At a recent convention of Alberta’s Rural Municipalities Association in downtown Edmonton, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith proclaimed her belief in natural gas.
“This is a natural gas basin,” she said. “We are a natural gas province and we will continue to build natural gas power plants because that is what makes sense in Alberta.”
It should come as no surprise that Smith is not a supporter of renewable energy.
In 2021, Smith published an opinion piece in the Calgary Herald where she implied that wind energy posed a threat to the reliability of Alberta’s energy supply.
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Smith tried to brush off that coal and natural gas accounted for nearly 80 percent of the power outage, as concluded in a detailed analysis of the crisis by experts at the University of Texas at Austin. She also incorrectly stated that if Texas had built more natural gas capacity instead of wind energy, that state’s recent power outage would have been much less severe.
The University of Texas report clearly identified that the failure of natural gas generating capacity was caused by losses in natural gas production due to extreme cold and frozen gas pipelines. More gas turbines would not have made any difference.
The premier seems to be confusing reliability with the intermittent nature of wind and solar. The availability of wind and solar is entirely predictable and its intermittent supply can be accommodated with grid storage and readily available generating capacity from other sources.
In Alberta, our energy systems are designed to handle the environment in which they operate. Just before Christmas, the Alberta Electrical System Operator (AESO) announced two consecutive grid alerts due to extreme cold temperatures, seasonally high demand and an unexpected outage at the Keephills 3 coal-fired generating station. Albertans were asked to reduce their energy consumption and no power outages resulted from the incident.
In Alberta, the renewable energy industry is booming.
AESO reports that 12,600 megawatts of solar, 9,100 megawatts of wind and 5,556 megawatts of energy storage capacity are under construction, approved by the Alberta Utilities Commission or announced.
According to AESO, “Alberta is attracting significant private investment in renewables generation and energy storage projects, estimated at more than $4 billion since 2019.”
Should Albertans be concerned as the maximum generating capacity of renewables blows past 30 percent of the province’s total generating capacity? The total generating capacity is currently over 18,000 megawatts with 28,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity in the queue.
Extra renewable energy makes sense because fossil fuel generation can be reduced when it’s available. This significantly reduces CO2 emissions and when renewable output is low, existing natural gas generating capacity will keep the lights on.
Technically speaking, there is nothing preventing Alberta from transitioning to a much cleaner electricity grid in the near term and a 100 percent renewable grid before 2050. As renewable energy projects are built out, the generating capacity is being scooped up by power purchase agreements like the one signed between Amazon and Greengate Power Corp of Calgary.
Utilities are happy to add renewable energy to their portfolios. Smith’s vision for more natural gas generating capacity will result in unwanted and unprofitable infrastructure that ultimately will lead to higher energy costs for Albertans.
Some politicians will attempt to create a false narrative that demand for wind and solar can’t survive without a support from a carbon tax.
In fact, it is natural gas electricity generation with the exorbitant added cost of carbon capture and storage that will be uncompetitive and heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
The market is already sending a clear signal that renewable energy is the best investment for the future.
Robert Miller is a retired systems engineer, formerly with General Dynamics Canada, who now volunteers with the Calgary Climate Hub and writes on behalf of Eco-Elders for Climate Action. He lives in Calgary.
