, including the ITCs, are expected to help mobilize over the next decade, and on what it takes to earn and keep the social license to build at this scale.
I’m very excited that it’ll be a kind of one-stop shop that will help everyone who’s building in this space learn what they are wanting to learn about what’s going on in the sector and then meet all the people they need to meet in the sector all in one place.
Speaking of that, why is it important for Canadian companies involved with renewable projects to be a part of ETC?
ETC is where business gets done. In Canada, in this space, it’s the sector’s one annual meeting place. And it’s the only time all year that developers, utilities, system operators, the financial community, Indigenous partners, and policymakers are all together in the same room.
And we’ve got a good story to tell. We’re tracking 24 GW of active procurements underway across the country. That represents more than $44 billion in investment. I know that sounds small to an American, but it’s large for a Canadian.
ETC is where companies connect directly with people making those decisions.
If you are part of the supply chain, if you’re part of the community, you really want to be in the room if you’re involved in not just wind, solar, and energy storage, but technologies in the clean electricity space and technologies in the electricity space — full stop.
If I were a first-time exhibitor, what should I expect from this year’s show?
You should expect Canada’s largest clean electricity event. We’re building off of last year’s show, so I would expect more than 3,000 people to attend, and we will definitely have more than 180 exhibitors because we’re tracking high right now. The exhibition floor sits alongside high-level programming, so exhibitors get both direct customer conversations and access to the policy and investment discussions that are shaping the sector.
The audience of ETC spans the full value chain. That includes solar energy, wind energy, energy storage, utilities, industrial energy systems, municipalities, Indigenous organizations, federal and provincial government representatives, electricity retailers, electricity exporters, real estate, construction, and other aspects of the renewable energy sector.
The show runs for three days, so you should expect to wear comfortable shoes. There will be two breakout rooms and a plenary session, plus a dedicated Indigenous pavilion and a podcast zone.
We’re going to have really exciting keynote speakers. We’re going to have fireside chats.
The group WiRE, Women in Renewable Energy, will be presenting awards. CanREA has our annual awards and reception. And there will be plenty of time to contact all the folks you want to talk to. We’ll have a lot of sessions on the show floor, so that will keep traffic moving. And I think you’ll get access to everyone you ever wanted to meet in this space.
What kind of networking opportunities will be available for attendees?
I would just start by saying that networking is built into the fabric of the conference. It’s not an afterthought. It’s the whole game plan. The No. 1 thing that everyone wants us to do is be the meeting place, so we’re going to be the meeting place.
There are keynote receptions and fireside chats. As I mentioned, there’s an awards assembly in the opening that includes WiRE awards and CanREA awards, and then there’s an opening reception. That’ll be the first large networking opportunity to see everyone.
On Day 2, there is a second networking reception, and there is also a hosted lunch and breaks specifically scheduled throughout the day to facilitate relationship building across the value chain with everyone from developers to the financial community to utilities.
And then beyond the main program, there’s an Indigenous pavilion and a podcast zone, and there’s an offsite reception at a place called Little Canada.
We’re looking forward to seeing all of that. It’s also kind of exciting because we’ve built a bit of a community here. There’s always offsite networking opportunities that our members offer up as well around what is offered by the main event. So, you can party hop all night long, and you can meet everyone you ever wanted to meet at ETC.
Any notable speakers in this year’s event?
Yes, there absolutely are. The lineup is headlined by clean energy entrepreneur and former U.S. Department of Energy Director Jigar Shah. He’ll be doing a fireside chat with RBC’s John Stackhouse on grids, geopolitics, and the race to build.
We’ve also got Nordex’s global CEO Jose Luis Blanco. We’ve got former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Perry Bellegarde and top executives from various Canadian banks and electricity system operators, along with leaders like Philippe Dunsky from Dunsky Energy and Climate and Ontario Energy Board CEO Carolyn Calwell.
There’s an opening plenary each day from the CEO’s chair, so we’ll have a good perspective from CEOs in this space as well as taking deep dives into Canada’s new national electricity strategy from several different angles.
And not to plug my own team too much here, but CanREA’s own policy directors are going to headline a closing panel we call Cross-Country Checkup to give everybody an overview of what’s happening coast-to-coast in wind, solar, and energy storage.
What are you personally looking forward to this year?
I hate picking favorites, but I’ll do it anyway. I’m pretty excited to see Jigar Shah and John Stackhouse. That’s a big one for me. I’m really excited. I’ve been trying for a couple of years to make this happen.
I am excited to hear Brady Gordon, who is up for a fireside chat called the Geopolitical Risk Checklist, which I think every CEO and project leader needs to attend.
Brady Gordon is a very impressive lawyer from Blakes who will give everyone a good rundown on what they should be talking about, and if they’re not talking about it, they’re making some mistakes.
JP Gladu was an excellent panelist last year, and I’m looking forward to see what he has to say.
I mentioned this previously, but the CanREA Awards were a big hit last year, and I’m really looking forward to learning about the kind of innovative projects in our industry.
I guess I would just say you can’t really miss with ETC. The whole wind, solar, and storage sector shows up. It’s the largest electricity conference in the country.
We’ve been working on it all year. Our team can’t wait to host everyone.
More info electricity-transformation.ca
