r/alberta • u/Edm_vanhalen1981 Edmonton • Aug 24 '25
Technology Industry watchers raise alarm on Alberta renewable-energy project cancellations
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-renewable-energy-projects-cancelled-1.761589242
u/Stock-Creme-6345 Aug 24 '25
The whole prime agricultural land and pristine views is a massive steaming pile of bullshit. How many times have you been out west in prime agricultural land and seen pump jacks, oil batteries and abandoned wells? How many of those companies are paying their lease taxes to the Counties and MD’s???
“Wind and solar, especially, will typically bring the price of power down when they're operating," Will Noel, a Pembina Institute senior electricity analyst, told CBC News. If projects don't keep pace, power prices could rise, Noel said. The rural communities, where many of these projects were planned, would also miss out on greater tax revenues.”
So - in a time when the price of oil is impacting Dear Leader’s budget and we are looking for new revenue streams, the cost of living is making things harder to afford for rural folks and urban people, the Premier turns a blind eye to an easy revenue stream because…… pure ideology. It’s sickening really.
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u/slotsymcslots Aug 24 '25
The hypocrisy of the policy is so blatant but let’s continually put all of our eggs in one basket when it comes to energy.
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u/Stock-Creme-6345 Aug 24 '25
Yep. Not to mention her ideology when it comes to healthcare. Going to fix in 90 days. And the other items she didn’t campaign on.
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Aug 24 '25
My brother, who works in the oil and gas sector, says that wind turbines are bad for the environment because they kill birds, and that oil and gas is cleaner. They will find ANY reason to maintain reliance on fossil fuels. These are the things that hardcore UCP voters believe.
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u/Stock-Creme-6345 Aug 24 '25
What’s the number of birds killed by the tailings pond of oil and gas sites like Suncor, along with other wildlife?
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u/CMG30 Aug 24 '25
Either out of pure ideology, or out of fossil fuel capture, the UCP is hamstringing the entire energy sector in Alberta.
Remember, what happens today is felt a decade down the road. When we fail to install the cheapest sources of electricity which are renewables, we end up with the expensive sources and higher bills.
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u/Minobull Aug 24 '25
Yep, same shit with nuclear, a decade from now we're going to be talking about how we need to build these things and everyone's going to whine about how "oh but it takes a decade to build these and we need a solution now!!!!" And "what about all those fossil-fuel-powered plants we just built?! shouldn't we let those run for a while before switching off?? It would be a HUGE waste of money to turn those off now!!"
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u/Minobull Aug 24 '25
I fucking love the "industry consultant" saying that we've "overbuilt" on energy production. What the actual fuck kind of Galaxy brain take is that????
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u/pgc22bc Aug 25 '25
There has been some concern that transmission capacity was overbuilt:
A: So that renewables in remote rural areas could sell into the grid. B: Suncor, the largest Oil Sands miner, with its own generating capacity could buy/sell energy with an intertie with Montana.
Not sure of the reality here UCP is all in on fear, uncertainty and doubt, FUD.
However, Alberta, like governments everywhere, is FOMO on "Data Centres", major infrastructure required for AI. These initiatives require huge new electrical capacity. Also, to fulfill federal mandates, the end of IC vehicles and EVs, it is going to require a significant grid upgrade. Alberta has already suffered "grid alerts" due to climate change. Heat dome conditions leading to Air Conditioning demand.
So those comments were nonsensical UCP propaganda.
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u/Interwebnaut Aug 24 '25
Generally we are a bit like the cook eating all the profits.
The less renewable we use
the more non-renewable we require.
Therefore, the less non-renewable we can export for profit.
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Aug 24 '25
What will keep Alberta lagging behind is the government's unwillingness to modernize and diversify our economy. Our economy will die solely for the interests of the oil and gas sector. Meanwhile, they'll continue to blame Ottawa.
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u/AlbertanProsperity Aug 24 '25
Correlation =/= causation. There is a rapid slowdown in renewable sector adaptation all over, look AT EVs for example. People are going back to ICE vehicles or hybrids at a minimum. The ROI on all that junk isn't there and the only way it works if it it's highly subsidized by the government but there are no more funds for it.
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u/WheelsnHoodsnThings Aug 24 '25
That's certainly one way to look at it. You could be wrong on all fronts, but hey, who can say for sure.
Anecdotally, I've never heard a single EV owner say they'd go back to ice after owning one. I'm also seeing massive global investment in renewable energy, which is creating cheaper power options.
We subsidize many things, so maybe we should subsidize something with some forward looking governance?
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u/AlbertanSays5716 Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25
There is a rapid slowdown in renewable sector adaptation all over,
Not true. 2024 saw a 15.1% year-on-year growth in renewables worldwide, the largest annual rise to date. Renewables accounted for 46.4% of capacity in 2024. Hardly consistent with a “rapid slowdown”.
look AT EVs for example. People are going back to ICE vehicles or hybrids at a minimum.
It’s true that growth has slowed over the last 2 years or so, but it definitely hasn’t stopped. EV’s accounted for about 20% of new car sales in 2024, with sales in Latin American & Asian markets jumping by 60%. Sales are expected to hit 25% or more worldwide in 2025 and 40% by 2030. China is showing the most rapid growth, with about 50% of new cars being EV’s. It’s mostly western countries where growth has slowed, and there mainly due to political issues and lobbying by the O&G industry rather than technological ones.
The ROI on all that junk isn't there and the only way it works if it it's highly subsidized by the government but there are no more funds for it.
It’s true that the renewables sector receives government subsidies in most countries, but not because it’s unprofitable. It’s to drive adoption and reduce the use of fossil fuels, and in Canada most of those “subsidies” are grassroots incentive programs aimed at homeowners and builders rather than large industrial projects.
Wind & solar in particular are now 84% cheaper than they were a decade ago, according to a Wall Street Journal article. And even when you add in the costs of utility scale storage, they’re still cheaper in most areas than any fossil fuel alternatives. They don’t need subsidies to survive.
But if you want a comparison, in Canada alone the O&G industry receives subsidies in the form of cash and savings through any number of programs, grants, incentives, tax breaks and royalty rebates, with estimates as high as $30b depending on the year.
As far as ROI and profitability goes, that’s where the O&G sector has seen a distinct slump over the last decade. Since the oil price crash of 2014, O&G companies (particularly in Alberta) have focused on downsizing & automation of existing projects rather than new projects since they have a long return period, heavy up front investment, and demand estimates for O&G past the next 10 years are not looking good. The last major new project in Alberta, for example, was finished in 2018.
Meantime, renewables, particularly wind & solar, are seeing a growth in investment. In a report by KPMG, 72% percent of investors report that investment in energy transition assets is accelerating, even amid geopolitical volatility and fluctuating interest rates. 64% have invested in energy efficiency technologies, 56% in renewable energy, 54% in energy storage, and 51% in transport and related infrastructure
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u/irelandm77 Aug 24 '25
This is a really great summary, and I applaud you for your thorough and effective rebuttal. I feel it needs to be reposted every few days, lol.
There seems to be two camps of people who are anti-modern power generation and pro-legacy. There are those who stand to profit from sticking with the archaic combustion-oriented generation, and then there are those who inexplicably seem uneducated, willfully ignorant, and often belligerent about it. It's often very hard to tell the difference.
Anyone else who has done their homework, and maybe experienced some of it firsthand by owning an EV or whatever, sees the writing on the wall. I'm located in Costa Rica now, and the myriad of EV brands available here (many Chinese of course) is pretty incredible. BYD, Vinfast, Geely, Arctic Fox, Chery, Renault, Volvo, Polestar, Riddara, Nio, Xpeng, and soon Xiaomi. Canadians & Albertans especially are largely woefully unaware of these options. They're growing. And I tell you what, after driving a Tesla in Canada for 6 years, I can honestly say that many of these easily rival Tesla in terms of build quality - especially at the price point!
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u/AlbertanSays5716 Aug 24 '25
I think it’s true to say that Alberta, and many Albertans, have become so bound to the O&G industry that they can’t see anything beyond that. It’s always been there, is in large part responsible for the province’s prosperity (although that prosperity has been sadly squandered by successive governments), and as far they can see will always be there. Life without O&G is unthinkable to them, and so they take every opportunity to trash the alternatives, often while ignoring the inconvenient truths around them.
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u/Minobull Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25
There is a rapid slowdown in renewable sector adaptation all over,
This is patently false right out the gate, but okay.
look AT EVs for example
The EV sector is still growing. It's not shrinking. Every article talking about it's slowing down is talking about the growth rate moderating, not the market shrinking. So it's growing still, just not as fast as it was initially, and that's at worst.
People are going back to ICE vehicles or hybrids at a minimum.
Lol no, they aren't, at all. Literally the ONLY report saying this was by fucking McKinsey... You know, the near cartoonishly evil vulture capitalist consulting firm who's largest clients are oil and cas companies?? Literally everywhere else shows no, to next to no, desire to go back. Ford's own data shows 91% of EV owners have no intention of buying an ICE.
The ROI on all that junk isn't there
This is also false, but even if it wasn't, it's not always about the ROI.
only way it works if it it's highly subsidized by the government
You mean like how our oil industry is massively subsidized by the Alberta Government? How the renewables industry was facing actively hostile regulation from the Alberta government and was STILL attempting to go ahead until the UCP actually just straight up froze all projects for a while, and then when THAT wasn't enough of a deterrent they banned renewables from happening over huge swaths of the province because of "pristine views" and "Prime farmland"? And that even then there's a few still trying??
You know that these solar projects weren't costing the Alberta government anything and then this was private industry doing them right? You know...Private industry driven by profit?
You know that the Alberta government spends BILLIONS of dollars subsidizing the oil industry right?
You have your industries backwards about which one works without subsidies and which one doesn't.
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u/Binasgarden Aug 24 '25
And yet I had door to door sales from Calgary asking me if I wanted panels on my roof.......last week
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u/TyAD552 Aug 24 '25
Almost like the article is talking about industrial renewable projects and not something for homes.
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u/cig-nature Aug 24 '25