As a social enterprise, BVGEC doesn't just measure success in kilowatt hours. We measure it against something bigger: the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a framework adopted by every UN member state in 2015 as a shared roadmap for ending poverty, protecting the planet, and building a more prosperous, peaceful world by 2030.

Back in 2016, Alberta set an ambitious target: generate 30% of the province's electricity from renewable sources, paired with a plan to phase out coal fired electricity generation entirely.

Over the past several decades, the cost of installing solar has dropped dramatically, and a big part of that story is simple: panels have gotten a lot better at their one job.

One of the very first questions anyone asks about solar is some version of: how long until it pays for itself? For a typical residential installation, the honest answer is somewhere between 8 and 20 years, a wide range, and for good reason, because the real number depends heavily on your specific circumstances.

Solar costs have been on a steady, dramatic decline for well over a decade, and that trend hasn't slowed down. Between 2010 and 2019 alone, the cost of utility scale solar power fell by 82%, one of the fastest cost declines of any electricity generation technology in history.

Here's a number worth remembering: 96% of the materials in a typical solar panel can be recovered and reused to manufacture new panels. Combine that with an expected lifespan of 25 to 30 years per panel, and most of the solar hardware installed today simply isn't going to be a waste problem for a very long time.

The emission intensity (the total amount of a given pollutant – for example CO2 – per unit of energy that is produced) of PV systems is 10 to 53 times lower than the burning of fossil fuels, depending on the specifications of the system.

Solar energy has an important role to play in Alberta’s transition toward a more sustainable and resilient energy system. But how and where solar projects are developed matters.

Ask anyone unfamiliar with solar power what they think happens to panels in a Bow Valley winter, and you'll usually hear some version of "they must be useless half the year." The real answer is more interesting: with the right mounting angle, snow only reduces annual energy production by 1 to 5%. That's a rounding error compared to what most people assume.

If you think of solar power as a technology built for California or Arizona, it's worth resetting that assumption.

Originally written by Clark Banack, Director of the Alberta Centre for Sustainable Rural Communities, as part of their research into co-operatives and rural economic development.

The Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley runs an ongoing Earth Talks series, bringing in speakers to dig into different angles of the climate and sustainability work happening across the Bow Valley.