The ruling United Conservative Party of Alberta, Canada has decided that its mandate includes the impositon of a 7 month moratorium on wind and solar projects. The reasoning is that the necessary legislation should have been put in place (by them, the elected UCP) years ago.
You know, regulating things like,
the need to ensure projects are adequately decommissioned at the end of their lifespan, including
rehabilitation and soil reclamation.
which are certainly valid concerns, and require mitigating legislation. Yet such standards are already quite high in the renewable energy industry, so a moratorium can serve absolutely no purpose other than to hobble its development.
Alberta was leading Canada in renewables growth when the moratorium was imposed. Since 2019, $4.7-billion has been invested into its renewable energy sector, and there are 3,400 megawatts of wind and solar projects under construction in the province, worth nearly $3-billion. — Emma Graney, Energy Reporter, Globe and Mail.
It is difficult to see this moratorium as having any other effect than chilling investment into the industry of renewable energy production in Alberta now, and for the future. For example, from The Tyee:
“Peace Energy Cooperative was ready to make history. Then Premier Smith halted renewables.. (UCP) Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean declined to comment.” — Clayton Keim
The irony inherent in this act is that the self-purported ‘small c’, conservatives of Alberta, supposedly supporters of the ‘free market’, are hypocritically using the not-so-invisible hand of ‘big-government’ to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.
Incidentally, Rob Anderson thinks renewable energy is a ‘scam’.
Video has re-emerged showing Rob Anderson, executive director of Ms. Smith’s office and her long-time political ally, expressing numerous anti-renewable-energy views, some of which are held by the oil industry’s most ardent supporters. He said Alberta is “sitting on an ocean of clean-burning natural gas” and its development and export is being held back by “a hostile federal government.” In the video from 2021, Mr. Anderson refers to renewable energy installations as “just butt ugly” and “a scam.”
Ok Robby Eh, I get that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and all that cal, but it seems to me that only an obsessively dedicated chemical engineer could find the noise, fire, smoke and vaporous chemical belching refinery crammed in between Edmonton and Sherwood Park in some way beautiful. That is just an opinion too, of course (cough).
And someone needs to tell Bobby A. that, given a long enough timeline, any industry that has effectively no inputs (other than maintenance) past the startup capital expenditure is inevitably going to have ships sailing in; ie not a scam.