On May 20, 2020, the Commission of the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) denied an application by NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. (NGTL) for leave to abandon facilities that are part of NGTL’s extensive system of pipeline and facilities in Alberta and British Columbia[…]
In June 2020, the Court of Appeal of Manitoba released its decision in Manitoba (Hydro-Electric Board) v Manitoba (Public Utilities Board)[1] and overturned a utility board directive creating a special rate class for on-reserve First Nations in Manitoba[…]
This case comment considers two decisions. The first is the Alberta Court of Appeal’s decision in Fort McKay First Nation v Prosper Petroleum Ltd,[1] issued April 24, 2020, finding that the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) improperly failed to consider the honour of the Crown separate from the duty to consult on Prosper’s Rigel Oil Sands Project[…]
In earlier articles and essays I explained that the sales of public franchises for private gain, undisciplined by effective competition, produced a concentrated, complicated industry no one intended. Repeated 80 times over 30 years, electricity mergers have wasted economic resources, diverted value from customers to shareholders, weakened competitive forces and intensified intra-corporate conflict. Let’s start with economic waste[…]
In October, 2019 the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC or Commission) issued two decisions addressing requests by ATCO Electric Ltd. (AEL) for recovery of the undepreciated costs of assets damaged or destroyed in the 2016 wildfires in Alberta. One decision was in AEL’s 2018–19 Transmission General Tariff Application (GTA)[…]
On July 1, 2020 the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA came to an end. After 24 years, NAFTA was replaced by a new agreement called the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.[2] The main impact as far as the energy sector is concerned was elimination of the famous Chapter 11 dispute resolution provision[…]
Natural gas distributors in Canada are under increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Policies at all levels of government impose ambitious GHG emission reduction targets that directly call for reduced use of natural gas. For example, the CleanBC Plan legislates a 40 per cent reduction over the next decade, and encourages electrification[…]
Natural gas plays a central role in various initiatives aimed at moving towards reducing carbon emissions. That role, however, sometimes appears inconsistent, indeed self-contradictory. On the one hand, as the cleanest-burning, lowest carbon-emitting of the hydrocarbon fuels, wider use of natural gas is often promoted as a “bridging fuel,” particularly to replace the burning of coal[…]