Wind farm Alberta’s largest.
Developer’s project is Alberta’s largest
The small, sleepy town of Halkirk is home to 121 people. Its biggest claim to fame is being the birthplace of longtime NHLer Shane Doan. Well, that and the yearly Halkirk Bullarama, where cowboys take their turn on some pretty rank bulls.
But it’s a different kind of cowboy that has shaken up the town. For the next two years, the population of Halkirk will more than double as about 200 workers build the massive 150-megawatt Halkirk wind project about 120 kilometres east of Red Deer.
That’s the kind of effect a wind energy cowboy can have on a town.
Dan Balaban is the president of Greengate Power and a wind energy entrepreneur. He has gone from no experience in renewable energy to cutting deals for the largest wind farms in Canada in five years.
He’s brash, bold and confident and he’s pulling off big projects in a province that doesn’t have any subsidies and has an electrical grid dominated by coal.
“This is the third business that I’ve started up, so it’s not my first rodeo,” says Balaban.
A dedicated entrepreneur, Balaban got his start running a software company that helped oil and gas companies manage everything from inventory to greenhouse gas emissions.
“The green industry is one of the best business opportunities of the next decade. In wind energy alone, it’s been estimated there’s going to be over a trillion dollars invested in wind energy and related infrastructure over the next decade.”
While many other wind companies were wrestling over limited space and transmission capacity in the windy Pincher Creek corridor of Alberta, Greengate headed up the highway in the opposite direction.
“Instead of following the wind, like every body else does, we followed the transmission lines, because unless you can connect into the transmission grid you can’t bring your product to market as a wind energy project.”
“The second thing that we did is that we found the best market in the world in which we could sell the environmental benefits that are generated by our projects.
“We have done the first and only deal to sell our renewable energy credits to a Californiabased utility,” says Balaban. This is great for Greengate Power, but some wonder why Alberta, a province burdened with reputation issues because of fossil fuel pollution, isn’t investing in clean energy.
Balaban and his company Greengate Power are project developers. Greengate Power does the heavy lifting — weaving through unclear permitting processes, negotiating with landowners who must participate voluntarily and then they must drum up hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the projects.
That’s what makes Greengate’s Halkirk project such a milestone. Greengate sold the shovel-ready Halkirk project to Edmonton-based utility Capital Power for $33 million.
Now under construction, the 150-megawatt Halkirk wind project will consist of 83 giant Vestas V80 wind turbines. These 80-metre-tall behemoths will generate enough electricity to power 50,000 homes in Alberta and reduce emissions equivalent to taking 60,000 cars off the road.
Unlike the oil and gas industry where landowners are obligated to deal with the companies who own the mineral rights, Greengate is only able to access private land through careful negotiations and by keeping everybody happy. There is no legal imperative compelling farmers to work with them.
Greengate negotiates carefully and pays some rent to both the farmers that have turbines on their lands and their neighbours that don’t. Balaban says that creating a “truly equitable compensation model” helped Greengate acquire enough land for its upcoming 300-megawatt Blackspring Ridge project without a single outstanding public objection.
But what about wildlife impacts?
“All sources of energy are going to have impacts on wildlife, but the impacts that wind has on wildlife are very benign relative to other sources of energy,” says Balaban.
One study done by the New York State Energy Research and Development authority found wind to have the second lowest impact on wildlife of all the methods of generating electricity. These days Balaban says wind developers must do environmental assessments, survey the wildlife before construction and monitor wildlife effects post-construction to ensure minimal wildlife impacts.
Halkirk will be the largest wind project in Alberta. Balaban’s next project, called Blackspring Ridge 1, is set for completion at the end of 2013 and at 300 megawatts promises to be the largest wind farm in Canada.