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Alberta

Foundation seeking applications for valuable ’emerging artists’ awards- Deadline Feb.23

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The competition deadline is midnight, February 23, 2020.

Full disclosure – I serve on the Board of Directors of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation.  And as a serious artist in the province, you are likely aware of this foundation.  And If not, you should be.  It was in 2003 that some visionaries in our province, some even luminaries, put together the funds necessary to establish a foundation that would celebrate and promote excellence in the arts.  You can thank the late Tommy Banks, the late John Poole and Calgary’s Jenny Belzberg for the legacy they created. The endowments they established with philanthropic dollars from generous community members, and gifts from a number of levels of government, have helped to create a lasting impact on those recognized.

In alternating years, the Foundation celebrates either emerging artists or distinguished artists.  In 2020, the Foundation will recognize up to 10 emerging artists who will each receive a $10,000 cash award and a medal presented by Her Honour, the Honourable Lois E. Mitchell, CM, AOE, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, at a ceremony in June.

Artists from all disciplines including performing, visual, film, design and literary arts are eligible to apply.

Emerging artists are considered those of any age who have completed their training or apprenticeship and are in the early stages of their professional arts career. To date, 53 Emerging Artists have been recognized including singers Nuela Charles and Colleen Brown; theatre artists Heather Inglis, Jenna Rodgers and Simon Mallett; visual artists Amy Malbeuf and Pamma Fitzgerald.

The awards are adjudicated by a panel put convened by The Banff Centre. This panel will select the 2020 Emerging Artist recipients.

The competition deadline is midnight, February 23, 2020.

Full competition details and links to the online application forms can be found at artsawards.ca

You can find the application form and other details here. Since its inception, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation has awarded more than a million dollars ($1,130.000 to be exact) to 20 Distinguished Artists and 53 Emerging Artists.

These awards are amazing.  I’ve attended both Distinguished Artist and Emerging Artist awards since becoming a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation several years ago.  If you are serious about your art, you really need to get an application together.

2016 Emerging Artists with Her Honour Lois E. Mitchell and His Honour Douglas Mitchell

Alberta

Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

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From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Cody Ciona

‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’

Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.

Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.

That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.

“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.

Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.

In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.

According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.

The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.

For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.

“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.

“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”

As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.

“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.

Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.

“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.

“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”

The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.

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Alberta

Alberta Next: Taxation

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A new video from the Alberta Next panel looks at whether Alberta should stop relying on Ottawa to collect our provincial income taxes. Quebec already does it, and Alberta already collects corporate taxes directly. Doing the same for personal income taxes could mean better tax policy, thousands of new jobs, and less federal interference. But it would take time, cost money, and require building new systems from the ground up.

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