Premier Wall’s lighter approach to climate change

Before one gets overly critical of Premier Brad Wall’s lighter response to climate change, compared with what we saw from Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley, there are a few things to consider.

Alberta got much richer off its fossil fuels and still has much greater fossil fuel reserves. As such, it can be argued Notley and Alberta needed to make a bigger splash, as she clearly did in her announcement on Sunday that included a carbon tax on every Albertan, phasing out most coal-fired electrical generation by 2030 and a greenhouse-gas-emissions cap for oilsands production.

Respected Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid rightly described Alberta’s new climate action plan as “the most radical policy shift ever seen” — one that may even be re-engineering the entire Alberta economy.

The latter idea might be a little premature, but let us acknowledge that Notley’s proposal was both bigger and more environmentally in tune with the times than what we heard in Regina Monday — an announcement from SaskPower president Mike Marsh and Economy Minister Bill Boyd, with neither Wall nor Environment Minister Herb Cox in sight. (In fact, both Wall and his caucus tweeted Monday that the premier was at the First Ministers’ conference largely to represent the concerns of laid-off oil workers, rather than environmental concerns.)

In fairness, SaskPower called for doubling the percentage of renewable electricity generation “capacity” in Saskatchewan by 2030 through a combination of wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and hydro — all to complement the controversial $1.5-billion Boundary Dam carbon capture project.

The goal is to have wind power (currently, five per cent capacity when fully working, but 2.7 per cent in reality) increase to 30 per cent by 2030, while biomass, geothermal and solar will account for another five per cent. Strangely, the plan calls for a reduction in hydro-generated electricity from 20 per cent today to 15 per cent in 2030.

One of the big problems with SaskPower’s proposal is its ambiguous language, like “up to 50 per cent generating capacity” and “goals.” In fact, one of the few moments of levity at Monday’s SaskPower event was Boyd explaining that “in hindsight” his Saskatchewan Party government might have been too “firm” in setting targets in the past. (See: Boundary Dam.)

Moreover, while SaskPower insisted Monday there are three major windpower projects “already approved or in development that will add another 207 MW of renewable generation by 2020,” environmental approval is still needed. Projects like the one at Chaplin are near a major waterfowl and bird sanctuary. Again, we saw no environment minister in sight.

But while Alberta’s plan to replace two-thirds of coal electrical generation (now accounting for 55 per cent of that province’s electrical power) with renewables seems both more ambitious and better defined than what we heard from Boyd and SaskPower, Alberta’s plan also has its drawbacks. Affordability for both business and ordinary Albertans is one of them.

Alberta’s plans for a legislated emissions cap of no more than 100 megatonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) on oilsands operations will also hit the province hard.

Albertans will pay 4.7 cents more per litre for gas at the pumps in 2017, 5.5 cents more per litre of diesel and an extra $320 for home heating in 2017 that will increase to $470 by 2018.

The cost of SaskPower’s program is pricey — an additional $1 a month per average SaskPower electrical bill, that corporation officials say will add up to an additional five-per-cent increase in the next 15 years on top of whatever other increases SaskPower has in mind. (Remember: we are already paying $1.5 billion for Boundary Dam 3 and will likely pay another billion dollars to expand carbon capture to Units 4 and 5.)

So in reality, Saskatchewan has already paid for our GHG emissions (albeit, under the hope and prayer that hundreds of millions spent on carbon capture actually works to capacity). In contrast, Albertans haven’t shelled out on things like carbon capture. And for years, Albertans have even gotten away with low gas taxes.

So if Alberta is now making a bigger splash on climate change, maybe it’s partly because Saskatchewan has had a bit of a head start.