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A significant Alberta utility has cancelled a big wind energy mission in response to new authorities guidelines on the place such developments could be constructed.
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TransAlta CEO John Kousinioris stated Friday the 300-megawatt Riplinger mission close to Cardston in southern Alberta will now not proceed.
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“We’ve reassessed our progress plans within the province,” he stated in a convention name to analysts.
“(The mission) has been impacted by the brand new restrictions on improvement close to protected areas and pristine viewscapes and won’t be superior. The mission has been faraway from our progress pipeline.”
TransAlta can be to place three different developments on maintain, as the federal government goes via a redesign of the province’s electrical energy market.
The 100-megawatt Tempest wind mission south of Lethbridge is affected by that delay, as is the gas-fired, 44-megawatt Pinnacle generator west of Edmonton and the 180-megawatt WaterCharger battery storage facility close to Cochrane.
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“They’ve been positioned on maintain till we obtain enough readability,” Kousinioris stated.
In February, the United Conservative Get together authorities introduced new guidelines on the event of renewable energy within the province. They impose a brand new 35-kilometre buffer zone round protected areas and what the federal government calls “pristine viewscapes.”
Riplinger would have been about 45 kilometres by street from Waterton Nationwide Park and about 55 kilometres from Beauvais Lake Provincial Park.
Kousinioris stated the Riplinger mission would have been on the sting of an exclusion zone.
The principles adopted a seven-month moratorium on renewable vitality approvals after the federal government determined the trade was rising too rapidly, threatening agriculture and marring Alberta’s panorama.
Analysts disputed the necessity for these restrictions, saying renewable vitality is effectively down on the listing of threats to farmland.
It’s the second setback this week for low-carbon vitality era in Alberta.
Electrical energy generator Capital Energy introduced Wednesday it might cancel plans for a $2.4-billion carbon seize and storage mission for its pure fuel facility close to Edmonton.
CEO Avik Dey stated the price of the mission was too excessive and the regulatory surroundings round it too unsure to justify going forward.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Could 3, 2024.
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