LYTLE: Smith government decides there's nothing morally superior about renewable energy

The government of Premier Danielle Smith has established policy guidelines for renewable energy projects in Alberta. Good.In December of 2023, the Osage Nation of Oklahoma won a surprising court victory over Italian wind power company Enel. Even more surprising is that the judge ordered specific performance by directing the company to remove their 84 wind turbines capable of generating 150 megawatts of power (when the wind blows.) It is a fascinating case.In 2010, I attended a luncheon speech about the events both prior to and after the death of more than 1,600 birds that died in a Syncrude tailings pond in April 2008. It was an interesting presentation. More interesting was my conversation with three representatives of TransAlta who sat at my table. Their company had just built wind turbines in the Crowsnest Pass and I asked them if there was evidence of birds dying from being struck by the blades. They said that they weren’t finding evidence of dead birds but there was a marked increase in the number of coyotes that hung around the bases of the turbines.From 2015 to 2020, I sat as a quasi-judicial commissioner on panels examining major energy infrastructure projects across Canada. Perhaps the number one environmental issue that we dealt with was the project impact on the little brown myotis — the brown bat. It was a big issue everywhere. Are wind farm projects similarly vetted for their impact on bats? Renewable energy projects are regulated under provincial jurisdiction so the amount of scrutiny of such projects is variable. When I asked one provincial regulator, I was told that renewable energy projects did not have the same regulatory scrutiny as oil and gas projects. One wonders why.What is my point? Simply that the aura of inviolability of renewable energy projects has created an untenable situation. Enel broke laws with a sense of impunity and ignored property rights in an apparent belief that the sacrosanct nature of their “planet saving” would shield them from the law.In the Canadian context, it was assumed that the sacred nature of saving the planet overwhelmed the need for considering the impacts of consequential “road kill.”I read the details of the government’s new policy through the lens of decades of ill-begotten belief in the politically correct sanctity of renewable energy projects. Our desire to solve the nonexistent (in my view) “carbon problem” has led us to hardly examine the singular and cumulative effects of renewable energy project proliferation. The government’s new regulations have burst the bubble of belief in the immaculate nature of renewable energy. That is good. The new regulations have elicited a howling, sanctimonious response from our federal government. That is better. The new regulations seek to appropriately balance “on demand” energy with “when I feel like it” energy and that is even better. I have some confidence that we won’t freeze in the dark next winter.Is this new policy unfair to the owners of current, unbuilt energy projects? Look. I come from the mining industry. Deal with it. No, it is not unfair. It is called regulating the public good. Another far reaching and big win for our premier. Good.Murray Lytle P. Eng., is a former commissioner at the National Energy Board

LYTLE: Smith government decides there's nothing morally superior about renewable energy

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