Alberta’s energy grid: Lost in the dark or powering forward?
By Lethbridge Herald on April 10, 2024.
Peter Casurella
SOUTHGROW REGIONAL INITIATIVE
The estimable Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” He may as well have been talking about Alberta’s electrical grid development over the past few decades.
The province-wide emergency alert of January 13, 2024 was the result of many years of not knowing where we we’re going all coming to a head at once. Long-standing calls to implement demand-side management and price signalling policies have been ignored, politicians have turned the technical debate surrounding the merits of capacity vs. energy only markets into a political knife fight, predatory market manipulation practices like capacity withholding have been tolerated, energy companies have been allowed to shirk their taxation obligations, and the regulatory environment has been allowed to stagnate far behind the pace of change with the advent of alternative energy sources.
Admittedly, keeping up with the pace of change in such a complex environment is hard and it takes resolution and force of will to keep things moving in any defined direction.
There’s a lot of different priorities at play from interested parties with very deep pockets. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do it, and the benefits of proactively setting a strategic direction and unified vision for the development of our energy grid justifies the effort it will take to implement.
Over the years our political masters have perpetually been working on ‘the next big plan’ to ensure a proactive approach to future electricity development, while never actually producing anything of substance and ignoring sizable volumes of technical recommendations from various concerned stakeholders. Rather than a team of experts thoughtfully planning to launch the next ship, behind the scenes regulatory and legislative minders have looked more like castaways desperately patching holes in their boat – which would be fine if Albertans weren’t stuck in it with them.
Elected governments are notoriously good at executing on the short-term priorities that will win them enough favour to have a solid run at the polls, and notoriously bad at implementing long-term, highly technical policies that won’t yield dividends with voters for many years to come.
This is the real danger now: siloed, back-room policy decisions on one of our most important pieces of infrastructure in the absence of broad consultation or consensus on where we’re trying to go. At best, it will be ineffective, at worst, it will create even greater chaos – unstable prices and more emergency alerts – and take us down a path leading away from Albertans’ best interests.
Energy is a core driver of economic activity in the modern economy. A reliable, safe, and affordable grid is a fundamental necessity for economic prosperity and social well-being. Only government’s resolute policy action can bring together the technical recommendations and the needs and wants of the diverse stakeholder base to drive system-wide momentum towards this goal.
Leading the Charge: A Vision for Alberta’s Electricity Future is an excellent step in the right direction and I heartily encourage everyone to read and absorb its recommendations. In it, a coalition of thought leaders pulled from every corner of the energy market in Alberta, has laid out a vision for where we need to go and the shifts required to get there.
It is work that any government should be grateful of: a broadly-backed vision that they can take decisive action on. Our hope is that someone in government will rise to the challenge and be the champion that this vision needs. Because people in Alberta may not be in perfect alignment about where they want to go, but they can agree it should be forward.
Peter Casurella is the executive director of SouthGrow Regional Initiative, an economic development alliance of 30 south central Alberta communities committed to working together to achieve prosperity for the region. He is a participant in the Energy Futures Lab’s ‘Alberta’s Electricity Future’ initiative.
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I wonder why? Maybe special interest groups are making this harder than it is. You have the solar group that thinks farmland is up for grabs. You have windmills who feel, wherever there is constant wind I own it, . Vegans who look down upon those that are meat eaters.NG Pipelines being built under the guise of saving other countries who do not have it, but, we shouldn’t?
If you are part of the Solar Cartel then shame on Alberta, if you are part of the Windmill Cartel then why can’t we build on Lake Louise. If you are part of the Vegan Cartel then let cattle die and let the carcasses pile up. If you are a Native group who thinks they can make money on the NG or Oil pipeline, then “gimme a chunk of that” If you are native group to far from the pipelines to profit, then Mother Earth damage is the cry!
If you have a job that requires a truck, then the Smart Car, or Tesla driver gets to make you feel bad. Hide in fear if eating a steak in a restaurant. Your Fort Mac supporter you!
Mind you the Smart Car or Tesla Driver says nothing about Batou Mongolia where kids are being born deformed so windmills can be built, nor the massive hole in Europe that they intended to burying 290 Windmill blades (but got caught) and still say they are planet lovers.
The reason there is no plan is there are too many chickens running around saying the sky is falling, so governments in hopes of quietening the cartels, feed them money.
Go to any meeting of intellects who want to contribute and you notice in their back pocket a Pie Knife” so that in the end they ensure they get their slice. Owning a Solar Company or being the head of a Solar Group does not make you an expert, it makes you conflicted. Ditto for Windmills! The reason Small Nukes will not be supported, and they won’t be is because “Pie Slices will be withdrawn from the Conflicted” so you scream the Planet is Burning, the Planet is Burning to keep your slice!
A plan was achievable, still is, sell fossil fuels until you have enough money to build SMRs and update your grid. Or you could be like Germany who decided to shut down Nuclear, Coal build out windmills/solar then after doing nothing else for a long time, has to replace them all, and spend $1 Trillion USD to upgrade their grid, why? Cartels and special interest groups who moved WAY WAY too early and are now suffering the consequeces.
As for the price of electricity, you sound astonished? Did you not realize you are replacing the Oil Cartel with an Electrical Cartel? By the time we get to Nirvana for the planet, people will be sneaking into Power plants to “Steal kilowatts” because they won’t be able to afford them.
Marie Antoinette said “Let them eat Cake”
Soon the poor who will not be able to afford electricity, will be told “Let them eat oil”
I gather you’ve never looked at the costs of climate change – doughts, floods, migrations, resource wats, famine, biodiversity loss, and so on.
And your alarmist ‘$1trillion USD’ is, of course, €128 billion over the next 20 years to reach net zero. That’s 0.15% of their GDP.
To do nothing to mitigate climate change is a crime against future humanity. As another famous French person once said, “Apres moi le deluge.” Louis XV must have been a Boomer, too.