Letter: SaskPower bets on fossil fuels as future for Saskatchewan


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We rely on SaskPower to provide reasonably priced reliable electricity. Each year it pays a sizeable dividend into provincial coffers, subsidizing tax and royalty revenues, but has little left over to invest in infrastructure.

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Consequently, the Crown’s position appears to be that it has no interest in making its net metering program attractive to people.

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Combined with sinking money into carbon-capture technology (used to produce more carbon emissions) and a projected $5-billion price tag for each small modular nuclear reactor it orders (excluding decommissioning costs), the transition to renewable energy alternatives is deliberately being derailed at an enormous cost to taxpayers.

Taxpayers lose because they are expected to foot the bill for the most expensive way in the history of the world to generate electricity, nuclear power, as well as foregoing lower costs in a more open market net-metering approach.

Obviously, you can’t complain about the “carbon tax” and then prevent individuals from lowering their utility costs. In other words, when SaskPower raises the spectre of an unreliable base load (Murray Mandryk: Artificial GHG deadline a non-starter for SaskPower, SP, May 18), it is its own policies that generate the problem.

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A robust participation in the production of wind and solar power combined with investing in battery technology can more than handle base-load issues. Unless SaskPower’s goal is simply to continue to wager the province’s future economy on the fossil fuel industry, a loser’s bet if there ever was one.

Wayne Turner, Saskatoon

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