LAND USE IMPACTS AND POLICY INCOHERENCE OF SMALL-SCALE UTILITY RENEWABLE POWER: SASKPOWER’S POWER GENERATION PARTNER PROGRAM
Date
2020-09-24
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Renewable energy development has reached critical interest internationally, and each jurisdiction must manage development appropriately based on their own specific policy realities. Many countries have pursued renewable energy development at the community level, and pursued private or cooperative models of developing and managing renewable energy systems. Within the Canadian context, each province is responsible for creating and distributing energy to its citizens, and many provinces still have Crown corporations that exclusively manage all aspects of energy development and transmission. In Saskatchewan, SaskPower, the provincial Crown Corporation has developed the Power Generation Partner Program (PGPP) to engage communities and the private sector in small scale utility renewable energy production (up to 1 MW) to be purchased by SaskPower. The introduction of this program has an impact on various policies, programs and plans, but particularly impacts land use planning within the province. Renewable energy production is an emerging land use in Saskatchewan that is competition with other established uses of land, such as agriculture, residential uses and other existing extraction industries. Permitting of this form of land use mostly falls to local governments. Because the PGPP is being presented on behalf of SaskPower as an opportunity to communities, the community-level effects of this development present questions pertaining to the motivations for communities to pursue this form of development, and the appropriateness of existing land use policies in place to accommodate this new land use.
Using existing land use planning documents as a guide, this research explores how Saskatchewan communities might pursue renewable energy development and inform how these developments might be reviewed based on the existing provincial and community land use planning legislative context. This exploratory research asks the following questions: Why might a community wish to participate in the PGPP? To what extent might policy incoherence and layering within the context of land use planning policy impact PGPP applications as an emerging type of land development? And, how might land use planning documents at the local community level impact PGPP applications?
Description
Keywords
policy incoherence, land use planning, Saskatchewan, SaskPower, Power Generation Partner Program, renewable energy, land-use impacts of renewable energy, solar development
Citation
Degree
Master of Public Policy (M.P.P.)
Department
Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy
Program
Public Policy