Assessing Danielle Smith's latest reasons for pausing Alberta wind and solar, to the letter

Premier Danielle Smith has grievances about the way media has covered her government's seven-month moratorium on approving wind and solar power projects, the premier (and former media figure) told journalists at her news conference Monday.

"One of the things I'm disappointed by that I haven't seen the media cover is that we were asked to do this by our regulators," she said. "We made the letters available to every member of the media on this the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) asked for us to do a pause to make sure that we could address issues of stability of the grid. The Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) asked us to do a pause while we figured out how we could deal with end of life reclamation."

She continued: "So I would just encourage you to to dig up that original press release that we put out and look at what the two regulators have asked us to do."

Now, most journalists worth their salt do not let politicians become their assignment editors, even on those hazy summer weeks when their usual assigning bosses are on holiday.

On Smith's advice, let's read these letters and explain what they say, and whether they do or don't bolster the United Conservative government decision that delighted rural leaders but blindsided and infuriated businesses whose billions of dollars worth of renewable electricity projects are now in limbo.

Smith may want to reread the letters herself, because they don't say what she insisted they say.

To whom it may concern

Let's first peruse the AUC letter from July 21, available here. In it, the regulator expresses concern about the massive volume of newly proposed power generators that have recently come its way, and two public-interest issues the flood of applications has highlighted: "the development of power plants on high value agricultural lands and the lack of mandatory reclamation security requirements for power plants."

It's tricky to address these issues in one-by-one application assessments."Rather, effective resolution necessarily requires a dedicated period of engagement with all of the stakeholders identified above followed by government direction, either in the form of provincial policy or new legislation," commission chair Carolyn Dahl Rees states in the letter.

That would, she concludes, "enable a reasonable, robust regulatory framework that is efficient and predictable while being protective of the long-term public interest for all Albertans."

That's the letter. It indeed asks for Smith's utilities minister to devise a new policy that considers farmland use and the end-of-life cleanup for these hulking concrete and steel wind turbines, and the fields full of photovoltaic panels.

But nowhere in that letter does the AUC request a half-year freeze on approving new renewable power generation, which Smith had said it did. The regulator has been through many policy revisions before, by itself or the government, without taking a break from assessing project proposals even when the commission itself was in a subdivision of the old Energy and Utilities Board in 2008, regulators didn't so much as miss a beat (certainly not for nearly seven months).

Danielle Smith says renewables will never be the main source of energy in Alberta

1 year ago

Duration 13:18

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith explains why her government won't be following Ottawa's clean power roadmap.

That's the AUC letter. What about the other agency's letter Smith asked us to read? It's shorter, and we can read shorter letters more quickly.

The letter by AESO does mention a "government directed six-month temporary pause" on new generation proposals. But like its sister agency, the electric system operator doesn't request it its CEO's letter merely acknowledges the government has advised AESO of the policy inquiry and moratorium.

Nor does the AESO letter refer to any grid reliability problems that more wind and solar power bring, which Smith also claimed in her media comprehension critique. The agency has previously admitted challenges that the growth of renewables bring to the grid because of the variability of the wind and sun, but its proposed solutions never included a moratorium at least not publicly.

"Just for the record, they did ask us to put a pause on wind and solar," Smith replied, when Globe and Mail reporter Emma Graney challenged the premier on the letter's actual contents.

Two weeks' non-notice

Looking more closely at the letters that Smith wanted the public to better appreciate, energy economist Andrew Leach noticed something else.

They're both dated July 21, he pointed out in a thread on social media. That means AESO knew about the UCP's project moratorium two weeks before Aug. 3, when it was announced to renewable power companies and the public. Presumably the AUC, which requested the inquiry, also knew well in advance, even though it was still asking wind and solar companies for extra information on their applications less than 24 hours before the pause took effect, the Globe has reported.

The renewable sector says it was never consulted on this plan, and says it's thrown investor confidence and thousands of jobs into disarray.

As Smith's story on this controversial story evolves, she added a new point that a pause from early August to late February should be seen as no big deal.

"Look guys: we have had companies that have gone 10 years through a regulatory process at the federal level, spending a billion dollars and having to pull the plug because they saw no end in sight. Six months! You will have your answers in six months' time," said a premier who has preached expedited approvals and less regulation in many areas.

Amid businesses' howls about no consultation, she also reasoned Monday that wind and solar companies should have seen this coming.

She insists she foreshadowed this in a speech at a spring meeting of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, a group that had highlighted many problems with the wind and solar boom, and cheered on the moratorium.

"I did say we are going. I mentioned that back in April," Smith told reporters. "So whether you guys didn't cover it or whether they weren't paying attention to what the RMA was asking for, it should have been very clear."

At that March 22 speech, Smith did criticize the unreliability of renewable power and its impact on farmland, while stressing the need for more gas-fired power plants in what she called a "natural gas province."

She discussed the potential for solar and wind companies paying for land reclamation.

But there was no mention of halting approvals for more than half a year, or at all.

Had there been, a United Conservative Party promise (or suggestion) of a lengthy freeze on any growth in the wind and solar sectors may have become a bigger topic in May's election.

But Smith and her team didn't talk about it more for another three months, until declaring the pause this month.

One wonders how voters and the business community, in urban and rural ridings, would have thought about a party that intended to temporarily prohibit a particular sort of energy projects it viewed as problematic.