Lethbridge-East MLA and minister of affordability and utilities, Nathan Neudorf, says he believes new regulations on renewable energy projects strike a balance. The regulations prioritize agriculture over wind and solar projects and ban wind farms in areas the province considers to have “pristine viewscapes.”
“Rural municipalities have been asking for nearly a decade for some parameters to be brought in for responsible energy development because we had none and under the NDP, it was the wild wild west and it was really becoming a runaway train,” Neudorf says. “This is just the government listening to municipalities and landowners and tourism agencies, saying lets have some structure around this development and that’s the inquiry that we put in place and these are the responses that we’ve developed out of the learnings from those inquiries.”
A recent report from the Alberta Utilities Commission says renewable projects have little impact on agricultural land and the environment. It notes from 2019 to 2021, the largest driver of land losses in agriculture were pipelines and industrial sites – which accounted for 1,859 hectares and 1,607 hectares of land loss.
“Solar generation projects resulted in the loss of 833 hectares of agricultural land and wind turbines resulted in a loss of 205 hectares (1.6 sections of land) during this time. Other key drivers of agricultural land loss between 2019 and 2021 include urban residential development, mines and wells, and roads,” the report says.
It points out some areas of the province are more impacted than others, such as the Lethbridge/Medicine Hat region. Across the province, the report estimates less than one per cent of agricultural class 2 land will be lost to renewable projects by 2041.
“If all of those energy projects were distributed evenly… there would be minimal impact to agriculture,” Neudorf says. “What we are seeing is 90-95 per cent of that development in a very small band across southern Alberta creating a lot of challenges, which is why municipalities have been crying out for this kind of approach for a long time.”
Neudorf says tourism was a consideration when creating the new regulations, specifically the no-build zones in a 35 kilometre buffer zone of pristine viewscapes.
“These are questions that are being asked all around the globe. If you go to the United Kingdom, a lot for their wind generation is in the ocean so they are not putting these on highly tourist populated beaches – they are putting them further out into the ocean,” he says.
When asked about the overlap between no-build zones and places in the province with potential for wind generation, Neudorf says there are opportunities across the south of the province
“We still left a wide swath of availability and of course this is not retroactive for all the existing projects that are already approved will continue to generate,” he says.