My electricity bill from EPCOR last month was almost $500. More than half was transmission, distribution, administration and climate tax. Sound familiar?.The scary thing for my family is that July is typically our lowest electricity bill for the year. I am fearful of what our bill will be come December and January when our power use will reach its annual peak..It is hard to believe Alberta's regulated rate option (RRO) for electricity consumption had increased from 2 cents to 4 cents per kW/h before Rachel Notley mandated an end to our provincial coal power fleet, to its current value of 30 cents per kW/h. This does not even include all the extras, which these days more than doubles the bill..This astonishing trend with the Regulated Rate Option equates to a compound annual growth rate of more than 40% between 2016 and 2022.. Fournier Column 21 - 1 .Milton Friedman once stated that “one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions, rather than their results.”.After six-plus years since we began to prematurely decommission our trustworthy coal power fleet, I am still waiting to see the net positive benefit. We were told that the elimination of coal power, the decimation of numerous rural coal mining towns and the reduced emissions would translate to a 'sustainable' state of existence here in Alberta..What is sustainable about paying $500 to $1,000 per month for electricity? Is this the price of 'climate leadership' and the 'Just Transition' that Rachel Notley continuously referred to in her brief tenure as premier?.The looming constitutional crisis developing within Canada in response to Trudeau's federal, NDP-backed, government's mandate that the use of natural gas in power generation be eliminated by 2035, unless 95% of CO2 emissions are captured and geologically sequestered, is forcing yet again the need for public discourse on this critical topic..While Trudeau's Liberal Party has suddenly come to it senses on advanced nuclear power generation, the supply chain and expertise is localized to Ontario and Atlantic Canada..Even though Alberta and Saskatchewan are beginning to prepare for Western Canadian nuclear power projects, neither Scott Moe nor Danielle Smith deviate from referencing 2050 as the most probable timeline for full-scale deployment of advanced nuclear technologies..Furthermore, legacy CANDU power plant refurbishments and new-builds are long-lead regulatory review and construction projects. Ontario will be fortunate if they have their first new CANDU power plant in 30 years operational by 2030..So, while I am fully supportive of advanced nuclear power and CANDU technologies as the future for Canada's electricity markets, I will never advocate for the early retirement of natural gas power plants. Purposeful destruction of capital that only results in mass inflation should be criminalized..This may seem aggressive, but as far as I can see, the 40% compound annual growth rate of Alberta's Regulated Rate Option since 2016 and a similar growth in retail rates for transmission and distribution fees, are related in time to the mass deployment of wind, solar and back-up natural gas technologies, plus their under-utilized transmission infrastructure..No one is attempting to quantify the negative externalities of this inflation on lower income Albertans..See my Western Standard article titled 'There is Nothing Green about Alberta`s Overbuilt Transmission System.'.Note that as of last year, Alberta produced a mere 12.5% of its electricity from wind and solar. (See graph, page 45.) Begs the question as to what the ceiling is on electricity inflation, if intermittent power generation increases much further..The answer to this question is already well established..One need only look to Ontario, California and EU markets, to see that the combination of wind plus solar with back-up natural gas is inflationary to retail electricity rates..Unlike these jurisdictions, Alberta has only limited transmission interconnection to other large grid systems to help balance intermittent power from weather-dependent power generation systems..The largest transmission interconnection Alberta has is with BC Hydro, which makes a complete killing on Albertan wind power. During periods of high winds in Alberta, BC Hydro buys our excess wind power and then sells back power when wind fields collapse, and pool prices explode..It is common to see Alberta wind being exported to BC Hydro at $20 per MW/h and then being sold back to Albertans at $800 to $1,000 per MW/h.. Fournier 21 - 2 .I suppose it could be worse..Ontario Power Generation has dealt with this problem for more than a decade and routinely has to pay nearby jurisdictions to take their excess wind power..Meanwhile, the EU's Eurostat retail electricity statistics serve as a baseline for what Albertans can expect if further wind, solar and back-up natural gas power generation continue to grow unabated..Note the linear relationship between retail rates and the per capita wind and solar generation (TWh = 1 billion kWh)..As Alberta has limited interconnection transmission options and Albertans separately pay for transmission fees, I would suggest that we will soon have the highest power bills in the world if we double our weather-dependent power generation from 12.5% (2022) to a mere 25%..All pain and no gain..Look to California and you will find that the CO2 emission intensity of its grid has not decreased after 11 years of aggressive investments in solar, wind power and back-up natural gas..That's because natural gas power plants lose efficiency, the more often they are cycled on and off and therefore emit more CO2 per MW/h produced as intermittent power generation expands..In essence, this is a parasitic relationship as the climate taxes on the natural gas back-up are being transferred to the wind and solar facilities that depend on the natural gas facility to maintain grid stability.. Fournier 21-3 .Again, these are facts that are well established, but are hugely under-reported. Albertans must demand evidence that higher retail prices are resulting in measurable emissions reductions beyond those resulting from switching from coal to natural gas..I support the six-month moratorium placed on new solar and wind project approvals and would implore Premier Smith to seriously consider requiring that all future approvals of weather-dependent power generation facilities include sufficient behind-the-fence storage infrastructure that they can function as stand alone dispatchable power generation facilities..Such a policy would break the parasitic relationship that wind and solar facilities have on natural gas power units.
