Alberta could lead Canada in wind and solar power by 2025, expert says
Source: Tony Seskus · CBC · | September 21, 2020
Another expert isn't anticipating as much growth but agrees with Rystad Energy's forecast direction.
A wind farm generates electricity near bales of hay in the foothills of Alberta in this file photo. Experts anticipate that renewable energy development in the province will continue growing. (Todd Korol/Reuters)
Growth in Alberta's renewable energy sector should continue its upward trend, experts say, with one forecast anticipating a surge of projects that could have the province poised to be the Canadian leader in utility-scale wind and solar capacity as early as 2025.
Rystad Energy tracks utility-scale wind and solar assets with at least one MWac (megawatt alternating current) in capacity. It forecasts that 83 per cent of the combined utility-scale wind and solar capacity built in Canada over the next five years will be in Alberta. That wouldn't include smaller renewable development such as residential rooftop solar.
With the forecast growth, Rystad analyst Felix Tan expects Alberta will have the largest combined total of utility-scale wind and solar capacity in the country by the middle of the decade, overtaking Ontario.
"Alberta is sort of playing catch up," Tan said in an interview from New York.
"We have seen a lot of capacity build out over the past two, three, four years in places like Ontario, in B.C. and Quebec."
According to the data that Rystad tracks, Alberta's current renewable capacity includes 0.1 gigawatt (GW) of solar and 1.8 GW of wind. By 2025, it expects that to grow to 1.8 GW of solar and 6.5 GW of wind.
Rystad forecasts Ontario will have about 1.8 GW solar and 5.8 GW wind in 2025.