A small wind turbine spins over Paul McLauchlin’s farm in Ponoka County, Alta. It’s a breezy day here, an hour south of Edmonton.
McLauchlin is so proud of his DIY setup that you would never guess this is the same man leading the charge against Alberta’s burgeoning renewable energy industry. Those natural resources, combined with a unique competitive power market, have made Canada’s oil and gas province an unlikely leader in green energy.in Alberta. Five billion dollars of investment have been injected into the renewable energy market since 2019, and this year was poised to be an even bigger year for the industry, with an estimated $1.5 billion worth of projects in the queue.
“We will phase out all coal emissions by 2030 and we will encourage the generation of clean, renewable electricity in its place,” the then-premier said at the time.This wind farm in 40 Mile County in southeastern Alberta was developed by oil giant Suncor and then purchased by ATCO. Oil and gas companies have become major players in Alberta’s renewable energy boom.The province is now expected to reach that target as early as six years ahead of schedule.
Power purchase agreements, or PPAs, have been a crucial backing force for the province’s renewable energy industry.“ create certainty for both sides,” Noel explains. Companies get a guaranteed price for the green electricity generated, and subsequent renewable energy certificates they then use to offset their own emissions.
Once ATCO’s Deerfoot site is electrified at the end of November, it will become the latest addition to the company’s growing portfolio of renewables, which includes wind and solar assets acquired from oilsands giant Suncor earlier this year for $730 million. The sudden moratorium was unprecedented; no other industry in Alberta has experienced anything like it — not even when oil and gas development was raging through the province in the mid-2000s.
McLauchlin remembers a call where a resident of 40 Mile County described irrigation pivots, used to water agricultural land, being pulled out of the ground so that solar panels could be installed.Click to share quote on Twitter: "I'm like, 'Woah, we have a land use policy problem here.'"