Kevin Timoney: “Within the vast fossil fuel industry footprint, presently a colossal public liability, renewables can transform Alberta to become a green energy leader. … Disinformation and bad government are the only things standing in our way.”

I’ve dried my clothes out in the sun on a $10.00 laundry rack most of my adult life. My favourite scent is bringing in for final drying my rack full of clean clothes that’s spent a day or two out in the sun in -40C. Watch Danielle Smith ban clothes lines in her lust to serve her polluting masters.

Fear monger stifling green energy movement by Kevin Timoney, Oct 15, 2024, Lethbridge Herald

As our society struggles against time and disinformation to transition to a sustainable economy, we turn increasingly to solar and wind energy.

Policies such as the moratorium on renewables and the prohibition of green energy projects on Alberta’s agricultural lands are little more than cynical ploys that have hampered the green transition and driven away investments and jobs.

Certainly few people want prime agricultural land to be lost to development, but the specter of renewables threatening agriculture is a false issue raised to confuse the public and stop the green energy transition.  

Let’s assume a worst-case scenario where all renewables development takes place on agricultural land. In March 2024, the Alberta Utilities Commission concluded that renewables pose little threat to agriculture or the environment. They concluded that “Assuming all renewable development locates on [some of Alberta’s best] land, the percentage of [such] agricultural land loss is estimated to be less than one per cent by 2041.”

That’s right, less than one per cent and yet the fear mongering continues to stifle the green energy transition.

In truth, currently most agricultural land lost in Alberta is due to urban sprawl, transportation and industrial projects, and the activities of the fossil fuel industry. Additionally,  thousands of hectares of agricultural land in Alberta have been degraded due to poor cropping and plowing practices, salinization, and overgrazing. Scapegoating renewables for losses of agricultural land has no basis in reality.

But even this progressive approach to land use is dwarfed in its potential if we turn to the fossil fuel industrial footprint.

As of 2021, in Alberta, the total landscape footprint of the fossil fuel industry (wells, facilities, installations, pipelines, roads, and seismic lines) had exceeded 3 million hectares. This vast area is composed of degraded ecosystems that cannot be ecologically restored due to the permanent damage suffered by the soils and the natural biota. Even if we invest the estimated $260 billion dollars required to reclaim those damaged landscapes, we will still be left with ecosystems dominated by non-native plant assemblages on impaired soils inhabited by only those generalist species capable of exploiting disturbed habitats. Within the vast fossil fuel industry footprint, presently a colossal public liability, renewables can transform Alberta to become a green energy leader.

Just how much land do we need to meet all of our electrical needs via solar?

As of 2015, the total Alberta electrical need was 80.3 GWh/year. Now let’s double that to 160 GWh/year to allow for future major increases in electrical consumption. 

We could build all the solar panels we’ll ever need on those damaged lands.

So that’s the big picture. It’s not bleak and we should embrace it. We can participate in the global green energy transition while helping to reclaim damaged lands to productive uses.

Disinformation and bad government are the only things standing in our way.

Kevin Timoney is a senior landscape ecologist with over 40 years of research experience in Alberta’s ecosystems.

Albertans need to push back against a corrupt government by Gail Lawrence, oct 12, 2024 Lethbridge Herald

Editor:

I was thrilled to hear that the United Kingdom has just become the first developed nation to be completely coal-free for energy production. 

This is a country that used to be entirely coal dependent. 

When Jason Kenney’s UCP looked at opening it up, there was a huge public outcry and a joint panel of federal and provincial regulators denied approval of this Grassy Mountain project in 2021.

Now the UCP’s energy minister Brian Jean is trying to manipulate the system in order to enable this illegal mine. If approved, it will affect water throughout the region including Lethbridge, whose Oldman River flows into the South Saskatchewan which will affect Medicine Hat, too.

Is Lethbridge or Medicine Hat being asked to vote in the referendum? Are the Indigenous peoples of the Piikani Nation being allowed to vote? No! 

Only the Municipality of Crowsnest which has about 5,000 people gets to decide this for the whole region of Southern Alberta. 

Apparently the UCP is concerned about “protected areas” (not on the eastern slopes of the Rockies though), and “pristine viewscapes.” 

Will the hypocrisy never cease? Because the so-called energy redesign (but not affecting any coal, oil or gas projects), has created extreme uncertainty, companies like our own TransAlta withdrew plans for a $70 million wind farm from the Cardston area and have shelved three other renewable projects. 

Come on citizens of Alberta, let’s wake up and push back against this corrupt provincial government.

Refer also to:

2024:

2019: Rhode Island vs 21 Oil & Gas Companies: Judge William Smith characterized operations “leading to all kinds of displacement, death (extinctions, even), and destruction….Defendants understood the consequences of their activity decades ago…. But instead of sounding the alarm, Defendants went out of their way to becloud the emerging scientific consensus and further delay changes – however existentially necessary – that would in any way interfere with their multi-billion-dollar profits.”

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