There hasn’t been much to cheer about lately for those in the business of making electricity from wind and solar energy.
On Dec. 6, the Alberta government released the Electric Energy Land Use and Visual Assessment Regulation, which is not friendly to renewables.
The regulation prohibits solar and wind energy development on a 70,000 square kilometre buffer that stretches from the Rockies to Calgary. It requires visual impact assessments for proposed projects on another 80,000 square kilometres. And anyone proposing a wind or solar project on high-value agricultural land must prove it won’t negatively impact crops and livestock.
The new regulations follow a seven-month moratorium on renewable projects announced in August 2023.
The Pembina Institute estimates the pause on renewables forced developers to walk away from more than 50 projects, costing Alberta an estimated $33 billion in investment and $263 million in annual municipal taxes and lease payments.
Unclear and Biased
Then, last February, Premier Danielle Smith announced that the province would take an “agriculture first” approach to renewable energy development.
Jason Wang, an electricity analyst with the Pembina Institute, says the new rules are a start but still leave many unanswered questions.
“It doesn’t do much to restore confidence in renewable energy developments. It’s not clear exactly how those impact assessments will be used or assessed,” he told The Canadian Press. “So for developers, it’s still wrapped in uncertainty over exactly how you should be developing a project.”
Alberta also released updated Transmission Regulations aimed at ensuring electricity ratepayers don’t eat the full cost of building new transmission lines to connect renewable energy suppliers.
“Albertans deserve a modern electricity system that prioritizes affordability and reliability,” said Nathan Neudorf, Minister of Affordability and Utilities, in a media release. “As our electricity supply mix evolves so should our policies, and these updates to transmission policies are essential to ensuring Albertans are well-served by our electricity system for years to come.”
However, Director of the Business Renewables Centre-Canada, Jorden Dye said the updated regulations create more uncertainty for Alberta’s renewable energy market.
“We’ve been asking the government for a year to provide the industry with certainty and some reasonable regulations that work with the realities of a modern grid. The government’s proposed changes to the electricity market structure will make it difficult for wind and solar projects to operate profitably. We now know that transmission costs will, to some extent, be passed on to developers. We don’t know the extent of that, though, and the missing details are likely key to project decisions for many developers,” Dye said after the province announced the changes. “Renewable energy could help the provincial government reach its net-zero status by 2050. But only if it actually gets built here.”
The rules are different, and the bar is much lower for big oil.
While the noose tightens on the once booming renewable energy, the Alberta government isn’t saying much about a report released earlier this year by the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) that predicts wind and solar would have minimal impacts on agricultural land and the environment. Nor is the Premier saying much about the current boom in oil and gas drilling and the toxic mess left behind by 170,000 abandoned wells, 1/3rd of all wells in the province.
“Compared to some other forms of industrial development, renewable power plant projects have well-understood and relatively contained reclamation risks,” the AUC report says. “The risks associated with groundwater and off-site contamination are generally low. From 2019 to 2021, the largest driver of agricultural land loss was expansion of pipelines and industrial sites.”
In an interview with the CBC, Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary resource law professor, called the AUC report a “reason-based wrecking ball that smashes the government’s talking points and policies with respect to renewables.”
