Photo: Brandon Harder

Corporate versus
Community

which path toward renewables is best for Saskatchewan?

Co-operatives and community ownership have a deep-rooted history on the Prairies. In the early 20th century, Saskatchewan farmers were driven by a sense of exploitation to seek greater autonomy over their local economies, and sensed the need for collective action (Russel, 2006).

In 1906, farmers banded together to form the Grain Growers Grain company, and in 1911, farmers launched the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, to create a grain elevator system owned and controlled by farmers. In 1924, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was formed (Russel, 2006). From credit unions to the Co-op oil refinery, organizations like these continue to play a central role in the economic development in the province and hold significant economic clout (Russel, 2006).

This history drew James Glennie to the province after over 15 years working in the international wind energy sector. He started up an organization called SaskWind aiming to build a community-owned wind farm in Saskatchewan.

“In coming to this province, I knew it was an oil and gas province, very resistant to wind energy and renewables,” said Glennie. “But the other thing about this province is that it has a very strong history and background in developing co-operatives or community initiatives.”

“When I came here I knew it was going to be hard … but I also thought if we can do it anywhere -- a community scheme in Canada -- it’s going to be here.”

With a community-owned model, people in Saskatchewan would pool their resources to build a wind energy project. These people would buy shares, sell the energy to SaskPower to feed into the electrical grid, and profits would be returned to shareholders.

“Saskatchewan has enormous experiences of doing community-owned projects,” said Glennie.

“It would have been a really exciting project to do, and it would have been a first in North America.”

The ground for community-owned wind power was not as fertile as he thought it would be, however. Though Saskatchewan’s main energy provider, SaskPower, is committed to 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030, a centralized, carbon-based system is slow to change its ways, Glennie discovered.

At the same time, experiments in community ownership continue to seek footholds in Saskatchewan, and have taken stronger root around the world, hinting at a new energy landscape to come.

Stonewalling SaskWind

Despite the strength of co-operative history in this province, Glennie was met with many obstacles while trying to get a community-owned wind project off the ground.

Glennie spent nearly five years in the province searching to get an answer from SaskPower on his project. He arrived in summer 2012, and in October 2013, he was encouraged by SaskPower’s Guy Bruce, vice president of special projects, to submit an Unsolicited Power Proposal because of the community-ownership model he was proposing (Glennie, 2016).


He was also encouraged to add a solar component to his proposal.

In response to his proposal, Glennie was first told in January 2014 that SaskPower was developing a deployment plan for wind, so it would be too early to consider his project. After many delays, he was then told that his project would be considered as part of the competitive process in July 2016. Glennie says the competitive process is ill-suited for a community-ownership model.

“There’s no way we can compete on a competitive tender process when you’re up against a large corporation,” said Glennie.

At that point, Glennie requested a meeting with Gordon Wyant, the minister responsible for SaskPower, to discuss the application. The meeting was scheduled for Oct. 17, 2016. Glennie received an email an hour before the meeting was set to start, saying that since SaskPower had recently issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for solar power in Saskatchewan, it would be inappropriate for the minister to meet with any companies involved in the production of solar power.

Glennie took issue with this pretext for cancelling the meeting.

“The project was originally intended as a wind project only; we stated that it was economically viable as such and further noted that we had only ever included solar because SaskPower had specifically asked us to do so. We also made it clear that the solar option was just that -- and the project would be viable without it,” said Glennie in an email.

Glennie also said that earlier that same day, his group saw representatives from Enercon, a major developer of wind and solar projects, leaving the minister’s office.

“The Minister should not have been meeting with Enercon if he felt it was improper to meet with us,” said Glennie.

In response to a freedom of information request, the ministry responded that no records exist of this meeting.

Glennie wrote to the provincial auditor about the mixed messages from SaskPower, noting the auditor’s 2015 report concluded, “We recommend that SaskPower use consistent processes to evaluate unsolicited proposals provided to SaskPower from potential independent power producers interested in selling it power” (Ferguson, 2015).

“There is no process. It’s one that’s just made up as people go,” said Glennie.

“We submitted an application and after two-and-a-half years, SaskPower simply turned and said, ‘Well we’re not actually going to follow that process, try this one.’”

In November 2016, SaskWind asked the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to conduct a federal environmental impact assessment on a 350 megawatt combined cycle gas plant being built by SaskPower near Swift Current, called the Chinook Power Station. SaskWind was also proposing the Swift Current area as the site for its wind project.

Screening for the project was required to be conducted by both the provincial Ministry of Environment’s Environmental Assessment and Stewardship Branch and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Both agencies were to determine whether an environmental impact assessment was needed.

Under the provincial Environmental Assessment Act, only activities identified as “developments” are required to undergo an impact assessment. The provincial ministry’s assessors determined that the gas plant was not a “development”, and therefore did not require an environmental impact assessment (Ministry of Environment, 2016).

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency also concluded an environmental assessment of the Chinook gas plant was not needed, issuing its ruling the very same day as the province did, Dec. 2, 2016. The agency was satisfied the environmental impacts were well understood, that there was little potential for the project to cause adverse environmental effects on areas of federal jurisdiction, and that any adverse impacts to the environment would be dealt with through provincial regulations (Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, 2016).

While both levels of government saw no need for an environmental review, the annual emissions for the gas plant are projected to be over a million tonnes. Glennie proposed that wind energy could produce the same electricity with no emissions at a cost that is competitive with gas (Glennie, 2016).

SaskPower has stated that Chinook Power Station will act as base load as they add more intermittent renewable energy sources to the grid (SaskPower, 2017). Wind currently provides three per cent of Saskatchewan’s power, and Glennie argues that additional backup, like gas, is not necessary for wind to meet “10 per cent, or even 30 per cent, of the province’s power needs” (Glennie, 2016).

Glennie argues SaskPower did not give serious consideration to alternative means of producing that energy, like wind.
For Glennie, the federal decision not to intervene was the final straw.

“I think the feds didn’t want to take on that battle at this time,” said Glennie.

“We thought, ‘Well, there’s no support from the feds, there’s no support from the local government, why bother?’”

“That was for me the breaking point. It’s five years, a lot of money’s been spent, and so many things were against us.”

So in late 2016, Glennie shut down operations at SaskWind, and left the province.

Community-owned advantage

While Glennie struggled, community-owned energy projects elsewhere have gained ground. Around the world, citizens have chosen to take their energy grids back and have made more rapid shifts to wind and solar power (Klein, 2014).

Public and community ownership has been central to helping many countries get off carbon-based energy. The countries with the highest rates of renewable energy have kept large parts of their grids in public hands (Klein, 2014).

Photo: Joelle Seal

So while SaskPower follows its ambitious pledge of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030, some energy observers say that community-owned models offer a quicker, more efficient alternative.

Saskatchewan has been lagging in home-grown, collectively-owned alternatives, according to Peter Prebble, a Saskatchewan-based clean energy advocate.

“A lot of the new wind installations that are going up are done by private developers that are basically out of province,” said Prebble. Prebble served as an MLA for 16 years, including serving as the Premier’s Legislative Secretary for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation. He has been actively involved in the province’s environmental movement for over 30 years, and has worked as the Saskatchewan Environmental Society’s director of environmental policy.


Prebble said that out-of-province developers bring more experience to bear, but with projects run by private developers, a lot of the revenue will leave Saskatchewan

“It would be nice to see more in-province development. In other words, let’s keep the revenue in Saskatchewan.”


“I think that could help in terms of getting more social acceptability,” agreed Brett Dolter, an ecological economist studying climate and energy policy in Canada.

Dolter added that if a community sees benefits to their community with a renewable energy project, that will bring acceptance rather than opposition.

European model

European countries like Denmark and Germany lead the world in a swift shift to renewable energy, and it is due in large part to the power of community ownership.

In 2011 in Europe, 69 per cent of all newly installed power generation capacity was from renewable sources (Seba, 2014). In Denmark, 40 per cent of its electricity comes from renewable sources. Denmark recently supplied all its electricity needs for a day by onshore and offshore wind supply: enough to power 10 million households (“Denmark just ran their entire country on 100per cent wind energy”, 2017).

Up until 2000, roughly 85 per cent of Denmark’s renewables were owned by local individuals and co-ops. Individuals choose what type of energy they wanted to use and share with their community, creating a first important example of participatory energy and autonomy (Seba, 2014).


Like Denmark, Germany's renewable energy movement began through opposition to nuclear energy. Communities were opposed to risks associated with nuclear plants, and wanted an alternative and autonomy (Klein, 2014).

The transition in Germany occurred with a feed-in tariff program with incentives designed to ensure that citizens who want renewable energy can make the switch in a simple and profitable way.

Small, non-corporate players are the providers, with roughly half of Germany’s renewable energy facilities in the hands of the farmers and citizen groups (Klein, 2014).

There were nearly 900 coops for renewable energy in Germany incorporated between 2006 and 2015. The national economy has improved in Germany because of renewable energy: renewables accounted for $3.5 billion in additional costs per year to produce; they also saved $15 billion to reduced imports of fossil fuels, and avoided external environmental damage (Droege, 2009).

The advantages of community ownership can also be demonstrated here at home. A report called “It’s easy to throw rocks at a corporation: wind energy development and distributive justice in Canada” found that communities with more local ownership respond better to renewable energy developments than large, corporate projects from the outside (Walker & Baxter, 2017).

“If it’s your wind turbine, and you’ve got shares in it and it’s generating a 15 per cent return every year, then it’s a good thing,” said Glennie.

The study found that local planning and sharing benefits were critical to acceptance for renewable energy. The model of community-owned development in Nova Scotia makes wind farms three times more popular than the corporation-led model in Ontario (The Canadian Press, 2017).

It was a different story in Ontario.

“In Ontario, the provincial government took away the ability of rural municipalities to say ‘no’ to projects, which I think only enhanced people’s sense of fear and dread that this project was being imposed on them and it increased their opposition,” said Dolter.

Saskatchewan solar co-operative

The co-operative model has been followed on a small scale here in the province by the Saskatchewan Environmental Society.

The Saskatchewan Environmental Society created a solar co-operative in early 2015. Today, the co-op has 135 members and three solar installations around Saskatoon.

To join, each member pays $1,000 with $50 going towards membership and $950 going towards a preferred share.

Two installations are on local businesses, and one installation is in partnership with the City of Saskatoon to help power the Landfill Gas Generation Station. The station captures methane that would otherwise be emitted from the landfill and uses it to generate electricity for 1,200 homes.

In total, the three solar co-operatives include 210 solar panels and 63 kilowatts of capacity.

“It’s still pretty small scale and we have a long way to go,” said Prebble. He is the founding member of the SES Solar Co-op.

“Our goal is to really model greenhouse gas emission reduction, to model the fact that solar is economically viable and to encourage others … so that others can be investing in solar.”

Prebble added that SES ensures its solar panels are the most environmentally desirable ones on the market. SES solar panels don’t have conflict minerals in them, and they ensure the manufacturer has a low environmental footprint.

SES’s members hope that other co-ops around the province can form by following the model they set out.

“The fact that the Saskatoon co-op has sort of gone through all the process of figuring out the legal requirements and the relationships that have to be developed… that work has been done,” said Ann Coxworth, SES board member.

“I know the hope is that the success of the co-op here will lead to the formation of solar co-ops in other parts of the province. It could be a model that will be copied elsewhere.

SaskPower and co-ops

Although Glennie failed to make inroads with community-owned wind energy, SaskPower has demonstrated a commitment to community-owned projects when it comes to solar energy. SaskPower has pledged to add 60 megawatts of solar power utility scale generation by 2021. Of that 60 megawatts, 20 megawatts will be generated via community-driven projects.

SaskPower has conducted public consultation groups across the province to determine what role communities can play in the implementation of solar energy.

“Solar power is the one where a lot of communities have an interest,” said Doug Opseth, director of supply planning integration at SaskPower.

“There’s a lot of models around North America where people can follow, where it’s straight utility-owned solar power generation on a large scale; there can be individuals’ home roof-mounted solar power, and then there could be things like solar co-operatives."

SaskPower’s solar group consulted with the public to see what people would like to see, and then reviewed what other utilities around North America have done.

There still seems to be no plan for SaskPower to follow a co-operative model for wind energy projects. However, Opseth can see the merit in such an approach.

“If I was to build a wind facility in a community, if I had some ownership stake or some stake in the facility, I may be more accepting of it. So it’s certainly something we have to be aware of,” said Opseth.

“Certainly as we look to add lots of wind power in Saskatchewan, lots of solar power generation in Saskatchewan, public acceptance is something we need to be very concerned about.”

A change in structure

Adding more renewables and distributed energy sources in Saskatchewan can be a challenging change for SaskPower’s current business structure.

“It all together would require a kind of different approach,” said Paul Hanley, an environmental columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

“Centralization isn’t as necessary, of course, with wind and solar, which is distributed across the province,” said Dolter.

“(SaskPower) was doing very much what other coal-dominated utilities have done throughout North America and worldwide,” said Glennie.

“It’s much easier to carry on what you’ve always done rather than try something new.”

“The newer model you’re seeing is electricity going the way of the internet. No one controls anything, everyone controls everything … I think this is a challenge that the utility companies are facing worldwide, and in fact we’re all facing worldwide. Life is about adapting and competing,” said Glennie.

Glennie thinks utilities can still provide a service in an age where electricity is decentralized and distributed through renewable energy sources.

“There needs to be an independent system operator that manages the entire system … and there also needs to be an independent transmission owner that managers the transmission and distribution assets on the grid. That is the role for SaskPower in the future.”

In the meantime, SaskPower faces challenges as individuals now have the power to generate their own electricity.

“As they build up their new capacity, refresh their transmission capacity and repair, rates will go up. At the same time, technologies like solar prices are going down,” said Dolter.

This leads to the potential for what Dolter calls a “utility death spiral”. As rates go up, it looks more appealing to individuals to “defect from the grid” and simply install their own generation capacity.

“You start to get into this feedback loop of rates going up, people leaving the grid, rates going up to compensate, more people leaving the grid,” said Dolter.

“That is the threat that utilities have worried about … There could be a changing business model for SaskPower. I’m still waiting to see sort of what they decide their role will be going forward.”

As SaskPower moves into the future to reach its ambitious target of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030, it must be decided whether a corporate or community-owned model will best benefit the province. The utility must adapt and define its role in Saskatchewan’s renewable energy future.

Sources:
The Canadian Press. “Local planning, sharing benefits key to wind-farm buy in, study says.” CBC News. March 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/nova-scotia-ontario-wind-farms-1.4010653

Caughill, Peter (2017, March 3). "Denmark Just Ran Their Country on 100 per cent Wind Energy". Futurism. Retrieved from: https://futurism.com/denmark-just-ran-their-entire-country-on-100-wind-energy/

Droege, Peter. (2009). 100 percent Renewable Energy: Autonomy in Action. London: Earthscan.

Ferguson, Judy (2015). 2015 Report Volume I. Regina: Provincial Auditor of Saskatchewan.

Glennie, James (2016, Oct. 28). “Letter to the Auditor: Inconsistent SaskPower process for assessing new generation”. SaskWind (blog). www.saskwind.ca/blogbackend/2016/10/28/saskpower-auditor-upp;

Glennie, James. (2016, Nov. 4). “SaskWind requests Federal Environmental Assessment of Swift Current Gas Plant.” SaskWind (blog). www.saskwind.ca/blogbackend/2016/11/4/saskwind-ceaa-chinook

Klein, Naomi. (2014). This Changes Everything. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada.

Ministry of Environment Environmental Assessment Branch (2016, Dec. 2). “Reason for Determination: Chinook Power Station Project”. Regina: Government of Saskatchewan.

“Notice of Environmental Assessment Determination” (2016, Dec. 2). Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Ottawa: Government of Canada.

Russell, Nora (2006). The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. “Co-operatives”. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina.

SaskPower (2017, January). “Chinook Power Station Moving Forward”. Regina: SaskPower. http://www.saskpower.com/about-us/media-information/chinook-power-station-moving-forward/

Seba, Tony. (2009). Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal and Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030. Silicon Valley, California: Clean Planet Ventures, 2014.

Walker, Chad & Jamie Baxter. (2017, January). “‘It’s easy to throw rocks at a corporation: wind energy development and distributive justice in Canada”. The Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning.