Alberta premier pitches more gas-fired power plants as UN climate panel calls for phaseout
CBC
Premier Danielle Smith says renewable energy is unreliable and that Alberta should build additional gas-fired power plants for a more predictable source of electricity.
"This is a natural gas basin," Smith told delegates at the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) convention in Edmonton on Wednesday. "We are a natural gas province. And we will continue to build natural gas power plants, because that is what makes sense in Alberta."
In response to questions from rural councillors, Smith also said she's looking at ways to ensure solar and wind companies set aside money to reclaim land in the future for when a renewable installation is dismantled.
"I think that it needs to be addressed at the start, or we're going to have the same problem that we had with the orphan wells, and why would we want to bring that to the province of Alberta?" said Red Deer County Mayor Jim Wood.
Smith said she met with power providers and learned the province's electricity grid twice came close to needing more power than it could supply in the last few months.
She pointed to stagnant air and solar panels covered with snow and ice leading to a dearth of wind and solar generation at those times.
The emissions from natural gas plants can be captured and sequestered to meet climate targets, she said.
Smith's promotion of more natural gas-fired power plants comes days after the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said wealthy countries should phase out gas plants by 2035 to prevent irreversible damage to the planet.
The premier said it concerns her to see solar panels and wind farms installed on arable land.
Kara Westerlund, vice-president of RMA, says rural councils share that concern. She told reporters the installations should be going onto brownfields rather than "taking some of the best growing soils and agricultural land out of production."
She sees renewable energy sources as complementary to oil and gas.
"We've never felt that one is going to replace the other," Westerlund said.
RMA members previously voted for a resolution calling on the province to require renewable companies to pay for a bond that would cover the costs of removing solar panels or wind turbines past their useful lives.
The province already has a regulation from 2018 that stipulates how the sites are to be decommissioned.
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