Alberta and the U.S. have been arguing over electricity — but a ‘win-win’ may be in sight

After months of complaints from Montana politicians and scrutiny from U.S. trade officials, Alberta’s utilities minister says he recently had a great chat with a Montana legislator who has been critical of the province’s approach to electricity.

And that legislator says he’s now confident there’s a resolution in the cards.

In early January, Alberta Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf travelled south of the border to Helena, Montana’s capital city, on a mission to strengthen cross-border energy partnerships.

But the minister’s itinerary, which included meetings with the local chamber of commerce and Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, irked Daniel Zolnikov, a Republican state senator from Billings who chairs a Montana legislative committee studying technology and energy.

In January, Zolnikov told CBC News it was “kind of a slight” to not meet with legislators, especially those who had been working on such issues for more than a decade.

“I’ve passed multiple transmission laws myself … for them just to say, OK, we’re going to meet with the governor’s office … I’d say that’s not a good way to start the conversation,” he said at the time.

Zolnikov expressed his view of the problem at the time: that Alberta’s electricity rules sometimes block Montana electricity from being sold into Alberta, hurting state power producers and discouraging cross-border transmission investment.

Alberta, for its part, has long rejected the claim that Montana is being treated unfairly.

Since that missed connection earlier this year, Neudorf and Zolnikov have spoken directly.

The Alberta minister said in that conversation, he emphasized how dramatically Alberta’s electricity market has changed in recent years.

“We had a great chat,” Neudorf said in an interview.

The province has added thousands of megawatts of renewable power in just a few years and fully phased out coal power in 2024. Alberta has also gone from being a net importer of electricity, buying power from jurisdictions like British Columbia and Montana, to a net exporter.

Neudorf argues that the challenges at hand are a consequence of that market evolution, something he said he spoke with Zolnikov about.

“Then, we point to things that we're continuing to work on and solutions that we are trying to bring to bear,” he said.