Alberta’s Electricity Future
February 21, 2025
September 26, 2024
Cheat Sheet: see what’s changed from the original draft vision
As Albertans work together to reduce emissions towards our net-zero targets, Alberta’s electricity system is facing a perfect storm of challenges to its reliable, safe, and affordable operation. In order to overcome these complex, system-level challenges, it’s clear that our past efforts to tweak the existing system won’t work. To successfully navigate to where we want to be, the system needs fundamental changes driven by a new approach.
Alberta’s electricity system was designed for a different era: not just the resources powering it, or the poles and wires, but the complex system of integrated players, policies and market signals that determine how much energy to produce, where it needs to go, and how much it will cost. Preparing Alberta’s electricity system to meet the needs of the future will require a highly-coordinated approach, one that includes the perspectives from the many stakeholders and Rights and Title holders connected to it. It must also draw in non-traditional voices from groups that the current system is under-serving or affecting adversely.
By bringing the system together to find alignment through a unified vision of our electricity future, identify key barriers that stand between today’s reality and that vision, and test solutions to remove those barriers, Alberta’s Electricity Future offers a better, more effective, and more equitable way to collaborate around solving these problems.
From governments to industry to consumers, everyone has a role to play in achieving a net-zero future in Alberta.
Building a coalition of leaders in Alberta’s electricity sector to be the actors for change
Uncovering barriers to progress and identifying where our collective action can bring about policy, regulation, customer engagement, and technology integration solutions needed to realize the vision
Creating a collective vision for the future of Alberta’s electricity system that will guide actions and focus outcomes
Implementing prototype solutions in real-world scenarios to embed collaboration, test solutions, iterate, share learnings, and ultimately scale solutions to resolve roadblocks
Final – September 26, 2024
Navigating the complexities of modernizing Alberta’s electricity grid demands collaborative dialogue and innovative thinking. Leading the Charge: A Vision for Alberta’s Electricity Future harnesses diverse perspectives from the initiative’s inclusive engagement model to envision an electricity system that empowers customer choice, ensures reliability, and accelerates decarbonization affordably.
Cheat Sheet: see what’s changed from the original release
Phase 1 of Alberta’s Electricity Future brought together the AEF Coalition, a group of 60+ representatives from Alberta’s electricity system. Through interviews, workshops and working sessions, we created a baseline understanding of the current state of Alberta’s Electricity System and its most pressing challenges.
This first phase also engaged communities, students, experts, associations, and social justice groups, to test and enhance the coalition’s co-created vision, Leading the Charge: A Vision for Alberta’s Electricity Future.
In Phase 2, the Lab conducted a review of over 60 studies, reports and electricity system modernization plans spanning 5 countries to uncover both regional and universal barriers to electricity systems change.
The barriers were then assessed using an Alberta lens to unearth the top 10 systemic barriers to advancing grid modernization in Alberta.
Of these challenges, the AEF coalition has identified 3 it feels are imperative to address as soon as possible. These will become the focus of Working Groups in Phase 3 of the initiative.
#1 – Incentivizing the optimization of existing electricity assets and infrastructure
#9 – Evolving traditional business and delivery models to accommodate DERs
By taking on these 3 distinct but connected challenges, all grounded in meeting customers’ changing needs, we will enable additional collaboration across the field to not only generate high impact individual solutions, but also ones that are mutually reinforcing.
To oversee and advise working groups responsible for generating solution prototypes, we’ve created Alberta’s Electricity Future Leadership Council. The council will provide strategic advice to the project delivery team, surface emerging opportunities or barriers to the solutions in development, and identify high-leverage opportunities to explore new solution areas.
The council includes electricity leaders and experts representing diverse perspectives from within the system and regions within the province.
Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC)
In October 2024, 3 working groups were formed to propose solution prototypes aimed at reducing barriers in the primary solution areas selected for this sprint cycle.
Across the 3 areas, 7 solutions were pitched, with 4 progressing through initial stress testing, 2 had components integrated into solutions moving forward with the full scopes deferred until the next round and 1 was deferred for further recruitment.
By June 2025, groups aim to put forward a variety of solutions, many involving proposing and pre-testing policy related solutions with the AEF coalition’s broadly representative stakeholders in parallel to the Government of Alberta’s Distribution Policy development.
1. Integrated Planning |
Output: Brief and supporting materials summarizing key considerations, potential benefits, and actionable recommendations for an integrated or coordinated planning approach between TFOs, DFOs, REAs and AESO tailored to Alberta’s deregulated electricity structure. |
2. Demand Side Management |
Output: Policy Briefing that outlines regulatory change options to enable and integrate demand-side management (DSM) as part of the suite of solutions for customers. |
3. Distributed Energy Resource Policy |
Output: Policy framework including the opportunity, short and long term objectives and anticipated outcomes, system integration considerations and implementation recommendations. |
4. Decentralized Market Mechanism |
Output: Structure outline for a decentralized market mechanism focused on end-user solutions to optimize the distribution system and its operations to minimize costs. |
We are currently seeking funders for AEF Phase 3 and beyond. If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of investing in our work, please reach out to a member of the Challenge Team:
Maureen Kolla
Lead, Alberta’s Electricity Future
[email protected]
Julie Bunker
Project Coordinator, Alberta’s Electricity Future
[email protected]
We are an Alberta-based coalition of diverse innovators and leading organizations working together to accelerate the transition to the energy system the future requires of us.
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