Pause on renewable energy by UCP is a mystifying act
By Lethbridge Herald on August 26, 2023.
Editor:
The decision by the UCP government to pause the development of renewable energy in the province for seven months is mystifying. Though there have been a series of excuses tested for public acceptance, the UCP seem to have settled on the need for better planning of the electricity grid to accommodate intermittent electricity production. One has to wonder what amount of planning (required for the transition to a low-emission grid) has actually been done by successive governments over the past quarter-century, the span of time since it has been known that global emissions must be reduced to net-zero by 2050. Nevertheless, that this notion has only recently filtered through to the UCP government is dismaying. That it was so sudden a revelation that a pause of renewable energy development was initiated without consultation or planning with the industry is nothing short of astonishing.
But, to be charitable, planning is good. And we should be grateful that the UCP has discovered the importance of it.
Planning might have been useful when the UCP government rescinded the Coal Policy endangering our water quality, or decided to close or privatize a number of provincial parks. This government may have applied the precautionary principle more broadly to the expansion and management of untreatable tailing ponds, or been more vigilant about the growing problem of orphaned oil and gas wells and associated uncontrolled methane emissions.
Even today, this government is granting approximately $300 million towards a 200,000-acre irrigation expansion project in southern Alberta. An extremely large expansion in a semi-arid region with a limited (and diminishing) amount of water available to households, communities and the industries, as well as rivers, relying on it. Expanding water demand with diminishing supply is simply untenable, and one glance at Lake Mead and the dry mouth of the Colorado River will tell you that more storage doesn’t create water.
In the spirit of precaution and planning, it would be a good time to pause this project until a proper environmental impact assessment has been completed with robust modelling of water flow trends in a warming world. Already, we do not meet instream flows needed to maintain the health of our rivers and riparian areas.
A cynic might say that the pause in renewable energy development to allow for planning was simply political intrigue. Others might say incompetence. For some, both. SAGE, however, is more generous in its perspective. We look forward to the UCP government employing the principles of planning, public engagement, and the precautionary principle more broadly in the future.
It is a good time to begin planning for ecosystem health and the enduring prosperity of our region.
Braum Barber
Lethbridge
11-10
We’ll have to wait and see, but am not holding my breath. Your reference to the Colorado, should not go unnoticed, but it surely will, at least in the UCP caucus.
Exactly! Why the moratorium to plan the future grid, and the reluctance to plan anything else? And is our water not as important to plan for as electricity?
The gauntlet has been thrown, here: This is the test for the authenticity of goverment motives.
A more appropriate term for those exercising one iota of common sense is “intermittent energy”. Was, is, will always be.
Someone as perceptive as you might also have an opinion on your government spending $300,000,000 on expanding irrigation without there being enough water? Is this ‘intermittent water’?
https://www.seed.ab.ca/alberta-invests-117-7-million-more-in-irrigation-system-upgrades/ Hair on fore again. Only reference to your stated 300 mil is happening ing in China. Maybe go and scold them.
https://www.watercanada.net/alberta-government-and-cib-make-historic-investment-in-irrigation-infrastructure/
It wood be good to make decisions based on facts and not emotions.
It would also show a lack of hypocrisy if “green” citizens used only green energy When it’s -38 and the need to heat their home arises. Suffice to say , most hypocrites have the mantra do as I say , not do as I do.