Dear Editor;
Alberta Energy needs a wake-up call after Jason Chance (Alberta Energy spokesperson), accused ENMAX’s CEO Gary Holden of advocating in his company’s commercial interest (ref: Calgary Herald, “Enmax pushes province for 50-year energy plan”, by Geoffrey Scotton). Chance says Holden is at complete odds with government policy and consensus within the electric power industry.
Holden has been calling for a plan and he has gone as far as to call for a 50-year energy plan that challenges convention wisdom and paradigms around electricity generation, transmission and consumption. If Holden is at odds with Alberta Energy it is only because Alberta Energy doesn’t have a plan.
Alberta Energy is an agency at odds with the general public and the consensus within the major industrial consumers of electricity. Deregulation has failed because Alberta Energy implemented deregulation absent of a plan. As a result Albertans pay some of the highest electricity rates in Canada.
Truth be known, the transmission line debacle (and failure) from Edmonton to Calgary was the direct result of Alberta Energy’s incompetence. What the public doesn’t know is the 500KV proposal was doomed to fail from the beginning because Alberta Energy initiated the process before the “Transmission Regulations” were published. In essence Alberta Energy put the cart before the horse.
The proposal to build a 500KV transmission line, from Edmonton to Calgary, was submitted to the EUB in 2004. The 500KV proposal was required to adhere to the new “Transmission Regulations”. However, Alberta Energy didn’t publish the “Transmission Regulations” until 2005. To compensate for this transgression and all the failures of the proposal to comply with the regulations, both the Board (EUB) and Alberta Energy decided to pick and chose which part of the new regulations they would ignore. In their attempt to railroad the public with an application that didn’t meet the requirements of the new “Transmission Regulations”, they got caught paying $100,000 to private investigators to spy on landowners.
Chance’s criticism of Holden is without merit! Alberta Energy needs to have a plan and it is long overdue, we need a plan!
Calling for a comprehensive public evaluation of all viable options to meet the reliable power needs of all Albertans, might be in the commercial best interest of Enmax, it is however, most definitely in the public interest. Alberta Energy needs to wake-up; they have forgotten the public’s interest.
Joe Anglin
Chairman
Lavesta Area Group
Rimbey