1. Renewable energy cheapest
PODCAST – As 2020 winds down we look back at the year when the renewable energy revolution past the tipping point. Renewable energy is now the cheapest energy money can buy and is attracting trillions in investment. In Canada the largest solar project in Canadian history was built unsubsidized in Claresholm Alberta. Before it was complete another solar project was announced four times larger for 2021, also in Alberta. Renewable energy is becoming a story of opportunity, investment, jobs and economic diversification.
No one contributed to our appreciation of the renewable revolution in 2020 more than Norman Crowley, the Irish multi-millionaire who cashed in several companies to start the Cool Planet Group the centerpiece of which is Crowley Carbon that is helping clients worldwide save millions of dollars.
That Crowley was inspired to pivot by seeing Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth is an interesting sidebar, but the more interesting thing is his high levels of success transitioning and creating new businesses designed to build the low carbon economy we need. The Cool Planet Group consists of Crowley Carbon, a company helping companies save millions through energy efficiency, Crowley Solar, Cool Planet Capital, and even a new electric car company Electrifi which we covered at Green Energy Futures.
Energy Transition and the Renewable Revolution reached historic tipping points in 2020, so much so Crowley declared in our interview with him.
“I believe climate change will be resolved by 2030,” says Crowley. “And it’s got nothing to do with governments or regulation, because if it had to do with governments and regulations, we would still be here in 2100. It has to do with economics.”
To build his case for this bold statement Crowley said we are close to solving some of the big puzzles that feed the global plague that is climate change.
Energy, he says, is in the bag. “During COVID a couple of PPAs [power purchase agreements] were announced…for solar and battery – and they were at between one and two cents a kilowatt-hour,” says Crowley.
This simple fact, that renewable energy is now the cheapest energy money can buy is far more powerful than any government program – it means investment will go to renewables first. Bloomberg predicts 77 per cent of all global investment ($13.3 trillion) in power generation will be in renewables between now and 2050.
We published our full-length 48-minute interview with Norman Crowley. Give it a listen – you won’t look at the Renewable Energy Revolution the same ever again.
2. Green economic growth
And according to Meran Smith of Clean Energy Canada we are starting to see the fruits of these energy shifts even in Canada. “Investment grew from 21 billion in 2010 to 35.3 billion in 2017. So that’s an increase of almost 70 per cent. But its contribution to GDP is also impressive. So it grew by 4.8 percent between 2010 and 2017. And if you compare that to the rest of the Canadian economy, it only grew by 3.6 per cent over that same timeframe,” she told Green Energy Futures in 2020.
Here is our story on Meran Smith and clean energy jobs from 2020.
3. Renewable jobs
In search of the economic impacts of the renewable revolution, we traveled to Claresholm, Alberta in 2020 to meet up with Bryce Bernhard, a guy who moved to Alberta from Texas in 2010 with little more than an old pick-up truck and a bag of tools.
He started a small construction company and early on learned the virtues of the lowly, underappreciated screw pile – a giant metal support structure for foundations under buildings, decks and as it turns out solar farms.
We learned in this story that screw piles are “God’s gift to solar.” Bernhard started Alberta Screw Piles Ltd. and when we met up with he was employing more than 60 workers and installing 53,000 screw piles at Claresholm, the largest solar farm in Canadian history. These screw piles will support more than 477,000 solar modules in a 132-megawatt solar farm.
As Covid-19 and economic chaos rages across the planet Bernhard is counting his blessings.
“Oh, it’s huge. I never expected to be here on a good day and to be here on a bad day and with COVID, and with the economy and the challenges that Alberta has to diversify and to keep people employed. It’s a huge blessing to be a part of this on a good day and to be here with the challenges on a world scale that we have is unbelievable,” says Bernhard.
This just might be our most inspiring story of 2020. Take a walk out on the prairie with us and Bryce Bernhard and see what the renewable revolution looks like on the ground.
4. Renewable transition career pivot
Then we heard about Faruq Vishram, an Alberta engineer who formerly worked on the development of control systems for coal and gas power plants in Alberta. Vishram landed some early work building some of the early solar farms in Ontario and since then has become a sought after solar engineer working from Alberta.
He now sings the praises of solar. “It reached grid parity. I would say maybe two years ago where solar could compete with its nearest rival, which at that time I think was natural gas is in this is without subsidy. So solar can now compete, you know, without subsidy. And it’s getting very, very popular, not totally in Alberta, but, you know, all over the world,” says Vishram.
Vishram knows this first hand, he’s helped build a solar-powered hospital in Afghanistan and is currently working on almost a dozen solar projects in Alberta and Ontario including some of the biggest projects in Canada.
Here are our two CKUA Radio Podcast stories on Faruq Vishram from 2020.
In the same year the largest solar project in Canadian history was built near Claresholm, Alberta work was already beginning on what will be the new largest solar project in Canadian history – the Travers Solar Project near Vulcan, Alberta.
5. Biggest and bigger solar projects
The project is being developed by a small Calgary company called Greengate Power.
“The Travers Solar projects in Vulcan County, Alberta, it’s only a few kilometers north of the largest wind energy project [Blackspring Ridge] in the country, which we also developed to put that project into perspective,” says Dan Balaban, CEO of Greengate Power, a small company based in Calgary, Alberta.
“It’ll consist of about 1.5 million solar panels spread over 5,000 acres of land. It’s about a half a billion-dollar project and will provide a clean source of power to more than one hundred thousand Alberta homes,” says Balaban.
Here’s our story on the Travers Solar Project and our interview with Dan Balaban.
Dan Balaban is a former oil and gas guy who has become a very successful entrepreneur in the clean energy space. He grows weary of the polarization between renewable and conventional energy.
He says things are evolving fast, and that our future prosperity depends on investment in Alberta’s nationally significant renewable energy resources, all the while respecting the role of conventional energy. Pitting one against the other is a terrible strategy for developing a sustainable economy of the future that attracts people to Alberta and provides jobs to its people.
Despite the pandemic and economic chaos renewable energy is on a trajectory to become one of the dominant sources of energy in the future. And as we’ve seen in 2020 renewable energy is the cheapest energy, it’s creating good economic growth, new companies, new jobs and new opportunities.
Next week in part II we look back at 2020 and the electrification of transportation.
