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VICTORIA (CP) _ British Columbia has the natural tools in its rivers, forests and wind-swept fields to easily reach its target of clean electricity self-sufficiency by 2016, say energy experts.
However, the province‘s energy minister said Wednesday that B.C. will partly achieve its goal of slashing its greenhouse gas emissions by relying on its forests to scrub clean much of its carbon pollution.
Guy Dauncey, president of the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, said he couldn‘t help but cheer on the government‘s energy initiative announced in Tuesday‘s throne speech.
But he‘s appalled the government might use so-called carbon sinks to offset the pollutants the province is generating, rather than taking action to ensure the emissions aren‘t released into the atmosphere in the first place.
“When it comes to using our forests as a sort of back-door escape route to get to the numbers, that‘s intellectual dishonesty,‘‘ said Dauncey.
Dauncey and Vancouver energy critic David Austin say British Columbia has the best opportunity in Canada and perhaps the world to make clean energy work _ it‘s only a matter of harnessing the province‘s vast supply of wind, rivers and other natural resources.
“We‘ve got a basket of electrical generation potential that is unlike just about any place anywhere in the world,‘‘ said Austin.
He urged B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell‘s government to “just get busy and start building it. There‘s nothing more complicated than that.‘‘
Energy Minister Richard Neufeld raised the carbon-sink issue with reporters Wednesday, saying the province is partly basing its plan on the controversial notion of counting the carbon dioxide ingested by its agricultural land and forests as an offset to its carbon emissions.
“What we‘re saying now is we got a standard, we got a target,‘‘ said Neufeld.
“Trees will be part of that sequestration process, so will agriculture.‘‘
Neufeld said the new green agenda for B.C. won‘t stand in the way of its growing petroleum industry.
“We‘ll actually have to figure out through technology how we totally reduce our greenhouse gas emissions but continue to have a viable economy,‘‘ he said.
Dauncey warned that B.C. shouldn‘t count on its forests to help it meet its emission reduction targets because the plan could backfire and actually increase the carbon count if widespread pine beetle damage in the forests leads to fires.
“Climate change is bringing longer, hotter summers which makes us more prone to forest fires,‘‘ he noted.
The province plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a third by 2020.
“Easy, easy, easy,‘‘ was Dauncey‘s assessment of the goal of electricity self-sufficiency by 2016.
“We have a large pool of the kind of green sustainable electricity that‘s needed in British Columbia,‘‘ he said.
Dauncey, who backs wind power as the best green-energy alternative for British Columbia, said wind plants are quick to install and the energy potential is enormous.
“There‘s a huge capacity of wind energy waiting to come on stream in British Columbia that can be done quickly,‘‘ he said.
Wind power has the potential to offer British Columbia 2.5 times more energy than the province currently uses, said Dauncey, who recently studied the province‘s wind-power capacity.
British Columbia currently produces 55,000 gigawatt hours of power annually. Wind power alone could produce 140,000 gigawatt hours annually, he said.
“It‘s two and a half times what we‘re using at the moment,‘‘ said Dauncey.
Austin said wind power is a major clean-energy technology. But there are other clean-energy alternatives being considered by the government, including a power-generating method called run-of-the-river.
“Essentially what you do there is you go find a canyon where it‘s really steep and there‘s no fish, and you put a pipe in the top of the canyon,‘‘ he said.
“You take some of the water that would normally run down the canyon, you stick it in the pipe and put a generator down at the bottom of the hill. It‘s not much more complicated than that.‘‘
Austin named more than a half dozen current run-of-the-river sites in British Columbia.
He said clean-power technologies are not pipe dreams, adding the only reason British Columbia hasn‘t adopted them on a large scale is the province traditionally decided to depend on dam building and importing power.
“The wind technology is proven on a commercial basis worldwide,‘‘ said Austin.
“The only reason we haven‘t built any is because of the strategy that was put together in the mid-1990s where we went on this import (power) strategy.‘‘
He said he‘s always been concerned that British Columbia imported power rather than explored methods to develop its own energy sources.
“We‘ve got any kind of resource that you would want to generate electricity with,‘‘ said Austin.
The only real concern Austin has about the government‘s 2016 sef-sufficiency deadline is that current labour shortages may cause some project delays.
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