Alberta is putting a booming renewable energy industry at risk and setting a double standard in the way it treats renewable and fossil fuel development, clean energy groups said today, after the province slapped a seven-month moratorium on new solar and wind projects over a megawatt in size.
The decision could erode investor confidence and undermine the “Alberta advantage” in the province that accounted for 75% of the growth in Canada’s renewable energy sector last year, the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA) warned in a release. The association is meeting with provincial politicians and regulators “with the aim of minimizing the duration of the moratorium and creating clarity on its consequences,” the release added.
“This is a mistake,” said CanREA President and CEO Vittoria Bellissimo. “The Alberta government, Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC), and Alberta Electricity System Operator need to move quickly to sort out this situation for all Alberta ratepayers, investors, and municipalities.”
“We’re out ahead here, and it’s really shocking to see that an industry and a province that is at the forefront of all of these issues is putting a pause on some really significant environmental, but also economic and energy sector growth,” agreed Heather MacKenzie, executive director of Solar Alberta.
Other groups were sharper in their criticism.
“According to the Alberta Premier, massive tailings spills that endanger Indigenous communities don’t constitute an emergency—but the potential for expanding cost-effective and proven climate solutions at a time when Canada is burning somehow poses a threat,” added Climate Action Network-Canada Executive Director Caroline Brouillette.
“Other Conservative premiers have recognized the vast opportunities and economic benefits of affordable renewable energy, and so have Alberta communities,” Brouillette said in an email. But Premier Danielle Smith “seems more interested in pursuing her own ideology than lowering energy costs for Albertans, no matter the lost job opportunities and the damage to investor confidence.”
Binnu Jeyakumar, electricity director at the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, said the moratorium would put 91 projects worth C$25 billion at risk, during a summer when wildfires and smoke have made “the growing costs of climate change all too real for Albertans and Canadians.”
The moratorium “creates uncertainty around future investments while adding unnecessary red tape to these projects,” Jeyakumar said in a release. “While other provinces with Conservative governments like Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario have created calls for new renewable investments, adding wind and solar to their grids to lower the costs of electricity for consumers, Alberta appears to be heading in the opposite direction.”
The masters of satire at The Beaverton weighed in Saturday with their own take on the announcement. “Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has announced a moratorium on all pending renewable energy projects in Alberta until these projects can prove they will be just as detrimental to the environment as the province’s current and past fossil fuel extraction projects,” the online publication wrote. Now, “Alberta’s renewable industry is scrambling to come up with ways it can meet the province’s strict anti-environmental standards without increasing the low price of renewable energy.”
Squelching One Industry, Subsidizing the Other
Alberta imposed the moratorium earlier today through February 29 to review where future megawatt-scale solar and wind projects can be built, how the surge in renewables affects the provincial grid, and how to deal with the projects at the end of their operating lives, the Globe and Mail reports. New measures could include “mandatory security bonds that renewable developers must pay to ensure projects can be cleaned up when they reach the end of their life,” the Globe says, citing an interview with Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf.
“Minister Neudorf is imposing regulations on an industry that’s working towards bringing prosperity into communities while curbing the climate crisis, but where were these requirements for the oil and gas industry when they were polluting communities while setting the planet ablaze?” countered Tzeporah Berman, international program director at Stand.earth.
“While renewable energy projects already undergo extensive community consultations and must meet environmental requirements, the oil and gas industry faces very little accountability,” added Keith Brooks,” programs director at Environmental Defence Canada . “The fossil fuel industry has disrupted close to 900 square kilometres and left tens of thousands of inactive and orphan wells,” but Alberta “has shown no urgency in addressing these mounting environmental liabilities, beyond subsidizing the same companies responsible for the mess.”
With Renewables, Landowners Get to Decide
In a release, the province said the moratorium responded to concerns that rural municipalities and landholders had raised with the AUC. But Bellissimo said she met with Neudorf Thursday morning, delivering the message that the industry is already addressing all the issues behind the moratorium. She told The Energy Mix the minister “did express a willingness” to look at shortening the ban.
The fundamental difference between subsurface fossil developments and solar or wind projects is that, with surface development, the landowner is in the driver’s seat, Bellissimo said Thursday afternoon. In a recent blog post, CanREA Alberta Director Evan Wilson said the province’s renewables sector is already well regulated.
“Make no mistake, this isn’t ‘the wild west’ of renewable energy,” he wrote. “Alberta is enjoying well-regulated growth, rooted in strong policies and robust community engagement practices.”
“This is not orphan wells,” Bellissimo agreed. “I’m an Albertan, and it’s a legitimate fear,” but that’s not how renewables work.” Unlike subsurface development, “wind and solar are subject to surface rights, so landowners can refuse entry if they so decide,” she explained. “They can decide when and how a renewable project gets installed,” through private, civil contracts that can include provisions for decommissioning or other assurances to address landholders’ concerns.
Later, when a grid-scale solar or wind installation nears the end of its useful life, “you can sub out the generation, upgrade the panels or turbines, and it’s good to do that,” she added. “It’s already a windy or sunny site, and the wires that get the generation to market have more life than the asset.”
[The renewables industry is also working feverishly to get recycling in place for old panels and turbines before the accumulation gets out of control—Ed.]
Bellissimo pointed to the province’s renewables boom as evidence that the system is working.
“There are a lot of landowners who were able to negotiate deals they were happy with to get projects off the ground,” she told The Mix. But even that level of development falls far short of what Alberta is capable of, or what the province and the country need.
“We’re in the middle of a climate crisis, and if anything we need to develop much more renewables at a pace and scale we haven’t seen before,” she said. “So this is again a mistake, and I will be working very hard with my government and my regulator, as an Albertan, to try to fix this as soon as we can.”
Risking Alberta’s Advantage
Bellissimo said the impact of the moratorium will depend on how long the province keeps it in place.
“If we can right the ship fairly quickly, then not much impact,” she said. “But if we take the full six or seven months and we don’t come out the other side of this with a better process for industry, a plan to develop renewables on Crown land, and confidence that renewables will be able to build and generate revenue, then I think Alberta has given up its advantage.”
The risks Neudorf has created with today’s announcement trace back to the finance and supply chain issues in an increasingly competitive industry.
“Renewable developers have supply chain issues like everybody else, and if they have a supply of turbines or solar modules or batteries, they will look at where they can deploy them the fastest and they will look at stable investment regimes,” Bellissimo explained. “If they’ve got this equipment on the books, they will put it where they can make it work.” That puts Alberta up against provinces like Quebec, Manitoba, British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, all of which are in the market for the same renewable energy gear.
“We’re competing against other provinces, we’re competing against other countries, and anything you do to hamper our ability to compete for that investment and capital and equipment in the supply chain is going to be problematic.”
She said she’d told Neudorf that she’s seen renewable energy companies opening offices in Calgary lately, “and I want to keep those jobs coming to Alberta. It’s a really good news story, and has been a really good news story.”
Why don’t we have a moratorium on fossil industry expansion? Let’s shut down TMX and Coastal Gas link. For seven millennia.
This may be the time to organize a drive for rooftop solar in Alberta.
Oh, absolutely! Everything under a megawatt is still in play.
Shouldn’t we look into reviving old wells and investigating Geothermal? There appears to be a good case for investment as the technology is improving all the time.
We are looking at new energy technologies in the UK, as we have a long history of innovation, going back centuries.
Thanks, Geoffrey. One of the consistent lessons learned in clean energy development is that it’s going to take a menu of options — so yes, geothermal where it makes sense, but that doesn’t preclude maximizing solar, wind, energy storage, and as a cornerstone for all the rest, going all-in on energy efficiency.
Sounds like some of the antics of the radical right in the United States…….pig headed commitments to the industry that is racing us toward hot house earth, and a sudden frenzy of regulation for the green technologies that do next to no damage in comparison with in situ mining or fracking for small pockets of gas.
Thing is, the transition is here and growing, because it has to. Green technologies bring in more investment in many jurisdictions than does Big Fossil Fuel companies……..for obvious reasons.
I hope this decision to throw up barriers for the emerging economy makes enough of us angry, that we proceed with the micro generation we perhaps thought we could do without. Solar is ideal for distributed power……..and it would be interesting to see how long it would take Danielle and her minions to try and shut down individuals opting for rooftop solar….
It’s only a matter of time before some communities could have those virtual power plants that are already making a difference in jurisdictions like California……when power emergencies happen because of extreme weather.
Forward, my fellow Albertans.
They don’t mind the 27 millions of trees turning to carbon so that Trudeau can mine more battery minerals?
Any human activity has environmental impacts. Any responsible industrial activity has to take those impacts in account, and if we really mean that, no local impact should just be written off as the price of progress. But it is a *huge* exaggeration to suggest that the impacts of clean energy are in the same universe as oil and gas development.
I’ll see your 27 million trees, though I’m curious about how you arrived at that number, and raise you 1.3 trillion litres of toxic waste in tailings dams that the oil sands industry has no plans to deal with. Then on the next round, I’ll bid another $260 billion (not my own money, so it’s an easy bid) for the abandoned oil and gas wells the fossil industry has left strewn about Alberta, as though their moms and dads didn’t teach them to clean up after themselves when they were finished playing. If you’re still in the game after that round, we can get into the millions in unpaid local taxes that deadbeat fossils have been holding back from rural municipalities that are essentially single-industry towns and now struggling to deliver services.
What’s that you were saying about 27 million trees? Shall we continue?
Abandoned wells aren’t a taxpayer liability. Some may become one, but not the entire $260 billion-worth – that only happens in the hypothetical scenario which all O&G companies in AB go bust tomorrow. Do you know what % of abandoned wells get turned into orphans versus those that are successfully reclaimed?
The 10s of millions in unpaid municipal taxes, while I agree are unacceptable, amount to less than 1% of government revenue (~10s of *billions) from companies who did pay their taxes.
Totally agree that clean energy impacts will be lower, but this is a bit more complicated that you seem to let on. Copper mines, which are part and parcel to our decarbonization plans, will also create billions of liters of toxic tailings, no? Should we have a game plan in place to deal with when a copper mine goes bankrupt? Isn’t that the spirit of this moratorium, or am I missing something? Should we proceed as we did 60 years ago with oilsands development and NOT consider these things, again, because we might risk investment?
Thanks, Ryan. YES, we absolutely have to sweat the details on the impacts of clean energy development, and keep at it until it’s solved. But the point the renewables industry is making is that none of these issues are new or unknown, and the moratorium was neither needed nor justified as a way to address them. Climate hawks, meanwhile, are making the point that Smith et al might have a shred of credibility on the impacts of renewable development if they were showing as much concern about abandoned wells and 1.3 trillion litres of toxic tailings.
Sorry, but taking a step back and evaluating our commitments to solar/wind projects is the smart thing to do. Repeating climate change talking points is not science. A lot of people have absolutely no idea how power is generated, transmitted and distributed. Renewables in general can cause massive grid instability. When considering all of the alternatives, I believe that nuclear might be the only tangible option if your goal is to reduce CO2.
Wellhmmm…replying from the province where nuclear cost overruns essentially bankrupted North America’s second-biggest power utility a few decades ago, I would strongly recommend that you take another look at how well renewables can *stabilize* the grid if the planning is done right. The issue is not that renewables+storage can’t get the job done, nor even that they aren’t cost-effective — they can deliver, and their cost is generally plummeting. It’s just that an old, clunky, centralized grid isn’t set up for a modern mix of distributed energy supplies.
But many grids are old enough at this point that they already need massive capital investment to bring them up to date. If we’re spending anyway, why not spend smart, for a change, and use that money to take advantage of the best technologies available (beginning with solar, wind, batteries, heat pumps, demand response, vehicle-to-grid technologies), rather than defaulting to more familiar grid models that really aren’t fit to purpose in the 2020s and beyond?