Energy Strategies - Alberta

Ministry of Energy

Department of Energy


Minister

The Honourable Ronald Liepert


Documents


Alberta’s Nine-Point Bioenergy Plan (6.12MB PDF)


Alberta Overview

Launching Alberta’s Energy Future, released in December of 2008, is Alberta’s long-term action plan to fulfil its three primary “outcomes,” namely: clean energy production, wise energy use, and sustained economic prosperity. Several other documents complement the energy strategy, including a specific plan for Alberta’s oilsands, a strategy designed to facilitate technological innovation and a bioenergy plan. With the exception of specific programs, like the Bioenergy Infrastructure Development Grant Program, where funding is defined, Launching Alberta’s Energy Future is primarily a backgrounder on the province’s energy mix and an overview of potential paths to the strategy’s three outcomes, with an implementation plan to follow. The 2008 Climate Change Strategy specifies deadlines for emission reduction through intensity targets.

Launching Alberta’s Energy Future focuses primarily on the importance of fossil fuel production (i.e., oil, natural gas and coal), with gasification and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, as well as efficiency programs, proposed as ways of fulfilling the document’s “clean energy production” and “wise energy use” objectives. The strategy primarily advocates facilitating industry participation and innovation, rather than government-led institutions. For example, Launching Alberta’s Energy Future specifically defers “to the market to determine what mix and proportion of energy sources Alberta will ultimately use for electricity.”


Desired Outcomes

Launching Alberta's Energy Future includes three “Desired Outcomes” that guide the province’s actions on energy. These objectives, in turn, correspond to common themes found throughout Canada’s other provincial and territorial energy strategies.

  • Clean energy production
  • Emissions, Diversification, Innovation
  • Wise energy use
  • Awareness, Efficiency, Electricity
  • Sustained economic prosperity
  • Development, Benefit, Innovation, Electricity

Major Energy Players


Timeline

2010
  • Reduce emissions by 20 megatonnes
  • Renewable Fuel Standard will require five per cent ethanol content in gasoline and two per cent renewable content in diesel
2015
  • Three to five projects expected to store about five million tonnes of CO2 a year
2020
  • Reduce emissions by 50 megatonnes
2050
  • Reduce emissions by 200 megatonnes