What's wrong with Alberta's electricity grid?

What's wrong with Alberta's electricity grid? Is it the voting habits of "hillbillies," as the NDP brain trust claims, or the NDP themselves?

Last weekend, Albertans received an amber alert-style warning sent to their phones about the potential for a catastrophic electricity grid failure.

#Alberta #Electricity #Alert pic.twitter.com/9aOrD1abgJ

— T (@Krommsan) January 14, 2024

The text message told Albertans to turn off non-essential lights, unplug electric vehicles, and avoid using large appliances and block heaters to prevent rolling blackouts as the electricity system strained to keep up with a long, albeit seasonal, cold snap in the province.

The former leader of the Alberta NDP, Brian Mason, blames UCP voters for the electricity operators failing to meet demand.

What’s changed? You hillbillies elected Danielle Smith and the UCP. That’s what’s changed. https://t.co/w8ogmrdhMk

— Brian Mason (@bmasonNDP2) January 15, 2024

But, as they say in horror movies, including the ones Albertans live through in this weather, the call is coming from inside the house.

Alberta is rich with hundreds of years of clean-burning coal under our feet to provide baseload electricity supply, and yet, during the dark days of the NDP's government, a phasing out of coal-fired electricity was accelerated.

This left coal towns decimated by jobs losses and energy producers struggling to keep up.

Extreme cold has put the province’s electricity grid at high risk of rotating outages tonight due to extreme demand. We’re asking all Albertans to reduce non-essential electricity use to help avoid outages: https://t.co/qeQnw57Yvl

— Alberta Government (@YourAlberta) January 14, 2024

Worse still, regulatory uncertainty caused by an anti-fossil NDP government left energy companies apprehensive about building natural gas plants to replace coal. These plants can take several years to bring online.

The NDP now blames Albertans who wisely didn't vote for a party that failed to earn their support for a mess in the electricity system they created. But the NDP needs to look in the mirror. Their green reset could cause Albertans to freeze in the dark.