context was a common theme, particularly when it came to renewable energy generation. Alberta legislation prevents the city of Calgary from generating more electricity than what is used in municipal operations. So while the city has had some success generating energy from a landfill for its own use, the expansion of renewable energy generation into the community faces challenges. The provincial legislative context and the utility in Nova Scotia also controls generation and constrains the participation of Halifax Regional Municipality: [HRM has] facilities where the opportunity to be a power producer exists in various ways, they could use PV or wind or combined heat and power but they will always come up against a stumbling block in trying to negotiate with Nova Scotia Power in the absence of any provincial regulation like a [Feed-in-Tariff] program. So that really comes down to the provincial government directing or setting the regulations for making that happen. Informant 3, Halifax
Even with local political support, implementation cannot move forward when the province has not given the city the jurisdiction over that action: I believe there’s something in [the CEP] regarding green power purchasing opportunities. We had a commitment from our regional council to buy up to 40% of our power through green power, like wind energy contracts directly. However, the province won’t give us authority to purchase directly from a renewable energy producer, we have to purchase through Nova Scotia Power. So whatever they’re selling, we have to buy. Informant 4, Halifax
A sense of powerlessness due to jurisdictional barriers and counteractive regional policy environments have been noted in the literature as barriers to the implementation of environmental policies (Allman et al., 2004; Wheeler, 2008; Burch, 2009). Participants in this research experienced similar barriers and found that the context of the provincial government was very influential on the activities that could be successfully implemented. The relationship between provincial and local authority is not just focused on policy and legislation, but also the transfer of money. Informant 8 from Guelph noted that a lot of the
49