Large renewable energy projects are now able to get approved again in Alberta.
Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf says they wanted the Alberta Utliities Commission to have more thorough guidelines for the renewables sector.
“We saw renewables coming to Alberta in huge numbers and our system wasn’t necessarily designed to handle renewables. It was designed around coal fired generation and stable transmission lines in 15 sites, and now we’re at hundreds and hundreds of sites. We just saw a rapidly changing scenario that was actually causing some instability because the characteristics around renewables change.”
Neudorf says they want to make sure that the electricity grid is reliable, affordable and sustainable and want to attract investment through “stability and clear guidelines”.
“We’ve made it clear that agriculture is a pretty big part of Alberta and on those really highly productive lands, we just have to make sure that we can do both if they want to choose to go that way. We’ve also made it known that tourism is really important in Alberta and the size of particularly wind turbines has grown over the years and we want to make sure that we don’t have any negative impacts on our pristine landscapes.”
You can listen to the full interview we did with the minister below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
