Wind Energy – Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston delivered a keynote address at the Oceantic Network renewables conference in New York City on Feb. 12, 2026.
The winds on the shallow Scotian Shelf of Atlantic Canada are consistent, he said, and so is the political will needed to capture and sustain them.
Premier Tim Houston called on local and international business executives to look north to invest. It’s another signal that the industry south of the Canadian border remains on ice as a frequent target of the Trump administration.
“We are a predictable and reliable regulatory jurisdiction,” said David MacGregor, associate deputy minister of the Nova Scotia Department of Energy at the conference. “When the regulator picks and chooses and goes through the bid process and they pick the best bids, the federal government cannot overrule them. It takes the province and the feds to overrule the board. That provides remarkable stability.”
MacGregor did not name President Donald Trump in making his point about political differences between the countries, but he didn’t have to. The Trump administration, following a presidential memorandum and numerous secretarial orders that have come from it, has moved to revoke permits previously granted to offshore wind projects, entirely upending a regulatory system that is needed to provide certainty to the projects and lenders putting billions on the line.
The proposal, called Wind West, is an ambitious plan that calls for as many as 60 gigawatts of offshore wind energy if fully developed. By 2040, about 15 gigawatts from Wind West could be operational, per Nova Scotia’s recent timeline.
Houston, who also serves as his province’s energy minister, said Nova Scotia only needs a small slice (fewer than three gigawatts). The province will look to send it west to larger population centers, but also export it to markets in the United States, to which Canada has been a major supplier of crude oil and natural gas.
