'Making up for lost ground': Public Interest Alberta calling for release of renewable energy roadmap

Brad Lafortune, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta, speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his organization’s calls for the province to release their renewable energy roadmap.

 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Michael Higgins: According to a recent report from the Pembina Institute, Alberta's seven-month pause on development approvals resulted in 53 wind and solar projects being abandoned.

The Clean Energy think tank says that represents the loss of more than 8,600 megawatts of generation, enough to power every home in the province.

Your organization is among the voices demanding the Alberta government finalize some form of guidelines for renewable energy project development. Why the urgency?

Brad Lafortune: It's been several months since the moratorium was lifted in February of this year. It's been about a year, just over a year, since the moratorium was announced very hastily by the government last August and what we're hearing from industry and municipalities is that they need certainty in order to get back on track, based on the projects that have been delayed.

So this is all about making up for lost ground, essentially.

The Smith government has said they want to enhance certainty for investors and ensure that we're developing well.

Thinking about everything from the beginning of a project to the end and thinking about cleanup, but we've never seen this before in Alberta, where an entire sector is put on pause and then when the moratorium is lifted we don't have clear rules.

We need clear policy regulations. Really it's about investor certainty and then the outcomes from that is to make sure that municipalities can benefit from the tax revenue and that's going to benefit every Alberta citizen across the province as well.

MH: On that point of certainty, in a recent statement to media, the minister of Affordability and Utility says Alberta continues to be a leader in renewable energy and a jurisdiction of choice for investors. How do you respond to that?

BL: I think that that's just false. When we talk to investors, or we look at the statements that have been made by some of the big corporations who are looking to invest in Canada, in Alberta, specifically, they're saying that there's been a major chill put on the investment decisions.

And you don't have to look any further than power purchase agreements and the projects that have been put on hold or cancelled.

Not only were projects cancelled as a result of the moratorium but there was a big rush when the moratorium was announced, just before it was put into place, and there was about 20 projects where they said, ‘maybe we can get grandfathered under these rules’.

Eventually they pulled out as well.

So we're talking about 53 projects and when you look at the conservative projections based on the report that was released by Pembina and the business research, Renewables Council of Canada, it shows that $91 million have been lost and that's very conservative estimates.

So the minister saying that investor confidence is there is not borne out by what corporate representatives are saying, nor is it borne out by what we're seeing in terms of the lost revenue to municipalities, in terms of taxes.

Obviously Alberta has some of the best renewable energy stock in the world.

We're talking about places in Lethbridge for example. Southern Alberta solar and wind.

So no doubt we can get back on track, but we do need clear rules and guidelines to re-establish that baseline of investor confidence for sure.

MH: The government gave some draft guidelines once the moratorium was over on where and how projects might proceed. So how much do you expect a finalized draft of guidelines to differ from what's already on the table?

BL: What we're looking for in terms of details is very clear, long term, hard commitments to the amount of renewable energy that Alberta wants to bring online.

So setting out those guidelines, similar to what Quebec and Ontario have done with their 10-year horizon, to say, ‘We want to bring on 5,000 megawatts or 10,000 megawatts over the next 10 years’ to signal to industry what we're prepared to invest in.

And then we also want to see those power purchase agreements come through so that banks and investors can really have confidence that those corporations are going to have a market to provide that energy too.

So we need clear, and very hard sort of commitments to what we're trying to bring online from the Government of Alberta.

We also need clear policy and regulations when it comes to clean up and reclamation.

Danielle Smith herself has said she's very concerned about what happens to those sites after they've been put off line.

We don't share those concerns compared with the government of Alberta, but it is a concern for landowners and people in the area.

So we want to see what those specific guidelines and policies and regulations are so that investors know what they're getting themselves into, so they can see from beginning to end what those costs are really going to be.

MH: This isn't the only issue you're pressuring the Alberta government on, you're also demanding pension survey results.

How would the release of that change the conversation when Albertans are still waiting for the federal government to come through with a final number on what Alberta might be entitled to from the CPP?

BL: That's a really good point, we're still waiting on that report back from the federal government.

At the same time tens of thousands of Albertans took the survey, gave their feedback, and we think that it's only fair for Albertans to be able to see what their neighbors were saying about this.

We think it's a very risky plan and we think that all information should be on the table when it's available so that Albertans can be keeping up with the conversation as it's coming.

Also, under the FOIP legislation, there's no reason legally under FOIP that they should be delaying the release of this information according to the FOIP Act, which is freedom of information and privacy and transparency in government.

We want to see good decisions being made on good information and Albertans should be able to know what information governments are considering when they're making those decisions.

So it's really a principle of transparency as well and we believe that Albertans should be able to have access to the full information.

MH: Where do you see this debate headed with the fall sitting of the legislature just a matter of weeks away?

BL: I think CPP is going to be a big issue, a lot of Albertans are really concerned about that.

Obviously retirement security is a big, big concern for Albertans in the time of an affordability crisis and a lot of economic uncertainty.

I think that also going into the UCP AGM that that debate is going to be brought into the house as well.

So we'll see a lot of UCP base issues coming to the fore, which will be pretty interesting to see how Danielle Smith juggles those interests with her base and the rest of Alberta as well.