#saskwind

It would have been the first 100 per cent community-owned renewable power project in North America.

Located just south of Swift Current, Sask., the $90-million project would have generated 35 megawatts (MW) of electricity from wind turbines and solar panels with electricity sold to the provincial utility, SaskPower.

But SaskPower had other plans for the region — specifically, a $700-million natural gas power station.

On Dec. 2, it was announced that the gas power station — which will emit one million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually, equivalent to putting 211,000 cars on the road for a year — wouldn’t require a federal environmental assessment.

Two days later, SaskWind, the provincial wind energy association and key promoter of the proposed Swift Current wind and solar project, shut down after four years of operation.

In a final blog post, SaskWind president James Glennie wrote that the decision about the environmental assessment of the natural gas power station was “extremely disappointing, includes no justification and verges on the inexplicable.”

After four years, SaskWind is calling it quits — and expressing frustration with how it was treated by the provincial government.

The company had proposed a community-owned wind project for Swift Current.

But it said the provincial government and its power company, SaskPower, never did seem all that interested in the idea.

"We've found essentially the door has been closed every step of the way," said James Glennie, president of SaskWind.

Glennie says the final straw for him came Friday, when the federal government decided to pass on an environmental assessment of a $700 million natural-gas fired power plant in Swift Current.

Glennie says not only would wind have avoided the greenhouse gas emissions of natural gas, but it would have created more jobs as well.