Rural Albertans Say Pause on Wind, Solar Projects May Help Heal ‘Split’ Communities

Farmers hope their concerns will be heard before Alberta restarts renewable energy projects

Wind turbines are shown at a wind farm near Pincher Creek, Alta., in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

Alberta suddenly put the brakes on its full-steam-ahead wind and solar power expansion in early August to assess its impact on the grid and on rural Alberta. Some rural Albertans hope it’s a chance to not only bridge gaps in regulation, but also bridge rifts in communities.

“It’s ripped some communities apart,” Daryl Bennett of Taber, Alberta, told The Epoch Times. Mr. Bennett is a farmer and the director of landowner advocacy group Action Surface Rights. He has been involved in negotiations on dozens of wind and solar projects across the province.

The common story, he said, is that big landowners can make a lot of money—some $30,000 per wind turbine annually. But the smaller-scale landowners who live next to the turbines without cashing in worry about quality-of-life issues.

These include noise, the “shadow flicker” effect from the rotating turbine blades intermittently blocking sunlight to some rooms in homes, and the much-debated health impacts, as people living near turbines have reported sleep disturbance, headaches, and dizziness. Landowners near wind farms also worry about transmission infrastructure on their land, difficulties in spraying their crops, and potential damage to the local ecosystem due to birds of prey and bats being killed.

“It’s really split some of these communities and created hard feelings,” Mr. Bennett said. And beyond individual communities, the issue has divided the province—with rural and urban Albertans often pitted against each other, he said.

Solar panels near Drumheller, Alta., on July 11, 2023. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

Mr. Bennett has seen some city-dwellers argue that their tax dollars insure farmers’ crop losses so, in return, farmers should willingly bear the burden of renewable energy infrastructure.

“We’re going, ‘hold on a moment, let’s look at this and make sure it’s a fair system for everybody,’” Mr. Bennett said. The moratorium announced on Aug. 3 “is probably the one chance to resolve a bunch of these issues,” he said.

The provincial government named a few main impacts it hopes to look at during the moratorium, which will end on Feb. 29, 2024. One is the loss of prime agricultural land and “pristine viewscapes.” Another is making sure plans are in place for land-reclamation at any abandoned wind or solar farms.

Mr. Bennett said he would add several other items to the list. Some of those involve applying regulations that currently apply to oil and gas companies and to renewables as well. Rural Albertans have learned some hard lessons in sharing their land with oil and gas over the past several decades.

Contracts, Regulations

Over the years, some oil and gas companies have failed to make agreed-upon compensation payments to landowners, failed to pay property taxes, and have gone bankrupt and left wells orphaned. Regulations were eventually made to protect landowners in these regards, but the law doesn’t offer similar protections to landowners dealing with wind and solar, Mr. Bennett said.

For example, if oil and gas companies don’t pay the property taxes, the landowner isn’t liable. And this often happens; in 2022, municipalities reported a cumulative $220 million in unpaid property taxes, according to a survey by the provincial government. But with renewables, the landowner is on the hook for unpaid taxes, Mr. Bennett said.

“The property taxes are often quite a bit more than your annual rent. So you could end up losing your farm or losing land if those guys don’t pay,” he said.

Although the contracts are bringing many landowners a lot of money, he said, the contracts are often biased toward industry interests. For example, many have no expiry date, with the landowner locked in indefinitely. Many include annual increases in compensation that don’t keep up with inflation, he said.

The Epoch Times asked the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA) to comment on some of the issues raised by Mr. Bennett, but a spokesperson said comments could not be provided by publication time. CanREA has criticized the moratorium, saying it will chill investment in Alberta’s renewable energy development, which represented 75 percent of Canada’s growth last year.

Mr. Bennett also acknowledged that the moratorium could have a chilling effect. He’s worried it might disrupt many viable renewable projects that are just getting started. He mentioned one that had land-reclamation security, a good compensation contract, and was set to be built on poor agricultural land.

But he still believes the moratorium is a good move. It could be a chance to resolve some of the most thorny issues, he said, and create standards that could ease some of the conflict in rural communities.

For example, some counties say wind farms have to be 300 metres from a residence, some say 1,000 metres. A provincewide standard might help smooth the path of local debates.

‘A Greater Split’

Dave Pasay, a landowner advocate in Sturgeon County about 30 kilometres north of Edmonton, said he’s concerned not only about the division within communities and the province, but in the country as a whole.

“This is going to create a greater split between East Canada and West Canada,” he told The Epoch Times, regarding the federal government’s push to switch quickly to renewables.

Now in his 80s, Mr. Pasay was long active in working on landowner rights in relation to oil and gas companies. Wind and solar is new to him, but he’s seen some of the problems it brings up in communities.

A local solar farm that was planned for outside of St. Albert caused some controversy, he said. The land was contaminated, so the town initially thought covering it with solar panels would be a good idea. But after much debate and consideration, the city scrapped the plan last year, deciding it wasn’t financially beneficial.

A few years ago, Mr. Pasay attended a meeting on the impacts of wind turbines and heard people talking about the headaches—literal and figurative—they caused.

“One person claimed that every time it went wump, wump, that it rattled the windows in his house,” he said. “It’s to the point where some people moved. Different people have different tolerances for that kind of agitation.”

Dalton Trenholm, a farmer in Thorhild County, about 100 kilometres north of Edmonton, is happy about the moratorium.

“I think it’s about time, and we have to do something before it gets going [again],” he told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Trenholm fought for oil wellsite land-reclamation guarantees in the past and now he hopes the same criteria, which has the Alberta government’s approval, will be applied to wind and solar projects.

“It needs to be put in the agreements,” he said. “Because it’s not fair that [companies] can take resources and then walk away and let the public deal with the land reclamation.”

He knows of a nearby solar project that aims to put panels on prime agricultural land. “It’s solar power or food, because we don’t have lots of really good soil,” he said. “We’ve got lots of poor soil.”

The government should consider only putting wind and solar on poor soil, he said. Mr. Bennett had a similar suggestion, saying if the government opens up Crown land to renewable projects, a lot of that poor soil could be used. Opening up Crown land is something that will be considered during the moratorium, the government said in its news release.

Regarding criticisms that the moratorium will set the province back too much, Mr. Trenholm said, “I don’t buy it.”

“It needs to be done, and six months goes by fast. So get it settled, get some criteria out there, get some safety things in place, and let’s move on.”

Mr. Bennett also urges the government to make good use of this pause.

“There’s a bunch of issues here, why don’t we resolve all of them?” he said. “Let’s take care of everything, smooth the process out, listen to all sides, and get something in place so once this is done we have a framework.”