Western Standard - June 13, 2025


A balanced path forward to serve the needs of Alberta

Topics
renewable energy developments affordability and reliability carbon capture
Guests
Alberta Minister
Mentioned
Nathan Newdorf Klein Corey
Spread the wealth! Digital pipelines

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

172.78

Word count

1,254

Sentence count

93

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Alberta's Minister of Utilities and Affordability, Nathan Neudorf, joins me to talk about the challenges facing Alberta's energy sector, and how the government is working to address them. We talk about how Alberta is leading the country in renewable energy development and development, and the challenges the province is facing when it comes to providing reliable and affordable electricity.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Yeah, I'm joined by Alberta Minister of Utilities and Affordability, Nathan Neudorf.
00:00:17.420 I really appreciate you coming in to talk to us today here at the Global Energy Show.
00:00:22.160 Well, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:00:24.160 So, I mean, just to kind of start with quickly, though, as I was saying earlier,
00:00:27.220 it's an unusual title for a ministry. I mean, it makes sense, affordability and utilities.
00:00:31.740 They're tied together. How does that work?
00:00:34.240 Well, affordability is a top issue for Albertans, and what many people don't always realize
00:00:38.540 is utilities, particularly electricity, but natural gas, water, other utilities that we use,
00:00:44.560 really impact the cost of living from the way you heat your home or light your grocery store
00:00:50.740 or cool the food that you eat. Every commercial entity uses electricity, so it's a primary input cost.
00:00:56.520 And if we can continue to stabilize that and lower that price, at least in relative terms,
00:01:02.140 we can make a big impact on affordability for Albertans.
00:01:05.080 Yeah, and utility is something we can't avoid. We need it, and stability is really important.
00:01:09.560 This has been kind of an issue, ironically, as we're an energy-producing province,
00:01:14.020 ever since Premier Klein deregulated, in a sense, and it's still kind of been an ongoing battle
00:01:20.000 to try and get, I guess, that consistency and such.
00:01:22.540 To start with, an issue that made a lot of news last year was with the renewables and generation and such.
00:01:29.760 There was a moratorium. The moratorium has come off. How have things come to play now?
00:01:33.820 Yeah, we're seeing a lot of stabilization.
00:01:36.200 What many, again, what many Albertans maybe not have realized is over the past few years,
00:01:40.880 Alberta has led Canada in renewable energy development and growth.
00:01:44.680 In 2023, 93% of all renewable projects in Canada were built right here in Alberta.
00:01:52.000 And in 2024, we saw an even greater number.
00:01:55.220 So we need to bring that balance and stability back.
00:01:59.200 There's attributes of renewable energy that aren't beneficial, some of their volatility and intermittency,
00:02:05.040 which is fine. But again, a balanced path forward to serve the needs of Alberta as we grow,
00:02:10.580 not just in population, but also in industry, is really important.
00:02:13.900 And that's what we're seeking to do is affordability and reliability.
00:02:18.060 We need both in today's day and age.
00:02:20.180 Yeah, and we're definitely getting to where we have much more demand for electrical power.
00:02:24.600 I mean, with AI centers, things like that, or even digital currency mining, it's putting a draw.
00:02:29.920 We need to increase our ability. One of the challenges, though, I saw that near your mandate letter,
00:02:36.080 is we want to increase it, but we've got Ottawa with a lot of regulations and emissions caps,
00:02:41.620 things such as that. How have you been navigating with that?
00:02:43.900 Well, it's a continual endeavor to get the federal government, Ottawa Liberal Party in particular,
00:02:49.880 to understand why Alberta is different. A lot of people would like to see more hydroelectricity.
00:02:55.260 We would love to do that in Alberta.
00:02:56.580 We don't, unfortunately, have the geography or the geology to allow much more than we currently have.
00:03:03.020 And the demands, as you said earlier, are ever-increasing for electricity.
00:03:06.960 That's why we're exploring geothermal. We're exploring nuclear.
00:03:10.380 We're exploring the future so that we get clean electricity, sustainable electricity,
00:03:15.640 as well as affordable and reliable.
00:03:17.780 And we sit on some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.
00:03:21.060 We want to utilize that resource as responsibly and effectively and efficiently as possible.
00:03:25.920 That's why we're making the changes.
00:03:27.980 Yeah, we are blessed with it.
00:03:28.920 I mean, our most immediate means of generating electricity, I would imagine,
00:03:32.480 is still expanding our natural gas generation capability.
00:03:35.420 Are there projects then in the works that are going to be coming on stream soon?
00:03:38.680 There's potential. They would love to build some more.
00:03:41.560 The clean electricity regulations the federal government brought in are problematic.
00:03:45.480 They potentially, they set impossible thresholds for admittance, and they set timelines that are prohibitive.
00:03:52.880 And if you don't comply, in our private market, it means that private CEOs and boards could go to jail.
00:03:59.180 That's just not acceptable for our industry to expand and innovate,
00:04:02.580 and nobody should be facing jail time for something that isn't technologically feasible at this time.
00:04:08.160 So we're asking the government to work with us to provide a better future for all Albertans
00:04:12.640 in terms of affordability, lowering emissions, and sustainability and reliability.
00:04:18.500 Yeah, so this show, I mean, we've got exhibitors from all over the world.
00:04:22.020 It's amazing.
00:04:22.500 Some of the new tech and ideas and things.
00:04:24.680 Have you been able to tour and see some, you know, meet some people,
00:04:27.020 some potential new ideas and things we can embrace out here?
00:04:29.300 Absolutely.
00:04:29.980 It's fun to watch and see the innovation around the world to work with global partners.
00:04:34.580 I'm proud to have just heard the premier speak on the potential for Alberta to lower global emissions
00:04:40.680 by 600 million tons a year if we get our LNG to market.
00:04:45.820 Alberta wants to be a world player and help solve the world's problems. 0.99
00:04:49.360 We believe we can do that in collaboration with some of our trade partners around the world.
00:04:53.540 The technology is there and ever advancing.
00:04:55.960 So we think we can get there.
00:04:57.740 We just need the time and relationships and help from the federal government to make it possible.
00:05:01.700 Okay, and we're continuing to move away from coal generation, you know, and fair enough.
00:05:05.980 I think most people kind of agree we can find cleaner means, but still for the immediate load
00:05:10.360 that we have on our grid, is there any appetite or plans to tap the brakes a bit on that
00:05:15.420 until we can get new things on board, or are we just going to keep phasing things up?
00:05:18.460 Well, unfortunately, a previous government ended that.
00:05:21.540 There is no more coal emitting generation within Alberta for electricity.
00:05:25.540 It did come at a significant cost, over $2 billion that is continually being paid.
00:05:31.100 But we have moved on to natural gas.
00:05:33.040 That's why we don't want to see the same thing happen to our natural gas providers.
00:05:37.500 We need them to have a good long lifespan so those assets that have been invested in
00:05:41.300 have their full capabilities reached as we continue to lower our emissions.
00:05:46.240 It was a big step from coal to natural gas, and we want to continue to develop that.
00:05:50.480 That's why we're looking at carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration.
00:05:56.840 We're just asking for time.
00:05:58.720 Great.
00:05:59.000 Well, I appreciate you coming to give us a few minutes, you know, an optimistic outlook.
00:06:02.400 I mean, we have the means, we have the ability.
00:06:04.680 If we could just kind of, I guess, get past some of the ideological opposition,
00:06:08.180 we could really increase the affordability and their stability.
00:06:11.680 We absolutely can.
00:06:12.740 We believe that there is truly a path forward of balance
00:06:15.480 that balances the needs of Albertans today and our hopes and aspirations for the future.
00:06:21.140 And we think, given what we see around here today,
00:06:24.100 innovation technology is continually advancing to make that more and more possible all the time.
00:06:29.500 Great.
00:06:29.840 Well, I'll let you get back to the show and perhaps find a few more of those
00:06:33.340 creative generating sources for Alberta.
00:06:35.480 Great.
00:06:35.780 Thanks a lot, Corey.
00:06:36.420 Thank you.
00:06:36.780 Thank you.
00:06:36.840 Thank you.
00:06:37.840 Thank you.
00:06:38.840 Thank you.
00:06:39.840 Thank you.
00:06:40.840 Thank you.
00:06:41.840 Thank you.
00:06:42.840 Thank you.
00:06:43.840 Thank you.
00:06:44.840 Thank you.
00:06:45.480 Thank you.