Protecting Alberta's Electricity Grid

Albertans faced a particularly gruesome deep freeze last week, forcing renewable electricity generation to completely shut down and putting the provinces’ entire electricity grid at risk.

That deep freeze caused the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) to issue an emergency alert urging Albertans to reduce electricity usage in order to avoid rolling blackouts.

The "green revolution" undertaken by the NDP government between 2015 and 2019 was supposed to be a legacy of that government, bringing Alberta into line with the agenda of the federal government.

The Alberta government also spent four years as a doormat for federal policy after federal policy designed to eliminate oil and gas jobs, decimate Alberta’s economy, and reduce our ability to keep the heat on during the cold winter months.

Perhaps then it was opportune timing for Rachel Notley to announce her retirement, as Alberta firmly moves away from her policies and into a new era.

Whether you agree or not, the current Alberta government has made it crystal clear that they intend to defend Alberta against the federal government's agenda rather than help implement it.

In the context of electricity generation, Ottawa’s latest bout of climate extremism is expected to further weaken the grid’s ability to produce enough energy to provide Albertans with heat in the winter.

The federal government’s draft Clean Electricity Regulations come at a ridiculous cost that would impose a severe financial burden on Albertans.

Last year, AESO estimated that reaching Ottawa’s 2035 net-zero electricity grid targets would incur a staggering cost of $118 billion and still result in power outages.

To put that number in perspective, the entire budget for the province of Alberta in 2023-24 is a mere $68 billion!

The central issue at hand is that the generation of electricity falls squarely under provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government's draft net-zero regulations not only overlook this fact but explicitly aim to regulate this provincial domain.

That's why, late last year, the Alberta government used the Alberta Sovereignty Act (the key policy we proposed in our Free Alberta Strategy plan) for the first time.

The government passed a resolution under the Sovereignty Act instructing provincial government entities to reject both the constitutional legitimacy of the Clean Electricity Regulations and refuse to participate in any collaboration with the federal government on their implementation.

The Sovereignty Act was a key aspect of the Free Alberta Strategy report, which we released in September 2021, designed as a “democratic legislative framework for defending the federal-provincial division of powers while respecting Canada’s Constitution and the courts.”

Using the Sovereignty Act on this important issue is a good first step, but we need to do more.

Our friends at Project Confederation have launched a petition calling on the federal government to stop the Clean Electricity Regulations, which you can sign here.

We'll also be launching a campaign on this specific issue very soon, so if you'd like to help, please sign up now to help us out.

Please join us in defending Alberta's energy industry!

Regards,

The Free Alberta Strategy Team

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