Big companies lined up this week to take aim at the proposed Heartland Transmission Project, with one group warning it could drive business out of the province.
About 50 people representing some 200 intervening groups spoke at a process meeting Tuesday at the Edmonton Expo Centre. The meeting was organized by the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) to prepare for next year's hearing on the Heartland Transmission Project — a 500-kilovolt double-circuit transmission line through Sturgeon County proposed by AltaLink and Epcor.
Several hundred groups have applied to speak for or against the line at the hearing in the past few weeks, said AUC spokesperson Jim Law.
Lawyer Richard Secord was there representing the Sturgeon Blue Line Group, a party of around 156 residents that live along the alternate route for the line. His clients were concerned about the health, economic and visual impacts of the line on their lives. "The list of issues is considerable once you start putting these lines on private property."
Bad for business, say groups
Several business groups also voiced their opposition to the Heartland project.
Jason Morris said his client, Sherwood Park eye-doctor Ross Harris, would lodge a constitutional challenge against the line. The line, he explained, would effectively shut down the doctor's federally approved helipad and the AUC did not have jurisdiction over the pad.
The line would also affect three large potato farms in Sturgeon County, said lawyer Jennifer Klimek, taking land out of production and interfering with aerial spraying. "This is some of the best agricultural land in Alberta," she said in an interview. "Why are we giving it up for a transmission line?"
Agrium and Total E&P oppose the line due to its effects on their operations, said Laurie Danielson of the Northeast Capital Industrial Association. The lines could interfere with Agrium's gypsum ponds, for example, and would make a chunk of Total's property unusable. "That's unacceptable to us."
Could triple power costs
One big player in the hearing will be the Industrial Power Consumers Association of Alberta (IPCAA), a group of oil, gas, steel, cement and agricultural companies that use about 35 per cent of Alberta's electricity.
The Heartland line is too big and expensive, said executive director Sheldon Fulton in an interview, and is far in excess of what industry actually needs.
His group's members are not short on electricity, Fulton said, and won't need a 500-kilovolt line for at least 20 years. "You don't need massive amounts of transmission going there in the next couple of years."
The Heartland line is the first of $12 to $14 billion worth of new lines proposed for construction by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) in the next decade, Fulton said. If it's all built, industry will see its power bill jump to $36 per megawatt-hour in 2018 from $11 per megawatt-hour today. "It's going to triple the cost." The Heartland line would account for about $1.25 of this jump, he said.
This plan will make Alberta less competitive, Fulton said, and would push companies to leave or go off-grid through on-site generation. Many residents and smaller companies won't have those options and will get stuck with the cost of the new lines. "That's bad politics."
These lines will cost billions, Fulton argued, and not produce any energy that could not be made more cheaply with on-site generation. "We're going to spend billions of dollars and there's no return on that investment."
The AUC will release the official time and place of the Heartland approval hearing later this month, Law said.
