Group could help Alberta ‘green the grid’

But wind energy association seeks government help in return

Alberta could green its image and add plenty of new turbines over the next few years with the right government incentives, the Canadian Wind Energy Association said in a report released Wednesday.

With Wind vision 2025, initiated after the province last year suggested it wanted to promote more sustainable energy on the power grid — which relies heavily on coalfired generation — the association identified two policies that would help the industry.

A “clean electricity standard” would impose a maximum green house gas emission-- intensity level, and would work in concert with an expansion and increase in the existing program that charges large emitters a penalty of $15 a tonne over a specified limit.

“We have to respect Alberta’s competitive system, its free market. But we see AESO (Alberta Electric System Operator) making some assumptions about the amount of wind that we will have on the grid in the next decade, and we don’t share those assumptions,” said Robert Hornung, CanWEA’s president, who thinks future projects are difficult to finance without changes in the marketplace.

AESO has forecast Alberta will need 7,000 megawatts of new power generation by 2022 — about 5,000 MW to replace retiring coal plants and another 2,000 MW to cover increased demand. It assumes 2,206 MW of wind farm capacity will be operational by then.

But Edmonton-based Capital Power Corp., a large wind power producer and CanWEA member, disagrees with the suggestions.

“This plan amounts to forcing retailers, and that includes large industrials, to contract to build new sources of renewable power,” said Martin Kennedy, vice-president for external affairs. “We develop renewables… without customers giving us a subsidy or taxpayers being on the hook. We take it at our own risk.”

Kennedy said between 2004 and 2012, 40 per cent of the new generation added to the Alberta grid was renewable energy.

And while Capital Power recently opened Alberta’s largest wind farm at Halkirk — using California green credits to make the project economic — and Enbridge is partnering with another firm at the Blackspring Ridge project using similar credits, a Spanish company this week announced a $200 million project for the Medicine Hat area with no such credits or subsidies.

Hornung said Alberta has “very high-quality” wind potential, and the new high-tech, low-speed turbines mean the giant blades would be producing energy about 40 per cent of the time, higher than the national average. And because wind farms can be located over a large portion of southern Alberta, more turbines are turning at different times as weather systems pass.

“It is a very exploitable wind resource over a very broad area,” Hornung said.

Lana Norgaard, Alberta’s regional director for CanWEA, said the Wind vision 2025 report is “a progressive work that will open up conversations.”

And the new natural gas-fired turbines planned for the province which start very quickly and can be considered “peaking” plants, will work hand-in-glove with wind, she said.

“Wind is a nice dancing partner for natural gas (to cover the demand when the wind isn’t blowing). Alberta doesn’t have to have a sole source for energy with natural gas, so wind is a good hedge.”

In one of the report’s scenarios, it projected that with a long-term cost of $84 per megawatt hour, wind could be much bigger in Alberta. But with market prices currently in the $60 per megawatt hour range, and no longterm contracts available, developers are finding it nearly impossible to get funding for new wind projects.

“We see a lot of natural-gas-fired generation being built out, but there are risks in relying too heavily on gas,” said Hornung. “We don’t know where the price of gas will be in 20 years. And natural gas is not carbon free — we could see a decline in emissions as coal is replaced but emissions will eventually increase as the number of gas plants increases.”

In an email, Energy Minister Ken Hughes said he was “open to all suggestions from those in the electricity market on how we can green Alberta’s energy grid,” and looked forward to reviewing CanWEA’s report.

Wind power currently represents eight per cent of the province’s total installed capacity, at more than 1,100 megawatts.