So what are Ottawa's draft electricity emissions regulations all about, anyway?

On Monday, Alberta tabled a bill that would invoke its Sovereignty Act for the first time, in response to the federal government's proposed regulations to reduce emissions from electricity generation to net-zero.

Shortly after, Premier Danielle Smith appeared on CBC's Power & Politics to discuss the move.

Host David Cochrane asked why her government was invoking the Sovereignty Act now while an Alberta-Ottawa working group was in the process of collaborating on the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations (CER), which are still in draft form.

"We had to draw a pretty firm line here," Smith replied. "We just know that 2035 target is not achievable."

Immediately following her interview, Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson spoke with Cochrane. Wilkinson called Alberta's move unfortunate, and said it represented a "victory of partisan politics over good public policy."

If you haven't been following this debate closely, it can be difficult to suss out exactly what everyone is talking about here. Perhaps you've only vaguely heard of "net-zero" and "2035" but are fuzzy on the details. Or maybe you've just seen the Alberta government's advertisements about freezing in the dark.

Though the issue may have been framed by politicians as involving a rigid 2035 net-zero deadline, when no more natural-gas-fired electricity generation will be allowed, the reality is more nuanced. The draft regulations have all sorts of exceptions that allow for significant amounts of emissions from electricity generation to continue well into the 2040s — and even some in 2050 and beyond.

So what's actually going on here?

Back in August, the federal government released the draft version of the CER, a set of rules for transitioning Canada's electricity grid to net-zero starting in 2035. The United States, among other G7 countries, have similar goals.

The regulations are necessary, in the view of the federal government, not just to meet Canada's climate commitments but also to compete economically in a low-carbon future.

The regulations as proposed would see facilities that produce electricity being subject to a performance standard — with some exceptions.

By 2035, many facilities that generate electricity from natural gas (or other carbon-emitting fuel sources) would have to find ways to reduce emissions, whether that's carbon capture and storage or some other method.

Alberta has said it supports the implementation of a carbon-neutral power grid, but only by 2050. The province says it does not have enough non-emitting base load electricity sources such as hydro and nuclear available, and doesn't have enough time to build them by 2035.

The 2035 date has been held up by both provincial and federal politicians as a sort of deadline for all this.