Phillips calls on UCP to end renewable energy moratorium

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on August 19, 2023.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

NDP MLA for Lethbridge West Shannon Phillips is demanding that the UCP immediately lift the six-month moratorium on solar and wind project approvals.
In a press conference at her constituency office on Friday, Phillips said Lethbridge East UCP MLA and Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf “should know better given the economic effects of renewable energy in this city.”
She said the moratorium puts jobs in Alberta at risk, noting that four projects near Medicine Hat that are now on hold are jeopardizing potentially 3,000 construction job, those projects which are worth $1.7 billion in investment.
Phillips also pointed out that almost half of Vulcan County’s tax base comes from renewables.
Phillips said the moratorium announced two weeks ago “is anti-business and will it will destroy jobs and investment in southern Alberta. Alberta, and particularly the Lethbridge region, has been a leader in renewable energy development for going on 40 years now,” said Phillips.
When the NDP was in government it introduced an electricity program that leveraged the free market and privatized electricity system “to see the momentum that we’re seeing in the industry today. We leveraged market forces to bring billions of dollars of new investment into our electricity grid without any kind of government subsidy, using the forces of competition and procurement to make sure that we had new electricity power coming onto our grid starting in 2017,” she said.
The result was job creation including in southern Alberta, Phillips said, with some projects having Indigenous equity participation – one from the Blood Tribe – which brought revenues to Indigenous nations as well as to private land owners and through property taxes to municipalities.
“This has been a tremendous source of diversification of tax base for southern Alberta municipalities,” Phillips added.
“But on a whim Danielle Smith and Nathan Neudorf decided to interfere in the free market. They put all of that at risk and they did that without any consultation or notice with the industry, putting themselves in legal jeopardy and putting our reputation at risk as a good place to invest,” said Phillips.
She said a project in Lethbridge County has been delayed and the status quo is being maintained by its developer with the effects expected to be felt long after the moratorium ends.
“What she really has done is ban development in the entire clean technology industry,” said Phillips of the premier.
She said “the UCP has shut the door on those competitive forces that brought us low-cost reliable electricity over the last 30 years.”
The moratorium not only puts jobs at risk but “is anti-business and it damages Alberta’s reputation as a place to invest,” she said.
In a recent interview with The Herald, Neudorf said the province does support renewable energy but there are costs associated with getting that energy online since the province has to pay for the costs of constructing transmission lines from projects to the electrical grid.
“Every time there’s a new energy generator put online, we’re obligated to build the transmission lines out there and the ratepayers pay for it,” Neudorf said.
Neudorf said even if projects were approved today, they wouldn’t be built this winter but rather next summer “so we’re trying to get this done so they can build next summer if they are approved to proceed.”

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