Both British Columbia ("BC") and Alberta have long-held political cultures that nourish a sense of alienation from the traditional Canadian power centres in eastern Canada, which has in turned fostered strongly iconoclastic public policies on a range of issues. Coupled with significant differences in geography and geology, these iconoclastic tendencies have resulted in electricity polices that have in recent years dramatically diverged. In short, electricity policy in BC has veered hard in support of a broader provincial GHG-reduction policy, while in Alberta electricity policy remains more focused on traditional cost of service and reliability concerns consistent with a more ambivalent GHG policy.