Deadline a non-starter for Saskpower
Ottawa's 2035 energy target not realistic: president
Saskpower president Rupen Pandya spent the first 11 minutes and 30 seconds of Tuesday's news conference explaining why the Crown electrical utility can't meet a federal goal of zero net carbon emissions by 2035.
For those on the left and right who can still park their personal politics, it's worth a listen.
Saskpower generates 65 per cent of its 5,437-megawatt current generating capacity (and it needs to increase that to more than 7,000 megawatts by 2035 to meet population and economic growth projections) from fossil fuels, including 40 per cent from natural gas and 25 per cent from coal, Pandya said.
Another 16 per cent comes through hydro, 11 per cent wind, five per cent power agreements and three per cent solar and other sources like net-metering.
Sure, there are some options like buying more green hydroelectric power from Manitoba, but Pandya stressed our eastern neighbours only have 100 to 200 more megawatts to sell before they max out.
The career civil servant and former deputy finance minister noted the ongoing unreliability and unavailability of green sources on calm, cloudy and cold days for Saskpower, which must maintain 80 per cent of its baseload power from more reliable sources.
Should we have made progress on renewables? One might argue the Sask. Party government spent too much time and money mucking about with a $1.5-billion carbon capture and storage project, while taxing electric cars.
His best point? Excluding that 1,500 to 2,000 extra megawatts we need, the cost of replacing the 65 per cent of power generated from fossil fuels within the next 12 years would mean $46 billion in Saskpower capital spending.
That would mean a minimum 107 per cent increase on your Saskpower bill, which would require things like building small modular nuclear reactors that Pandya described as an impossibility.
Again, this is Pandya calling meeting the feds' goal “impossible and unachievable” — not Premier Scott Moe.
In fact, Moe was comparatively neutral at the Tuesday ews conference ... sort of.
“We will not risk plunging our homes, our schools, our hospitals, our special care homes, our businesses into the cold and darkness because of the ideological whims of others,” Moe said at one point.
Evidently, old habits are hard to break.
Moe did rub up against his old fed-bashing rhetoric, but neither he nor Justice Minister Bronwyn Eyre engaged in their usual sabre-rattling rhetoric threatening federal lawsuits.
Instead, Eyre simply explained that the provincial government has written to the federal government outlining the province's legitimate concerns, and reminded us that control over the operation of the Crown corporations and their operations and natural resources remain a provincial jurisdiction.
One might note the ironic timing of Tuesday's announcement — a day when the province was being choked by warming planet mid-may forest fire smoke that pushed air quality to 11 on a scale of one to 10, to a level where the air quality in Regina and Saskatoon was worse than that in Beijing.
Some might question whether Eyre — who once wrote in a newspaper column that scientific proof of global warming was “witchcraft thinking ” — should have been there at all.
But while it's not what environmentalists and the left believe or want to hear, there is no question the
feds “have been moving the goalposts,” as even noted by NDP economic critic Aleana Young. Responsibly, the NDP supported the position that net zero at Saskpower can't be done by 2035.
One wonders how truly serious even the federal Liberals are about this goal, given the statement Wednesday from federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson's communication director Ian Cameron suggesting “the federal government is keen to work with every province and territory to develop a clean, reliable and affordable grid.”
To that end, Moe's counter-proposal of net zero by 2050 with Ottawa assuming 75 per cent of the cost of Saskatchewan's first small modular nuclear reactor and 50 per cent of any further new low-emission renewable power seems a great place to start this serious discussion.
As Pandya pointed out, Saskpower has a serious problem best solved without any more tiresome rhetoric.