While Canada lags behind in solar adoption, many places including Germany, China, Japan and even the United States are moving quickly.
In fact, on certain days, some places are generating so much energy, the price to purchase it is dropping below zero, prompting concerns about storage capacity for the abundant power source.
So what? It isn’t as though solar is the only clean energy option out there (and the externalities from the production and disposal of solar panels make it not as environmentally friendly as it looks at first glance, although obviously still better than fossil fuels). Wind, hydro, nuclear, and even tidal may be more appropriate for our much larger, much colder, much less dense, more northerly country. We already have a lot of hydro and (in Ontario) a lot of nuclear, and both seem to serve our needs well.
What we really need to do is shift Alberta’s economy away from fossil fuels. That would do a lot more good than a Netherlands-sized installation of solar panels.