Hours after the operators of the province’s power grid warned that new federal electricity regulations could lead to blackouts, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her government is preparing for the possibility of enacting her signature legislation in an effort to push back against Ottawa’s planned emissions reductions.
“We’re preparing a Sovereignty Act motion, and I’m hoping we don’t have to use it. That’s why we’re at the table having these negotiations,” Smith said, referring to a recently formed Alberta-Ottawa working group focused on emissions reductions.
“But we are going to defend our constitutional jurisdiction to make sure that we develop our oil and gas industry at our own pace, and that we develop our electricity system so that it achieves the goal of reliability and affordability.”
When asked at what point she would potentially invoke the act, Smith said she has continually said she would do so if Ottawa “comes through with emissions caps that are unconstitutional.”
Great, can’t wait for our province to waste more money on unwinnable arguments
I cant wait for the Texas style blackouts after they cut us off from the rest of the country.
I’m pretty sure we generate most of our own. I’m not sure what they’d cut us off on, come to think of it, although I’m sure there’s something.http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
Check out the “interchange” box on the top right. We’re currently importing 132 megawatts. It’s not much, but it’s often higher, and it’s almost always Alberta importing rather than exporting.
No reason for Alberta to be cut off, though. Even if we buy into some ridiculous idea that the other provinces are going to cut Alberta off out of spite, Montana isn’t going to care. I’m sure they’d be quite happy to supply more power to Alberta.
And charge Alberta taxpayers through the nose for it.
If you’d rather go that route, have at it.
Huh! … Why? We have lots of gas and lots of gas power plants.
But we have a valuable natural resource that will only ever increase in value, can’t be found elsewhere, and will literally never run out that was given to us - the chosen people - by God!
It’s our right to claim sovereignty against a country that has never done anything to help us along the way! Never built us a railroad, or a highway, nothing! We don’t need their ports or other resources! We can do everything we need right here! It doesn’t matter that we’ve only ever done one thing, that doesn’t make us whiny, insolent children threatening to run away from home because we’ve been treated like literal slaves doing chores!
Not 100% sure if you’re being sarcastic or not. Just can’t tell anymore these days.
I’m shocked.
We’re in for an interesting few years with Alberta. Anecdotally, some of my friends who live in rural Alberta voted for the UCP because the Alberta NDP allegedly cost them billions in oilfield investment.
When I pointed out that all cars were going to be electric by 2030/35, this was news to them. They had no idea that now was the time to pivot the economy to solar/wind and prepare for the not so distant future.
This is very much a get my friends rich scheme, while the people suffer. There is a precipitous cliff coming for Albertans, and ignorance won’t be an option.
Anecdotally, some of my friends who live in rural Alberta voted for the UCP because the Alberta NDP allegedly cost them billions in oilfield investment.
In rural Alberta “she’s NDP” is enough of a reason. Literally, during the election I heard someone list all the reasons they don’t agree with the UCP ideology and then finish with that verbatim.
“comes through with emissions caps that are unconstitutional.”
So then never
I can’t believe Albertans wanted more of this. Just like I couldn’t believe my fellow Ontarians wanted more of Ford. But here we are. 🫠
Populist campaigning strategies and poor education made this possible.
And decades of propaganda as well.
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People with more education tend to lean left, it’s been the case for a long time now.
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Good education for most is a fairly modern thing (tons of boomers never finished highschool), Alberta is middle of the pack when it comes to post secondary education %.
You’re jumping to a weird conclusion (and I know you don’t believe it yourself and that you know I never said that, you’re just trying to be a contrarian), that more education = less vote when it’s the contrary, although it might happen depending on the options being offered (see Ontario reelecting Ford with an abysmal vote attendance). Today’s tendency is more about people that didn’t use to vote now going because of polarization and having parties that “speak to them” and it works because…
The most educated also tend to live in urban locations, since they’re not spread out over the territory and the FPTP system not being proportional it means that cities lean left but rural/suburban districts (leaning right/more right than cities [see Toronto vs its suburbs]) represent a majority of the seats (see… well there’s tons of elections where the party that wins a majority of the seats didn’t get a majority of the votes or similar aberrations, like the Alberta conservatives losing 11 seats with 2% less votes but the NDP winning 15 seats with 11% more votes compared to the previous election).
There’s also more options left of the conservatives than there are right of the conservatives in Canada, so the vote on the left gets divided more.
https://www.narcity.com/least-educated-provinces-territories-canada
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11162-022-09717-4
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*by whatever fucking definition we, the UCP, make up
We’ve been headed that way for at least two decades, and they have another decade to figure it out, and they’re acting all shocked pikachu they finally will have to care about their emissions?
The more you postpone acting, the more it’s gonna hurt when we have no choice but to cut emissions to survive.
1300 votes. We were so close.
Two things:
It’s easy to ask “why didn’t Alberta diversify a bit more so this wouldn’t have been so ‘impossible’ to do?” From this point of view, all the fuss being made comes off as Alberta whining because of their own short-sightedness.
Second, the AESO is contradicting themselves now to match the UCP narrative? Sourced from here:
Last year, an AESO report said there are multiple pathways to achieve net-zero emissions in the province’s power system by 2035, estimating the transition would require an additional $44 billion to $52 billion of investment.
Now they’re saying:
Alberta won’t have enough supply to ensure the reliability of the system in 2035 and the severity of a shortfall would increase over the years.
??
It’s easy to ask "why didn’t Alberta diversify a bit more
It’s a harder question when we consider that diversification and diverse investments was the biggest plank of the platform Peter Lougheed won the province with and gave the Cons their first victory over the strong NDP incumbents in a long time.
Like, the Cons took the province on that platform.
Now ask why it didn’t happen. (hint: greed)
Makes sense when you realize the Albertan politicians are all suckling at the big oil teets.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Hours after the operators of the province’s power grid warned that new federal electricity regulations could lead to blackouts, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her government is preparing for the possibility of enacting her signature legislation in an effort to push back against Ottawa’s planned emissions reductions.
Smith’s Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, which was passed late last year, has a stated purpose to direct provincial agencies to ignore federal laws deemed unconstitutional, though there has long been contention around how it would work in practice.
“Regardless of how much intermittent wind and solar Alberta has, the provincial grid will need sufficient dispatchable generation to meet the cold, dark, windless winter nights that we have in this province and form our peak load conditions,” he said.
Blake Shaffer, a University of Calgary economist who specializes in electricity markets, says it’s difficult to comment on the assessment released by AESO on Thursday, as the details of their modelling work and the assumptions that go into it haven’t been provided.
The Pembina Institute, a renewable energy think tank, also called for AESO to release its modelling on Thursday, writing in a statement that the operator’s conclusion that the CER would lead to a reliability risk in 2035 was “a big claim to be issued in a two-page report.”
“We ask AESO to release the full analysis that supports this claim, including its assumptions for growth in renewable energy, storage, transmission interties and natural gas with carbon capture,” wrote Jason Wang, senior analyst with the Pembina Institute.
The original article contains 1,224 words, the summary contains 252 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If you want a taste of what happens when you run your own independent power grid just look at Texas, the state most closely in culture to Alberta. Power costs skyrocketing, unreliable power and no plan to increase power generation.
@Cobrachickenwing Alberta already has market-driven pricing, resulting in large manufacturers shutting down operations when the electricity costs outweigh potential profits from the manufactured goods. AB’s management here costs jobs.
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Oh, I get it. You’re just trolling, but poorly. Have some imagination at least…
Slightly. 😉
I still believe this falls firmly under provincial rights. Ensuring stability of the electric grid is a matter of life and death in the north. The Feds are unwilling to understand that.
We’ve known about this problem for over 20 years now. Alberta has done the bare minimum to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels for electrical generation.
And Alberta still has 12 years to bring new capacity online. That will have been 32 years in which they sat with their hands against their ears and did little but yell OIL OIL OIL!
If the Albertans government was so concerned for those in the north of the Province, they would have got to work decades ago. Global warming isn’t a new phenomenon they’ve only known about for the least 2 years. Other Provinces have successfully shut down their CO2 emitting power plants during this time — Alberta absolutely should not get a pass on this as a reward for doing close to squat for the least 2 decades.
Then perhaps they should stop subsidizing the on-it’s-way-out o&g sector and use that money to modernize the grids you’re saying won’t work.
It’s really not that difficult.
Who?
