Saskatchewan isn’t taking Alberta’s electricity crisis lying down. Instead, it’s coming to a coal-fired rescue and defying Ottawa to stop it.On Monday, the Land of Living Skies took the unusual step of restarting the Boundary Dam’s #4 coal-fired power unit that was originally supposed to shut down in 2021. Since then it has been used intermittently to provide base load backup generation as needed. The most recent plan was to shut it down for good last March, but with the benefit of hindsight that was was fortuitously extended to this spring..In a post on Twitter ("X"), Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said it was done for the good of all of Western Canada after the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) was forced to issue four grid alerts in four days after a bout of freezing temperatures that threatened rolling blackouts.And in fact, it was Saskatchewan that stepped up by supplying more than 150 megawatts of additional supply when it was needed most.“We will not risk plunging our homes, schools, hospitals, special care homes and our businesses into the cold and darkness because of the ideological whims of others,” Moe said. “Net zero by 2035 is not only impossible, it’s irresponsible as it would leave Saskatchewan and Western Canadian families freezing and in the dark.”.Albertans responded by thanking the Saskatchewan premier for his foresight and generosity and blamed the former NDP government of Rachel Notley — who by happenstance stepped down as leader on Tuesday — for retiring Alberta’s coal plants too early.It comes amid lingering fallout over the AESO’s weekend alerts, which critics and the opposition NDP called politically motivated and blamed the UCP government for mismanaging Alberta’s electricity resources. Randy Boissonnault, the only federal cabinet minister from Alberta and one of only two Liberal MPs from the province, called the statements from the premiers “a petty, untrue and partisan attack” and blamed the close calls on “decades of under investment in the electricity grid.”Opposition NDP climate and energy critic Nagwan Al-Guneid blamed a "serious lack of planning" that led to the crisis and called for even more renewable energy sources — such as the ones that failed Saturday night. "This is a situation that could have been avoided by increasing supply and investing in technologies to create a reliable and affordable low-emissions grid," she said.
