The Indigenous-led solar farm redefining Alberta’s energy landscape – The Globe and Mail
An Alberta First Nation is launching a bold new renewable energy project that will consistently crank out enough clean electricity to power 20,000 typical homes for a year.
The Tilley Solar project is a solar farm with nearly 70,000 photovoltaic panels that is expected to become operational this spring and provide 23.6 megawatts of clean power to southern Alberta. The $52-million initiative, located about 200 kilometres southeast of Calgary, will reduce Alberta’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 14,200 tonnes annually – the equivalent of removing 4,350 passenger cars from the roads.
The project was approved before the Alberta government placed a seven-month moratorium on renewable energy projects in August, 2023. At the time, the province said the moratorium was needed to protect farmland, though some critics said it tilted the playing field toward fossil-fuel energy projects. Before the moratorium, Alberta’s renewable energy market accounted for 92 per cent of Canada’s renewable energy growth.
