The Alberta Solar One Farm near Burdett, about halfway between Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. (Image from Enbridge)

By Justin Goulet

SACPA: discussing the prospect of solar power breathing new life into abandoned oil wells

Nov 5, 2021 | 11:41 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The province has more than 170,000 inactive and abandoned oil wells and over 3,000 orphan wells that have been abandoned by failed companies.

According to the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA), that all adds up to a liability in excess of $30 billion against a total security deposit of less than $250 million. Additionally, there is a growing tax liability.

In a survey, the Rural Municipalities Association of Alberta (RMA) discovered that $245 million in unpaid property taxes were owed by oil and gas companies in February 2021. Lease arrears to landowners are also in the millions.

With that, SACPA welcomed Keith Hirsche to its latest virtual meeting, which can be viewed in full below.

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Hirsche is behind the RenuWell Project, focusing on reusing abandoned oil and gas sites in southern Alberta as a foundation for solar energy initiatives. He said that over the years, there has been “major breakthroughs” in terms of renewable energy development, including solar. Hirsche said, “when I started in renewable energy back about 15-17 years ago, wind was really the up-and-coming technology.”

“Solar was something that was a dream, but it was really not commercial at that time.”

He noted that in the early 2010s, the U.S. Department of Energy launched a “SunShot program” which aimed to bring the cost of solar generation to $1 per watt within a decade, which Hirsche said was achieved in 2018.

“What that means is that the cost of energy production from solar has become cost competitive with fossil fuels in many places of the world.”

Hirsche listed the Travers Solar project as one of the highlights of the success of solar power in southern Alberta, as well as the Claresholm Solar project. He said that’s great news in the solar industry.

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Hirsche stated that, “solar has been dropping consistently over these past decades. We’ve gone from a price of about $8 a watt for solar generation, down to $1 a watt.”

“As that cost has declined, the amount of solar generation capacity has increased and now it’s at a point in Alberta [where] the cost of generating electricity is about $4 a kilowatt hour on levelized cost of electricity generation, and that’s equivalent to about $20 a barrel.”

Hirsche said one of the benefits of using abandoned oil and gas sites is that the areas usually already have service roads, power connections and are “sitting on land that has been prepared and in good position for power generation in southern Alberta.”

“If we look at a comparison, one of the phases of the Travers Project was originally posted as a 400-megawatt development. It would sit on about 2,000 acres of land. Likewise, if we converted only 25 per cent of the inactive leases in the Municipal District of Taber, we would be able to achieve that same 400-megawatts without disturbing any additional agricultural land.”

More on the RenuWell project is available here.