WESTLOCK — Westlock County’s prime agricultural land won’t be home to a proposed solar power project after the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) decided not to approve the application by Acestes Power ULC.
The Calgary-based company applied to build a 24-megawatt solar project in 2023, that they said would provide enough electricity to power about 7,000 homes every year.
The proposed project was located two kilometres north of the Town of Westlock and was expected to be in operation by the end of 2024.
After months of review, that included a two-part hearing this summer, the AUC announced their decision Oct. 11.
In their ruling the AUC noted the company’s failure to demonstrate the benefits of the project outweighed its negative impacts and “that approval of the application is not in the public interest.”
Westlock County farmer Nathan Brown, whose land borders the proposed project site, said he is happy with the AUC’s decision.
“I’m happy that the government has changed their stance and is seeing that farmland is a priority,” said Brown. “There’s still more work to be done in order for this to not continue to happen in the future.”
Brown was the sole landowner to present at the AUC hearing, which held two sessions, in June and July, and said it wasn’t just about trying to stop the project but in presenting evidence and research, he wanted to convey the importance of this type of highly productive agricultural land in Alberta.
“I hope this is a stepping stone,” said Brown. “The main reason that they disqualified this project from being built was because of the soil that they were going to build on.”
Randy Pidsadowski and his family own land southeast of the proposed project and farm the quarter-section of land directly south of that location.
“I’m encouraged that after going through the process of the application and hearing out the concerns of the residents and opponents to it, that the better value of that soil or the land will be used for agricultural purposes and not taken out of production to construct this infrastructure,” said Pidsadowski. “I think everyone’s largest concern was taking out of production, that class 2 agricultural soil and that was my main view of it as well,” he added. “There were other things that were brought to our attention, such as migrating birds and reflective (glare) and end of project, what is left there for infrastructural clean-up … the main concern is just taking that low-supply of high quality agricultural land out of production.”
Both class 1 and class 2 soil is considered highly productive and prime agriculture. Alberta’s government has indicated some development of class 2 land will still be allowed but the proponent of the project would need to prove that agrivoltaics, crops, and livestock could peacefully co-exist.
While Pidsadowski said he can’t speak for everyone, as a farmer in Westlock County he thinks moving forward, there is potential for renewable energy projects to be a viable resource in the region.
“I think there’s great potential in renewable energy if the economics make sense of it. (With) full project life like that would be applied to an oilfield or to a mine — there’s a start, there’s an end, there’s reclamation. I think there’s a great opportunity for it if it’s strategically put in a correct location,” explained Pidsadowski, adding that the project may have had potential if it was proposed in a different area with lower quality soil type. “I don’t think there are many people against renewable energy, it just so happens that this wasn’t a good location because of the soil type …. I don’t know if anybody would be against solar panels on houses or on parking lots, or on irrigation canals. I think there’s great opportunities for that, it just so happened this one (project), the location is what got everybody a little concerned.”
Westlock County CAO Tony Kulbisky said the county supports the AUC’s decision regarding the proposed solar project and noted some major concerns regarding land use planning and their bylaws, that they had early on after learning about the solar project and the open house in March 2023.
“This project would have been whatever the AUC decided to do, whether or not our land use bylaw contemplated that type of development or not. We would have been obligated to follow the AUC directive and we would have had to amend our bylaws accordingly,” said Kulbisky, noted changes were made following the province’s six-month pause on renewable energy projects, which was lifted at the end of February.
“The AUC process was flawed at the beginning and I think they’ve now corrected it so that municipalities are in the forefront of having these discussions earlier so that way we can make sure that maybe there’s better success at the end,” he said. “We support the AUC decision because it basically supports that good, agricultural producing lands are not going to be used for these types of projects going forward.”
In addition to Nathan Brown, Westlock County also spoke at the summer hearing and had to present a position paper, participate and waited for the AUC’s decision.
“We didn’t oppose the project per se as a project, but we did emphasize that a project of this size and scale really shouldn’t be on properties that are highly productive soils, on class 2 lands as identified by the Alberta Lands Suitability Ratings System,” said Kulbisky, adding that if changes were made sooner and the company spoke with county officials about the project, they could have suggested other class 3 or class 4 lands in Westlock County for the project.
“I think the AUC really did consider that, as much as the solar project could have had some environmental positives going forward, it was not enough to prioritize that over the economic loss of productive lands to the agricultural economy,” explained Kulbisky. “We’re open to having those discussions but involve us earlier in the process so that we direct them to the more appropriate land locations.”
Kulbisky pointed out Westlock County’s role in another important area — ensuring the clean-up and reclamation of such projects is also considered, moving forward.
“We really were forcing some discussion on the reclamation bond part of it,” he said, noting there were questions about “how much money is being allocated for reclamation.”
It is unknown what may happen several years down the road if a company is no longer in the area or the person they were leasing land from is no longer able to clean up the site. Following the tax sale process the municipality becomes owners of that particular area land and are the ones on the hook for reclamation and clean-up costs.
“We’re saying the AUC or the province should have some sort of depository of these (reclamation) funds so that if they ever do need to be cleaned up, there’s that pot of money that can be drawn from to pay for those reclamation costs,” said Kulbisky, noting that the government is still trying to figure out what that will look like. “But it is going to be a problem 10 to 15 years from now when all these fields throughout Alberta are becoming past their useful life and there has to be all this clean-up. There’s not even an area that takes all these old solar panels to either recycle or reclamate,” he added noting there’s still more work to do. “They have to figure that part out and I don’t think there’s an answer to that yet so there’s more to come.”