Alberta Energy minister promises to release electricity market report by end of year

Alberta’s Energy Minister Ken Hughes says he plans to release a major report on Alberta’s retail electricity market before the end of the year. The release will include the government’s response to the report, which was prepared by a task force known as the Retail Market Review Committee from March through August, 2012.

“The electricity industry is quite complex, and so we want to make sure we have a really good understanding of the recommendations before we bring it forward,” Hughes said Tuesday. Hughes would not reveal any of the recommendations but hinted that at least some minor changes could be coming to the province’s deregulated market. The task force was commissioned before the spring election following outrage over a spike in power prices.

The RMRC website contains extensive written and audio materials from the stakeholder presentation process. (These materials will be available on the Ministry of Energy website as soon as the report is publicly released.)