Canada

Great, can't wait for our province to waste more money on unwinnable arguments

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.

“comes through with emissions caps that are unconstitutional.”

So then never

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.

??

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.

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.

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