Alberta is killing a free-enterprise golden goose

Alberta talks up free enterprise, but its treatment of renewable energy tells a very different story

Interview requests

SkyFire Energy Inc., one of Alberta’s most successful solar startups, announced a major acquisition last week that highlights a stark reality: Alberta government policy is actively driving renewable energy investment out of the province.

While the deal bodes well for SkyFire’s future, it speaks volumes about an investment climate shaped by a government that says it champions free enterprise while systematically discouraging renewable energy development.

SkyFire has purchased Hakai Energy Solutions, a British Columbia-based renewable energy company known for residential and commercial grid-tied solar, and large remote off-grid solar installations.

The acquisition extends SkyFire’s reach across Vancouver, Vancouver Island, coastal British Columbia and remote communities. Each of the estimated total of 200 employees will be an owner of the consolidated companies.

SkyFire’s CEO, David Vonesch, said the number and magnitude of regulatory changes by the Alberta government are driving investment out of the province. “There really just isn’t any desire for [large-scale] solar projects to be built in Alberta anymore.”

Disincentives include a seven-month moratorium on renewable project approvals, banning projects from certain classes of agricultural lands and within 35 kilometres of protected areas such as provincial parks, an upfront recycling fee for wind and solar equipment, and new reclamation security requirements for developers.

“There’s a lot that’s happening that is punitive toward renewables … really out of market [norms] for what folks in other provinces are doing,” said Vonesch. “It’s removing the market base for decisions” that are being made.

It’s a disheartening shift for a province that once was a leader in renewable electrical generation, Vonesch said.

“Solar has historically really found its place in [Alberta’s] marketplace economy … Alberta was the first to realize the low-cost opportunity that solar provides.”

Pushback for solar projects in rural communities has translated into government policy that has effectively curtailed new solar projects, he said. “It’s really death by a thousand cuts. It’s not just one thing that’s causing the industry to collapse right now. It’s a number of items.”

The Globe and Mail reported last week that renewable energy deals in the province have fallen 99 per cent from 2023 to 2025.

“We went from an average of about 1,000 megawatts of deals per year down to only five megawatts last year. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars every year and thousands of construction jobs,” Jorden Dye, the director of the Business Renewables Centre-Canada (BRC-Canada), told the Globe. BRC-Canada is an industry organization that tracks corporate renewable energy procurement and publishes data on renewable energy deals across Canada.

Vonesch said the biggest challenge is lack of certainty. Investors don’t know what revenue they’ll get for the power that is generated, what the cost of development will be or what long-term costs will be.

Vonesch, who grew up on a farm in Alberta, is familiar with the claim that solar farms are eating up arable land, but he says that is a myth. Instead, developments are mostly done on subpar land, and in some cases can actually benefit the farmer. He cited the example of one sheep rancher who saw an improvement in water retention from the shade provided by solar panels, which in turn improved the grazing for his sheep.

“There are positive stories like that around agriculture that really aren’t being told in this province.”

Vonesch said renewables should not be seen as competitors to oil and gas. “A lot of the solar projects we’ve been doing have been for oil and gas companies,” including Enbridge and TC Energy, refurbishing orphan wells as small solar facilities.

So SkyFire is looking further afield to friendlier provinces that recognize the need for more energy. British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, in particular, are actively procuring renewable energy projects, often offering grants or rebates and finding ways to reduce the need to upgrade transmission systems.

One other promising market is Nova Scotia Power, which has overtaken Alberta as the leader in renewable energy development. It launched its Green Choice Program two years ago, allowing large-scale electricity customers to access renewable power from local developments. By January 2025, the utility had procured 262 megawatts of new wind capacity from projects under the program, all of which are co-owned by Mi’kmaw communities in the province.

So, one has to wonder what the UCP government of Alberta is thinking. It appears it is choking off one of the greatest investment success stories the province has ever seen for no other reason than a short-term benefit of appealing to a reactionary segment of its core supporters. In other words, the tail is once again wagging the dog. And Albertans are the poorer for it.

Vonesch and others in the renewable industry aren’t suggesting there’s no future for oil and gas. Worldwide demand for fossil fuels is expected to remain strong for at least two decades, and perhaps much longer. But a mountain of evidence also forecasts that demand for electricity to feed our vehicles, power-hungry data centres, and to heat and cool our homes will just keep growing.

Given its record of stubborn attachment to harmful initiatives (examples are plentiful, but coal mining heads the list), it is probably too much to ask this wrong-headed government to reverse its anti-renewable policies. But it’s not too much to ask citizens to speak out and demand their MLAs pay attention to the public will.

If it remains tone deaf to the majority, the UCP can expect to pay the price on election day.

Doug Firby is an award-winning editorial writer with over four decades of experience working for newspapers, magazines and online publications in Ontario and western Canada. Previously, he served as Editorial Page Editor at the Calgary Herald.