Renewable energy procurements in Alberta almost completely stalled out in 2025 despite gigawatts of demand for new capacity, after a moratorium on new projects and a series of onerous and confusing regulatory changes drove investors out of the province that had previously led Canada in clean power development.

“The proof of the pudding is now in the eating,” the Calgary-based Business Renewables Centre-Canada (BRC) writes in the latest edition of its annual state of the market report. “The market has now endured two full years in which commercial agreements have fallen to a tiny fraction of the robust deal-making seen in 2021-2023,” so that 2025 “manifested last year’s BRC prediction that “the pipeline of new renewable energy capacity will start to dry up.”

When Alberta first announced its moratorium in August, 2023, there were still approved projects in the queue that were headed toward completion. But by 2025, BRC writes, new wind projects had “stalled altogether”, so that the province actually lost grid-connected wind capacity, while solar only added 38 MW, its smallest gain since 2019.

To date, Alberta’s 3.62 GW of contracted volume from corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) has supported 4.77 GW of renewable energy capacity, producing more than $7 billion in capital investment, about 7,000 construction jobs, enough energy to power 1.7 million homes, and $30 million in municipal tax revenue in 2025 alone, BRC says. The more recent policy changes mean that, “after pioneering business investment in renewable energy in Canada, as of 2025, Alberta no longer leads the country in corporate procurement capacity.”

Alberta’s decline is likely to extend through this year, the report adds, since “there are no active development projects that have announced the sort of commercial deal that has proven essential for financing most of Alberta’s renewable energy growth in the last half-decade.”

BRC’s analysis includes a complicated, full-page chart that summarizes the land conservation restrictions, energy market restructuring, transmission policy changes, and shifts in industrial carbon pricing that have confused and bogged down the province’s energy markets since early 2024. Executive Director Jorden Dye said the province is expected to finish drafting its new market rules and regulations by the end of 2026, but they won’t start going into force until 2027.

Despite the years of twists and turns, the province saw two major energy storage purchases in 2025, and corporate customers still say they’re interested in buying renewable power.

“Even though regulatory and market uncertainty are holding back many corporate buyers,” the report states, “demand for corporate renewable energy procurement remains strong.” Companies may be on the sidelines for now, but they’re “monitoring policy and market developments to make a move once more clarity emerges.” Although the restrictions had cancelled 10.7 GW of new renewables projects by August, 2025, enough to meet 89% of Alberta’s peak power demand, BRC reported in October that the top 100 corporate buyers would be looking for 7.7 GW of renewable power by 2040, including 3.9 GW by 2030.

“They may not be putting it forward in their marketing,” Dye told The Energy Mix. But the companies’ annual reports and corporate disclosures make their intentions clear, and with so many more potential buyers in the market beyond the top 100, “we’re only scratching the surface of the tens of gigawatts of demand” that Alberta can expect to see.

“They’ve made commitments to their boards and investors, and we need to be open for business to meet them,” Dye said.

With Alberta abandoning the field, the lead in corporate renewables procurements now passes to Nova Scotia, where two developers working with Mi’kmaw communities announced 262 megawatts of new wind power sales to 11 buyers. The report also points to positive moves in Saskatchewan and Ontario.

Dye said the momentum from other provinces shows that deep restrictions on renewable power are not the only policy option for conservative or populist governments.

“Governments that are open to industry and want to see development and investment in their jurisdictions should be agnostic to the type of investment,” he told The Mix. “You place rules around it. We want responsible development. But you don’t have to attack an industry, and frankly, attacking a multi-billion-dollar industry at the height of its growth is something I haven’t seen in other jurisdictions.”

In the five years that BRC has been working to open up Canadian markets for corporate power purchases, “the leading message I’ve had is to highlight the results for Alberta,” he said, with data on the investment and municipal tax revenue that renewable energy development brought to the province.

But now, that success story ends with a cautionary tale about the cost of disruption. “We can see the outcome on any industry, and this goes beyond renewables,” he said “When you start adding layers of policy uncertainty, you’re going to drive away investment.”