All in on AI, restricting renewables and … cougars: another wild week in Alberta politics
The provincial government was firing out announcements again last week, from restricting wind energy to taking the ‘protected’ out of ‘protected areas’
In the latest Alberta news, significant changes to the way the province is governed continue to be announced by the United Conservative Party government under Premier Danielle Smith.
To keep track, we’re rounding up the significant news of the past week.
While it would be difficult to live up to last week’s threats to break federal laws, control who can visit an oil and gas facility and establish a provincial border patrol, there are still some doozies this week.
Cougar hunting! A cozy post-hunt hotel room in a previously protected area in the mountains? Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just coming for your job, it’s coming for your electricity too. Aaand, speaking of electricity, it’s officially really hard to build renewables in Alberta. Take that, AI.
The legislature ended its fall sitting last week, with the government touting its work to fight “for the protection and advancement of Albertans’ rights and freedoms in an ever-evolving world” (on which we have some notes).
So things ought to calm down a little bit over the holidays. Right? Right?!
1. Nice park you got there, shame if it was turned into a resort
Last week, the government passed its All-Seasons Resort Act, a nice-sounding bit of legislation that will, let’s see, give the minister of sport and tourism the power to remove protected-area designation and establish all-season resort zones.
The All-Seasons Resort Act supersedes the Kananaskis Country Recreation Policy, which, according to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, was “created based on robust public consultation and mandates that the future of Kananaskis should be to centre conservation, not large-scale commercial development.” Photo: Gavin John / The Narwhal
Tourism developments in those zones will be exempt from the “normal environmental land-use planning, review and approval processes applied to all other public land use activities,” according to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
Or, as the government puts it, the act “will create the investment certainty necessary to attract private capital into the province’s tourism sector.”
The goal is to have year-round resorts on Crown public land across Alberta.
The act passed through the legislature on Dec. 4.
2. You can’t build renewables here … or here … or here!
Specifically, there are now new restrictions on where projects can be built. Anyone pitching a project on what’s known as prime agricultural land (Class 1 and Class 2 if you’re hip to that jive) will have to prove the project can co-exist with both crops and livestock.
But, just to make sure it’s difficult in all areas of the province, the new rules say that “in municipalities without Class 1 or 2 lands, Class 3 lands will be treated as Class 1 and 2.”
Is that a pretty background? Proponents of new wind energy projects will be barred from “pristine viewscapes,” and those within a “visual impact zone” will have to submit a “visual impact assessment.” Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal
Proponents of a project must also conduct an “irrigability assessment.” It’s Friday afternoon as this is being written and we don’t know precisely what that means, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to provoke some “irritability assessments.” Get it?
Projects will require security deposits for reclamation, new wind projects will be barred from viewscape buffer-zone areas and all other electricity projects in that zone or within a “visual impact zone” will have to submit a “visual impact assessment.”
Watch for an avalanche of wind farm proposals in Walmart parking lots across the province.
3. AI? More like aaiiii!!!
While the government works to restrict what was once a booming renewables sector, it is also pushing to attract energy-intensive AI data-processing centres.
Last week, the government announced an “attraction strategy” for the centres that has three pillars: “power capacity, sustainable cooling and economic diversification.”
According to the International Energy Agency, data centres accounted for between one and two per cent of global energy use in 2022 — back when ChatGPT was just a baby.
That’s only expected to grow as the sector explodes. “Alberta is uniquely positioned to capture the AI data centre opportunity, leveraging our vast natural gas resources and pro-business environment to create thousands of high-quality jobs and attract billions in investment,” Nate Glubish, the minister of technology and innovation, said in a press release.
The Narwhal’s Prairies bureau is here to bring you stories on energy and the environment you won’t find anywhere else. Stay tapped in by signing up for a weekly dose of our ad‑free, independent journalism.
The Narwhal’s Prairies bureau is here to bring you stories on energy and the environment you won’t find anywhere else. Stay tapped in by signing up for a weekly dose of our ad‑free, independent journalism.
We’re covering energy on the Prairies
One thing to keep an eye on is the interest in building electricity infrastructure, even beyond renewables. The Alberta Electric System Operator is currently restructuring Alberta’s market, leading to significant uncertainty and a drying up of investment.
We don’t normally ask AI to do our reporting for us, but here we thought it might be able to help. When asked what Alberta could do to increase its generating capacity, ChatGPT’s top suggestion was to expand renewable energy generation. But it also thought we still had a bunch of coal plants. We don’t — so it looks like AI could use another data centre or two.
4. Going on a cougar hunt … wait, isn’t that an Alberta provincial park?
In November, the government also carved out an exception for off-leash dogs if they’re hunting cougars, so hounds can be used to trap the big cats in trees for hunters to shoot.
Alberta Parks and Forestry Minister Todd Loewen — who is a hunter and whose family owns a hunting business — has overseen numerous changes to Alberta hunting regulations since he took over in 2023. As of Dec. 1, cougar hunting, using off-leash dogs, is now allowed in Cypress Hills Provincial Park.
It’s one of several hunting changes introduced by the province under Parks and Forestry Minister Todd Loewen, which include removing limits on trapping animals like wolverines in order to, uh, find out how many wolverines there are.
Loewen is an avid hunter and his family owns an outfitting business.
The bad: Overall spending, when you factor in the Orphan Well Association and a previous government clean-up program, is down. And while the number of inactive wells decreased, it was significantly less than the previous year’s decrease. Also, there are still almost 80,000 to go.
Here at The Narwhal, we don’t use profit, awards or pageviews to measure success. The thing that matters most is real-world impact — evidence that our reporting influenced citizens to hold power to account and pushed policymakers to do better.
And in 2024, our stories were raised in parliaments across the country and cited by citizens in their petitions and letters to politicians.
In Alberta, our reporting revealed Premier Danielle Smith made false statements about the controversial renewables pause. In Manitoba, we proved that officials failed to formally inspect a leaky pipeline for years. And our investigations on a leaked recording of TC Energy executives were called “the most important Canadian political story of the year.”
Here at The Narwhal, we don’t use profit, awards or pageviews to measure success. The thing that matters most is real-world impact — evidence that our reporting influenced citizens to hold power to account and pushed policymakers to do better.
And in 2024, our stories were raised in parliaments across the country and cited by citizens in their petitions and letters to politicians.
In Alberta, our reporting revealed Premier Danielle Smith made false statements about the controversial renewables pause. In Manitoba, we proved that officials failed to formally inspect a leaky pipeline for years. And our investigations on a leaked recording of TC Energy executives were called “the most important Canadian political story of the year.”
Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter. Six years ago, Rocky Bay First Nation —...
Your access to our journalism is free — always. Sign up for our weekly newsletter for investigative reporting on the natural world in Canada you won’t find anywhere else.
Your access to our journalism is free — always. Sign up for our weekly newsletter for investigative reporting on the natural world in Canada you won’t find anywhere else.
