Renewable energy deals in Alberta have almost completely collapsed since the province overhauled rules that govern the sector, plummeting 99 per cent from 2023 to 2025.

While renewables activity in Alberta virtually disappeared in 2025, Nova Scotia emerged as Canada’s most active market for corporate clean energy deals, according to a new report from Business Renewables Centre-Canada. It’s the first time a province outside Alberta has led in corporate energy deals.

Nova Scotia Power launched its Green Choice Program two years ago. It allows large-scale electricity customers to access renewable power from local developments. In January, 2025, the utility announced it had procured 262 megawatts of new wind capacity from projects under the program, all of which are co-owned by Mi’kmaw communities in the province, the report said.

It added that Nova Scotia “is a model for other corporate renewable energy procurement program development in provinces across Canada.”

Report finds Alberta’s restrictive renewables policies dampened investment

Jorden Dye, the director of BRC-Canada, said he wasn’t surprised about the dearth of activity in Alberta given the government’s various policy decisions.

Those include a seven-month moratorium on renewable project approvals, banning projects from certain classes of agricultural lands and within 35 kilometres of protected areas such as provincial parks, a new upfront recycling fee for wind and solar equipment, and new reclamation security requirements for developers.

“We went from an average of about 1,000 megawatts of deals per year down to only five megawatts last year. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars every year and thousands of construction jobs,” Mr. Dye said in an interview.

Corporate backing for renewables has dried up as a result of policy changes, Mr. Dye said, which has also hurt the pipeline for future projects.

The office of Alberta’s Utilities Minister said in a statement that the BRC-Canada report is a “misleading characterization” of Alberta’s renewables sector. Alberta has led Canada in new renewable energy development over the past few years, the statement said, adding that the province’s utilities commission approved 16 renewable projects in 2025.

Editorial: Free the market for renewable energy in Alberta

Solar and wind projects in the province generated roughly $70.6-million in municipal tax revenues in 2025, according to the report. But those “benefits are being overshadowed and even put at risk by new policies that continue to weigh on Alberta’s renewable energy market,” it said.

“There remains substantial evidence that private-sector buyers want more low-cost, non-emitting energy, and the fundamentals of Alberta’s market-based electricity system continue to make it an appealing host jurisdiction. However, Alberta’s continued policy uncertainty has all but halted new commercial transactions.”

Two other areas of policy are still being overhauled – around the province’s new restructured energy market (REM) and transmission rules – and the report warned that even clarity around where they are headed might prove insufficient to restore investment and commercial confidence in Alberta’s renewable electricity market.

“The precedent will have been set: if the Alberta government disregards the investment expectations it fostered with prior policy and market constructs, it could do so again with the new REM and transmission policy framework.”