Nov 20, 2023
A tall wind turbine in my neighbourhood? Yes, I'd have questions
"Everybody and their dog is a solar or wind developer right now" Many people are upset with Premier Danielle Smith’s six-month moratorium on new wind and solar projects. That’s fair enough. The
"Everybody and their dog is a solar or wind developer right now"
Many people are upset with Premier Danielle Smith’s six-month moratorium on new wind and solar projects.
That’s fair enough. The moratorium seemingly comes out of nowhere. It hardly seems friendly to attracting investment to Alberta.
But let me ask you: what if a company proposed building a wind turbine as tall as the Calgary Tower in your neighbourhood? Would you have some concerns?
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Now what if 83 such turbines were going up in your part of the city, all of them as tall as the Calgary Tower? There would be a thunderclap of alarm in any Alberta city if such a project were proposed, let alone approved over fierce local objections, as just happened in the southeastern Alberta hamlet of Lomond.
It’s no surprise that country folks are buzzing just now with anxiety, anger and unanswered questions about the boom in solar and wind farms near their homes.
Rural people have been down this polluted path before, said Jason Schneider, a fourth-generation farmer near Vulcan County, where Lomond is located, and where Schneider is county reeve and area director for the Rural Municipalities of Alberta.
The main concern is the reclamation cost of solar and wind projects when they’re no longer economically viable, Schneider said, a sore spot for rural Alberta.
“We’ve been burned by coal, we’ve been burned by gravel, we’ve been burned by oil and gas,” Schneider says. “In Alberta, the cheapest reclamation plan is bankruptcy. And that’s not a great solution because somebody ends up holding the bag.”
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Vulcan is located near the Travers solar wind farm, the largest wind farm in Canada, and also the Blackspring Ridge wind farm, 166 wind towers that went up about a decade ago. Those projects went in with little controversy, Schneider said, but public sentiment has now changed.
The UCP and NDP have both been in power during the solar and wind building phase but there’s still no provincial regulation, such as mandatory reclamation bonds, still no money in place from wind or solar companies to eventually clean up.
That’s an issue for a solar farm with 1.5 million solar panels, each with an embedded foundation piling.
No land owner has the ability to clean up that kind of disruption, Schneider said, so the mess is passed on to government and nothing gets done. “Chances are good, especially with wind, it would probably just sit there in that state for eternity. I don’t think the land owner is going to be able to take down a 300-foot tower.”
The initial solar and wind farms were built on marginal land by companies that had strong community relations, but new projects are planned for prime farmland by operators who often seem most interested in flipping the project to make a quick buck, Schneider said. “It’s really a gold rush is what we’re seeing. Everybody and their dog is a solar or wind developer right now.”
Neither the province nor the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) has a standard when it comes to land use, no mechanism to prevent top farmland from being converted as opposed to marginal land, Schneider said, which upsets many local farmers. “We definitely hear that one loud and clear.”
Another concern is power lines for new projects, which are ultimately paid for by the Alberta grid operator, with costs passed to consumers. Farmers don’t always like having farmland expropriated for these power lines, Schneider said, and the overall cost of electricity for all consumers also goes up. “We’re all paying for it.”
All of the unrest came together in opposition to the Lomond wind farm with its massive Calgary Tower-sized turbines. Signs went up on farm fences saying, “Stop the turbines!”
But that project was ultimately approved by the utilities commission
“It divided a community. It got so ugly,” Schneider said.
The government’s six-month moratorium is needed, Schneider said. The system needs fixing, but he hopes it can be a win-win-win for land owners, consumers and power generators. “We’re by no means advocating trying to stop or kill the wind and solar development because they’ve been very good for us. We just want them to be done right.”
Alberta still struggles to get it right with oil and gas, let alone remedy all past mistakes. It makes no sense to proceed willy-nilly and make a new pile of mistakes in wind and solar.
In rural Alberta, where people live by the scars of poor coal, gravel and oil and gas policy, with folks burned thrice, it is little wonder they are four times shy.
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