{"id":60344,"date":"2023-08-16T08:20:15","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T15:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=60344"},"modified":"2023-08-16T08:21:51","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T15:21:51","slug":"smith-is-smothering-albertas-response-to-energy-system-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/markham-on-energy\/smith-is-smothering-albertas-response-to-energy-system-disruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Smith is smothering Alberta&#8217;s response to energy system disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Premier Danielle Smith thinks global energy transition should slow down to accommodate Alberta<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Premier Danielle Smith\u2019s Monday <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/live\/-yZKtBaG9Us?feature=share\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">press conference<\/a> demonstrated once and for all that the 7-month moratorium on renewables has nothing to do with land use or solar panel reclamation and everything to do with a dangerously flawed view of the future of energy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tuesday&#8217;s hot news story was about<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reporters&#8217; persistent quizzing of Smith about the suspicious timing of regulator support letters for the &#8220;pause&#8221; on wind and solar projects. The letters were written by the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) and the Alberta Electricity System Operator (AESO). Below, you can watch my conversation with former journalist, and now widely read blogger, David Climenhaga, about what her answers revealed about the controversy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h84CKQpYSOY\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Smith\u2019s comments about why Alberta refuses to cooperate with Ottawa\u2019s clean electricity regulations and the net-zero by 2035 requirement is the more interesting story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s start with Smith\u2019s bottom line problem with renewable energy: An affordable and reliable electricity system \u201cwill be accomplished by ensuring an appropriate amount of high efficiency natural gas base load is added to the grid while incentivizing carbon capture utilization in storage, abated natural gas generation, small modular reactors, hydrogen generation, and a sustainable amount of wind, solar, and other renewables to drive down electricity costs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the fundamental issue in play: Smith and the UCP think that renewables should play a minor role in Alberta&#8217;s power grid, but their rate of growth (1 gigawatt in 2022, twice as much planned for 2023) suggests they could be a much bigger player in the very near future. That makes them a threat in the Premier&#8217;s eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wind and solar asset reclamation and agricultural land use, the issues used to justify the moratorium in the first place, are secondary. Legitimate, certainly in the eyes of the UCP\u2019s rural political base, but more a pretence because the provincial government has little direct authority over the the power grid, in large part thanks to the deregulated wholesale market introduced by a previous Conservative premier, Ralph Klein.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>AESO says net-zero by 2035 is feasible<\/h3>\n<p>The irony here is that only last year AESO published a report about pathways to a net-zero power grid by 2035. I interviewed Miranda Keating-Erickson, the system operator&#8217;s VP, markets about the study, which examined three generation scenarios: mostly natural gas with carbon capture and storage, mostly renewables and storage, and a hybrid of the two approaches.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/olOYvQ5aHK8\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Keating makes clear that Alberta&#8217;s climate &#8211; long cold winters with variable weather &#8211; will require some abated natural gas generation on the grid. And some &#8220;wild card&#8221; generation technologies touted by Smith, such as small modular reactors and hydrogen, weren&#8217;t considered because they won&#8217;t be ready by 2035. The best approach, says Keating, is to let the province&#8217;s deregulated wholesale electricity market, the only one in Canada, determine which are the best technologies to reach net-zero.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;If we leverage the market forces of all of the different players competing with each other, that will get us to a place where we can do this in a more affordable way than by trying to pick today what the right technologies are going to be in 2035,&#8221; she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Speaking of affordable, Smith claimed Monday that net-zero by 2035 would cost Alberta &#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at least $200 billion and maybe as much as $400 billion of mandated investments in new generation and transmission capacity.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Only $44 billion to $52 billion will be needed, according to the AESO study, and 90 per cent of the cost will be for new generation, which will be paid for by the private sector. &#8220;T<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hat&#8217;s the potential to be attracting a lot of investment into Alberta as that all happens,&#8221; said Keating. Investments like the $25 billion of wind, solar, and storage projects already under development that are now in jeopardy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And when Smith claims that a net-zero grid by 2035 would create &#8220;massive immediate increases to power bills for every Albertan making life more expensive for families and businesses,&#8221; she neglects to mention that 87 per cent of Alberta&#8217;s power is consumed by industry and large commercial customers. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The federal government estimates that clean energy generation could lower costs on average 12 per cent by the middle of the next decade. Consumers might further benefit from lower transmission fees, which are a growing portion of their power bills, by making full use of the two 500 kilovolt transmission lines, completed in 2012, whose capacity is only half utilized, according to energy economist David Gray (see interview below).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There are several caveats to the estimate, Keating warns. The study didn&#8217;t consider the cost of upgrading distribution systems or the impact of cost inflation, which blew out oil sands construction budgets during the pre-2014 building boom. The additional costs would be a small percentage of the AESO&#8217;s estimates, certainly not enough to affect the report&#8217;s conclusions that net-zero by 2035 is not only feasible but potentially an economic shot in the arm for the province.<\/p>\n<p>Not quite the Doomsday Scenario painted by Smith.<\/p>\n<p>One thing the AESO report makes clear is that the Premier and her government would have plenty of policy and regulatory work ahead of them to make net-zero by 2035 possible.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;It has to start at the policy level,&#8221; said Keating. &#8220;No matter what scenario or pathway that we&#8217;re on, having policy clarity and getting the regulatory frameworks in place, and doing that as quickly as possible given the timeframe we&#8217;re working with. Where you have have unknowns and policy gaps and regulatory gaps, then everyone&#8217;s sort of paralyzed and can&#8217;t move forward.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Why won&#8217;t Smith &#8220;move forward&#8221; with net-zero by 2035?<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/energi-notes\/alberta-renewables-moratorium-out-of-synch-with-american-push-for-more-wind-solar\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alberta renewables moratorium out of synch with American push for more wind, solar<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I argued that US grid planners and operators are also worried about moving too quickly, but for very different reasons than Alberta. South of the border, utilities are retiring thermal (coal, gas) power plants faster than renewables can be built while demand is ramping up as the US begins electrifying its economy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where Alberta argues that the new technology isn\u2019t ready, the Americans argue that they can\u2019t get enough of it in a timely fashion.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where Alberta tries to slow down the pace of change to preserve the power sector status quo, the Americans say they need time to build the infrastructure and institutions to accommodate disruption.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve interviewed dozens of US power sector executives, both for Energi Media and as a member of the journalists panel during US Energy Association press monthly briefings. The contrast between Alberta and the Americans couldn&#8217;t be more stark. Osmand Tsang, head of utility sales for Hitachi Energy, discusses those differences in the interview below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UAtTpY-ofKs\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Alberta power sector is tentative, reflecting the traditional conservative utility culture of prioritizing reliability, low prices, and gradual, cautious change. This isn&#8217;t necessarily a bad thing. The power grid is often referred to as the world&#8217;s biggest machine and the consequences of breaking it &#8211; outages, high prices &#8211; can be disastrous.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, the industry is buffeted by disruptive change as n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ew technologies transform power grids around the world. Wind, solar, and battery storage are just a few of them. Others include microgrids, virtual power plants, demand response, new transmission technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning, energy as a service, and innovative market design.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 125-year old hub-and-spoke utility model with huge centralized power plants is on the way out, to be replaced with flatter, more decentralized business models. Consumers are becoming \u201cprosumers,\u201d generating and storing power, then releasing it into the grid when most needed and most profitable. Big industrial and commercial customers are discovering that they can \u201cself-generate\u201d with solar and dramatically reduce their energy costs, perhaps even disconnecting entirely from the grid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The US power sector has mostly embraced change. Not uniformly and not all utilities and regulators are moving at the same pace, but generally the need to modernize the aging American grid is recognized and accepted. The global economy is electrifying while switching to clean power and the Americans have no intention of being left behind by China and Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Not so much in Alberta.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this August 3 <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/typefully.com\/politicalham\/sUEbaIU\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">thread<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (tweets 12 to 17) I discussed a 2021 Alberta Utilities Commission report detailing worries among provincial utilities and other stakeholders that large customers would begin to defect from the grid, leaving remaining players with ever larger bills to make up the difference. This would be enormously disruptive for the power sector.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Smith&#8217;s renewables moratorium essentially chills self-generation plans. How convenient for utilities.<\/p>\n<p>There are a few forward-looking thinkers in the province.\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Listen to my August 14 Energi Talks podcast with Gray, who explains how Alberta could redesign provincial electricity markets, make better use of the under-utilized high-voltage transmission lines, build east-west electricity markets with other Western Canadian provinces, adopt renewables at an even greater pace, with the ultimate goal of becoming a clean energy exporting powerhouse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/share.transistor.fm\/e\/ebd37a9f\" width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gray\u2019s vision and the US strategy stand in sharp contrast to Alberta\u2019s timid response to power sector disruption and, frankly, to the global energy transition in general.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Smith is smothering Alberta&#8217;s response to energy system disruption<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Premier is a symbol of Alberta\u2019s deep reluctance to change with the times. Never mind her refusal to even talk about the climate crisis.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other impending disruption is increasing demand caused by electrification of transportation (electric vehicles), buildings (heat pumps), and industrial processes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOttawa&#8217;s own forecast expects electricity demand to double between now and 2050 as it is now,\u201d Smith told reporters. \u201cCanada&#8217;s electricity grid, including Alberta&#8217;s, can&#8217;t handle the increased load that is coming, and the draft regulations will severely threaten the reliability of our power grid even more, leading to potential blackouts that would be devastating.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is nonsense. Utilities across the country are already planning for increased clean generation. One could argue that with a power grid that is already 84 per cent emissions-free thanks to hydropower and nuclear, Canada could afford to start later than the US and other trading partners.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Premier is parroting the concerns of the Alberta utilities incumbents, the companies worried about losing their large industrial and commercial customers to self-generation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBased on the conversations we have had with our power generators, we believe [a net-zero grid] can be done by 2050, but not by 2035,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd any plan must recognize that we can only cut emissions as fast as technology and infrastructure and people&#8217;s pocketbooks will allow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Which explains Smith\u2019s apocalyptic language about the consequences of moving too quickly:\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOttawa&#8217;s strategy seems to be to placate the environmental extremists while throwing regular Canadians under the bus. That&#8217;s wrong. It&#8217;s unacceptable morally and financially, and Alberta&#8217;s government will not go along with it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smith&#8217;s narrative is inaccurate and inflammatory, but within Alberta it serves its purpose: to deflect attention from her government\u2019s real strategy, which is to shield power sector incumbents from disruptive change. She performs the same service for the oil and gas sector, as I point out in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/unethical-oil\/unethical-oil-part-2-albertas-orphan-well-crisis\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unethical Oil Part 2: Alberta\u2019s orphan well crisis<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reporters grilling the Premier about the government possibly rigging support from provincial arms-length agencies for questionable policies serves to undermine her narrative. That\u2019s a good thing and Alberta needs much more of it, as Climenhaga argues during the podcast interview.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We journalists need to continue chipping away at the narrative that the energy transition has to slow down to accommodate Alberta. Alberta exceptionalism is a quaint holdover from the 20th century that needs to flushed as soon as possible. The truth is that Alberta has to speed up to adapt to a rapidly transforming global energy system before it&#8217;s too late.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Premier Danielle Smith thinks global energy transition should slow down to accommodate Alberta Premier Danielle Smith\u2019s Monday press conference demonstrated once and for all that the 7-month moratorium on renewables has nothing to do with <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/markham-on-energy\/smith-is-smothering-albertas-response-to-energy-system-disruption\/\" title=\"Smith is smothering Alberta&#8217;s response to energy system disruption\">[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-60344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markham-on-energy"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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