Alberta Premier Danielle Smith slammed the Liberal-NDP’s climate “ideology,” claiming it naively phased out coal too early and consequently, has cost the province billions of dollars.
“This is what happens when ideology runs a power grid,” she said on Wednesday.
“[The NDP] phased out coal too early, coal was a long-term sustainable way to provide power, they phased it out early, costing billions of dollars.”
This comes a week after Smith’s United Conservative Party announced they were pausing approvals of new renewable electricity generation projects for six months, citing feedback from rural landowners and the Alberta Utilities Commission over the “rapid pace of renewables development.”
Smith further said that Alberta is still paying hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the NDP’s “poor decisions.”
“At the same time, they for some reason felt they could bring on an equivalent amount of wind and solar and get the same amount of power and you cannot do that —- wind and solar are intermittent.”
Smith’s announcement also comes just days after Notley said she will remain as the NDP’s leader, after getting blown out in the May 29 provincial election.
“I am fully committed to the job that I’m doing here today and that Albertans asked me to do,” she said.
“Twenty-six hundred was the difference between us being in government and the other folks being in government,” she said, referencing the six ridings that the UCP narrowly won.
