Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is threatening to go her own way over Ottawa’s proposed regulations to decarbonize the province’s electrical grid, even at the risk of sparking a constitutional crisis..Speaking in Calgary on Monday, Smith redrew her proverbial ’line in the sand’ after telling Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault on the weekend he could “pound” on it in an interview with a local newspaper columnist..That in turn sparked a war of words on X (formerly Twitter) that raged in the info-sphere up until her prepared remarks. The pair reportedly exchanged heated emails all weekend over her comments..Without divulging the exact nature of those communications, Smith was blunt in her assessment that they remain far, far apart on critical issues..“Well, first of all, I would say that we're having a robust discussion on Twitter,” she said. ”So, he said that he and I have some areas of agreement, some some areas of grave disagreement… and when I look at the potential for this 2035, arbitrary target to cost us $200 to $400 billion in Alberta, just because of the unique nature of our power grid, I have to be realistic. I have to tell him, ‘it's not possible to achieve that’.”.Smith has personally taken the reigns of the electricity file, and didn’t mince words on Guilbeault’s proposed power regulations released Thursday, calling them “exceptionally bad”, “illogical” and “ruinous.” .“Ottawa’s strategy seems to be to placate the environmental extremists and throw regular Albertans under the bus,” she said. “There is no room for agreement on this.”.Specifically, Smith said Alberta can’t realistically expand intermittent wind and solar without providing reliable base load backup generation — for instance natural gas. And hence, the pause on new renewable energy projects..She also blamed Alberta’s soaring electricity rates on the previous NDP government’s decision to retire coal-fired power plants decades early, throwing the province’s deregulated electricity market out of whack..People are paying more in service and delivery charges than the actual cost of the electricity itself. She pointed to several instances over the past several summers — and winters — when the grid came close to collapse because wind and solar just couldn’t keep up with the base load demand..Unlike provinces such as Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and even Manitoba which have abundant hydroelectricity and nuclear options, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are all reliant on fossil fuels to power their grids. Residents in the NWT and Yukon often rely on diesel generators for electricity..Smith said policymakers are just going to have to accept that reality..”We have to take the world as it is right now. And the world as it is right now is we just came off a multibillion dollar retirement of coal... that massively reduced our emissions profile, because we're now on natural gas,” she said..“And we can't, we cannot ask for those who have just invested in all of that new technology to accelerate that (transition) at extraordinary cost.”.So what exactly does “pound sand” mean from a technical and policy perspective, as it relates to decarbonizing Alberta’s electricity grid?.“I'm hoping nobody has to pound sand,” she said. “I'm hoping that we can all walk halfway on that pathway to 2050 together.” .Due to a high level of spam content being posted in our comment section below, all comments undergo manual approval by a staff member during regular business hours (Monday - Friday). Your patience is appreciated.
