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The winning bidders were Capital Power Corp., which is planning a wind farm with 201 megawatts of capacity, EDP Renewables, which is developing a 248-megawatt project, and Enel Green Power SpA, which will build two wind farms with total capacity of 146 megawatts, according to an emailed statement. Combined, the wind farms can power more than 250,000 homes, officials said.

The weighted average bid was 3.7 cents (3 U.S. cents) a kilowatt-hour, the lowest price for wind power ever in Canada. Developers agreed to sell power for 8.5 cents a kilowatt-hour in an Ontario procurement last year.

Climate Leadership Plan

The Climate Leadership Plan seeks to phase out all pollution from coal-fired electricity and get 30 per cent of the province’s power, or about 5,000 megawatts of capacity, from renewable sources by 2030. The first round of the competition started with a request for expressions of interest in March and saw 29 projects advance to the bidding stage.

Alberta’s government, controlled by the left-leaning New Democratic Party, has sought to balance efforts to curb climate change while not harming the province’s major industry. Alberta’s oilsands contain the world’s third-largest stores of crude, with proven reserves of about 165.4 billion barrels, and produced about 2.5 million barrels of crude bitumen last year, roughly the same oil output as the entire country of Mexico.

Coal Production

Coal is also a major industry in Alberta. The province consumes about two-thirds of the fuel used in Canada for generating electricity, according to the nation’s natural resources department. Alberta has 6,457 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity, more than four times the 1,530 megawatts in second-place Saskatchewan.