New research released in April estimates the value of the global geothermal energy industry will grow to $9 billion by 2025, up from $4 billion in 2018.

While this growth is translating to geothermal heated greenhouses in the Netherlands, a zero-emissions power plant in Italy and geothermal chocolate bars in the Philippines, it hasn’t meant much for Canada — despite the country’s substantial documented potential.

Geothermal energy comes from natural heat in the earth’s crust. Steam from hot spots near volcanic ranges, such as those in B.C., can be used to spin turbines to generate electricity, while warm water from cooler areas can be used as direct energy to heat homes, melt snow or grow food in greenhouses, like the Icelanders do.

The form of renewable energy, which provides uninterrupted baseload energy as opposed to intermittent alternatives such as wind and solar that rely on the weather, seems an obvious choice for many provinces and territories looking to increase sources of electricity while also decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Thus far, Canada is the only country on the Ring of Fire, a tectonic zone where the earth’s heat is abundant, that doesn’t have a single commercial geothermal power plant in operation.

But there have been positive developments — from a small geothermal power plant in Saskatchewan to an aquaponics startup in the Yukon — that may be signalling a long-awaited change in tide.

Saskatchewan’s DEEP geothermal project poised to be Canada’s first

Advocates and supporters of geothermal energy across the country are watching construction of the DEEP project — Canada’s first geothermal power facility in the southern Prairies — with hopeful anticipation.

Located in southern Saskatchewan near the U.S. border, the DEEP project requires a well drilled down 3,500 metres and will generate approximately five megawatts of power from heat in the Williston Basin hot sedimentary aquifer.

The company estimates hundreds of megawatts of power could be developed in this basin with the drilling of additional wells.

“The DEEP project has stirred up a lot of excitement, people are asking questions that weren’t necessarily being asked before,” says Zach Harmer, policy director at the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA).

And the questions are important, because it’s a push-pull narrative between government policy and the public’s appetite for demanding change. “If you have the public on your side, chances are that politicians will want to be there,” he says.

DEEP geothermal drill rig. In December 2018, DEEP drilled the province’s deepest well, more than 3,000 metres deep, to harvest hot water. Photo: DEEP Corp.

And the DEEP project needed that political support. Initial exploratory work and feasibility studies cost the company $8 million — a substantial investment that was made worthwhile when the province’s utility provider SaskPower announced a power purchase agreement with the company that guaranteed a set price for the plant’s energy.

Jumping on the opportunity, the federal government announced $25.6 million in funding for the DEEP project earlier this year.

The project will power 5,000 homes a year while offsetting about 40,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, the equivalent of taking about 8,000 cars off the road, according to SaskPower. Wastewater from the project may also provide its own offshoot opportunity.

“There’s a huge business case for our wastewater,” DEEP CEO Marcia previously told The Narwhal.  

“The water that comes out of the plant is still 65 degrees Celsius, so it’s extremely hot still. We’ve done some modelling on what we can do with that: as it turns out, from just one of our plants, we could heat a 45-acre [18-hectare] greenhouse.”

Marcia has also previously suggested that heat could help grow a variety of products, including legal marijuana.

The company announced it successfully drilled its first well — the deepest in the province’s history — in December.

Beyond its position as Canada’s first geothermal plant, the story of the DEEP project in Saskatchewan holds promise for another reason: its heat resource was originally mapped by oil and gas developers.

Leveraging Canada’s oil and gas data for geothermal

Canada first expressed interest in geothermal during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

Steve Grasby, a geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, who worked on mapping Canada’s geothermal potential between 1975 and 1985, said most of the data we have about the resource stems from that original research.

“It’s fairly simple to determine how windy or sunny a place is,” Grasby told The Narwhal, “but much harder to know what the temperature of the rocks are [four kilometres underground] and do they have enough fluid to produce to surface.”

Refining the target zones through more passive methods, or “desktop studies” as he calls them, is helping to reduce the uncertainty of investing in active exploration.

Continued research and observation over the years have added layers of information to help pinpoint locations, but in comparison to research on other renewable energy sources Grasby said “geothermal is certainly behind,” and drilling is still the only way to be 100 per cent sure.

A deep well to get the essential data for geothermal costs millions, Grasby says. That’s a huge barrier, but one that can be eliminated when looking for geothermal where oil and gas activity has already taken place.

Wellhead data from the hundreds of thousands of wells drilled across B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan includes temperature readings and has proven useful for estimating geothermal potential.

The Canadian Geothermal Association, for example, has identified more than 60,000 wells with bottom temperatures of more than 60 degrees Celsius. Of those wells, 7,702 have temperatures above 90 degrees, enough for heat exchange systems that can power refrigeration, and 500 showed temperatures above 120 degrees — hot enough for power generation.

As Alberta figures out what to do with its growing roster of unused wells, these legacy temperature readings provide the provincial regulator and energy companies with much needed information to determine where geothermal potential might underlie pre-existing oil and gas infrastructure.

That helps eliminate expensive risk, making geothermal projects much more attractive. This was the case for the town of Hinton, where some of these hotter wells are located. Last year the town received $1.2 million in federal and provincial funding to conduct a feasibility study of using geothermal for municipal heat and possibly electricity.

“In the renewable energy industry, we don’t have the privilege to have a well turn out to not be in the right area. It can be the make or break for a project,” CanGEA’s Harmer said.

This is also why getting government support and funding for “capacity-building projects” (shouldering some of the burden in drilling exploration so a community has enough funds to actually develop a power facility) is key.

Policy and tax incentives take shape, but hurdles remain

For many years, companies drilling for oil and gas across Canada were unable to drill for hot water. The permitting structure just wasn’t in place.

As far as policy goes, British Columbia and Saskatchewan are “at the forefront in Canada,” Harmer says; they’re the only provinces in Canada to have a formal framework that enables developers to drill explicitly for geothermal.

And it was just in 2017 that the federal government even acknowledged the existence of geothermal energy as a potential recipient of tax breaks and flow-through shares to help attract investment.

But even with a more lucrative tax structure, obstacles remain.

Geothermal energy is expensive, for starters, and requires a lot of capital investment up front. As a reliable, low-emission energy source with a small physical footprint, the gains of geothermal come over time, but perhaps not quickly enough to satisfy short-term political cycles.

More difficult, though, is a lack of appetite for energy from provincial utilities.

This, in part, accounts for an absence of geothermal power generation in B.C., where the resource is among the most promising in the country.

Geothermal “has not been competitive with other renewable resources because of its cost and exploration risk,” a spokesperson from the province’s ministry of energy, mines and petroleum resources told The Narwhal.

The ministry’s website touts the benefits of harnessing geothermal as “a source of clean, renewable energy with a small environmental footprint,” but is not expected to purchase electricity from alternative energy projects until after 2030, because of the construction of the Site C dam, which will add 1,100 megawatts of power to the provincial grid.

“Beyond 2030, additional conservation measures and geothermal, wind, solar and other clean, renewable resources can supply the electricity we need to support low-carbon electrification and achieve our climate targets,” the spokesperson said.

The Site C dam is expected to oversupply electricity to B.C.’s grid, pushing out wind and solar producers, while flooding 107 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries and displacing local residents who currently live in the dam’s flood zone.

This hasn’t stopped all geothermal activity in B.C., however. The town of Valemount is forging ahead with plans for a geothermal ecovillage that won’t rely on feeding power to the provincial grid and will instead generate power and direct heat for local businesses, including a brewery, greenhouses and a European-inspired spa.

Valemount’s geothermal project has survived despite a lack of support from the provincial utility, BC Hydro, which has put additional pressure on the local community partners and Borealis, the company spearheading the project, to stoke investor interest.

Borealis is using creative methods, such as aerial drone surveys, to keep exploratory drilling costs down.

Geothermal takes long-term vision

Those initial investments in drilling and building have long-term gains that will pay off financially, Harmer said, adding geothermal requires “an aged look at energy pricing.”

“If you look at the straight dollar per megawatt for geothermal energy, it’s expensive, but if you look at a levelized cost, then it is very comparable, even competitive with other forms of energy.”

But forging ahead with geothermal power may depend on the public demanding it, Harmer said. That also means getting a better sense of the role geothermal can play in areas other than energy production. Recently an agriculture company in the Yukon integrated direct geothermal heat from a local hot spring into its plans for an aquaponics greenhouse and tourist attraction.

“We need to see it as a viable solution.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

YELLOWKNIFE — It’s an expensive and sad reality that the universal sound of the North isn’t the howling of sled dogs, the mesmerizing joy of throat singing, the squeaking of boots on supercooled snow. The real sound — the one that’s consistent from Burwash Landing, Yukon, to Pond Inlet, Nunavut — is the clattering rumble of the diesel generators keeping the lights on.

They power every off-grid community in Nunavut, Nunavik, the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Labrador without exception — and most northern communities are off-grid. Diesel generators even keep the lights on in some of the larger centres, such as Iqaluit. Some communities have supplemented diesel with alternatives such as solar or wind, and others have plans to do so, but the pattern remains: up here, diesel is king.

That means nearly every electron flowing through every lightbulb in Pangnirtung, every BTU of electric heat in Norman Wells and every Netflix binge in Kuujjuaq has to be shipped in by truck, barge or plane.

In Paulatuk, N.W.T., this summer, the annual diesel barge never arrived when extreme fall ice conditions shut down marine traffic through the area.

“The community was running out,” recalls Aaron Ruben, who works in the hamlet office.

The territorial government stepped in to fly 600,000 litres of diesel to the community of 265 people to keep the generators running. Moving that fuel, plus some other supplies, cost $1.75 million over dozens of flights. It was either that or Paulatuk would go dark.

“I’m not sure what would have been the next step,” Ruben says.

The next step when the Baffin Island community of Pangnirtung’s diesel generator caught fire in April 2015 — with temperatures dropping as low as -17 degrees Celsius — was that residents were advised to gather in the school gym to stay warm. Rotating outages lasted for days, during which people had just enough power to warm their homes before the power would cut off again. Hospital patients were evacuated to Iqaluit.

The machine that caught fire was among the many outdated diesel generators plaguing the territory. The Qulliq Energy Corporation, which supplies power to Nunavut’s communities, says 13 of its 25 generators are already beyond their expected lifespans.

“[Qulliq]’s operating cash flow is…not sufficient to fund the replacement of the older power plants,” it said in a report in 2017. Instead of being able to look ahead, the utility is treading water. The $54 million it spends each year on diesel is keeping it from investing in anything new — even new diesel plants.

The energy corporation burns 55 million litres of diesel each year to provide power to 38,000 people.

The situation has become sufficiently expensive and unsustainable that the federal government has stepped in with funding for a multi-pronged approach to reduce the North’s dependence on diesel. But it’s a complicated problem, and some of the proposed solutions revert back to old habits.

Map of remote communities in Canada that are dependent on diesel. Source: Waterloo Global Science Initiative.

New solutions or old habits?

The Northwest Territories and Yukon have energy grids that include large-scale hydro dams. In Yukon, fast population growth and increased energy demand from electric heating means the utility, Yukon Energy, is scrambling to bring in new power.

Its solution? Diesel and liquefied natural gas (LNG) generators.

“Maybe 10 months of the year now we’re burning LNG,”  explains Cody Reaume, energy analyst at the Yukon Conservation Society.

That isn’t much of a solution, according to Craig Scott, executive director of Ecology North, a non-profit that works on issues like climate change, waste reduction, water quality and food sovereignty.

“It’s not much better than burning diesel,” he says, “because there’s huge methane fugitive emissions from fracking and pipelines.”

In the Northwest Territories, the cornerstone of the plan to reduce diesel is expanding an already controversial dam, and building transmission lines to the diamond mines northeast of Yellowknife.

Inside an empty fuel container at Yellowknife’s tank farm. Photo: Pat Kane

A problem worse than carbon

The reality of the North is this: it’s cold, it’s far from the rest of the country and its people are spread out over an area that makes up half of Canada. It has the highest cost of living of any part of the country. That cost extends to industry, which pays the same high prices for fuel and groceries as everyone else. That makes it harder to turn a profit, which hinders growth.

These factors conspire to create an extremely energy-intensive society, without a lot of clean or affordable options for electricity, transportation and heat. But this system is a relic of a previous generation, when other options were not available and the majority of the problems that come with diesel were not fully understood.

Diesel generators are spitting out greenhouse gases 24/7, contributing to climate change in a place that is seeing the most dramatic impacts of global warming anywhere on the planet — but they represent a minor contribution to the overall picture. Despite the carbon intensity per person (about twice the national average), the share of Canada’s emissions coming from the North is a tiny fraction of the country’s total; in 2015 all three territories produced 2.3 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, just a third of a percentage point of Canada’s 722 megatonnes.

To put it in perspective, when stacked against Canada’s oil and gas industry’s emissions over a year, industry would produce more than the territories by lunchtime on January 4th.

But greenhouse gases aren’t the only problem with diesel generators.

Environment Canada lists dozens of chemicals known to be released in the burning of diesel, including mercury, formaldehyde and sulphur dioxide. In Iqaluit alone, diesel is responsible for producing about 290 litres of formaldehyde each year.

Diesel exhaust has been unambiguously labelled as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

“Diesel engine exhaust causes lung cancer in humans,” Dr. Christopher Portier wrote in a statement from the UN International Agency for Research on Cancer. “Given the additional health impacts from diesel particulates, exposure to this mixture of chemicals should be reduced worldwide.“

A dizzying patchwork of federal programs is incentivizing people, businesses and communities to reduce their reliance on diesel. It’s a veritable alphabet soup of acronyms that together represent billions of dollars being thrown at the problem.

“Money is starting to flow,” says Dave Lovekin, director of the Pembina Institute’s work on renewables in remote communities.

But Lovekin says much of the money is not being deployed in a way that encourages Indigenous participation or solicits local knowledge.

“I think one area that is lacking is policies from governments and utilities that support Indigenous inclusion in developing these projects,” he says. “There’s a lot more work needed to work with and advocate and push for better policies that Indigenous communities can participate in.”

Wind farm at Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. Photo: Diavik Diamond Mine

Diesel spills often unreported, unknown

Governments are trying to reduce diesel use, in large part due to their desire to lower emissions. But a lot of that diesel never even makes it to the generators; instead, it spills out into the environment from storage tanks, or from the trucks, pipelines and ships that deliver it to the communities.

More than 9.1 million litres of diesel has been spilled in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut since the 1970s. More than half of the leaks are from trucks and storage tanks.

In Yukon, those numbers are vague at best. The government knows a lot of diesel has ended up in the environment, but has a hard time pinning down the exact number due to historically lax reporting. Looking at what records are available, government analysts came up with a total of at least 219,000 litres, but say that is definitely an underestimate.

“A large amount of the fuel spilled over the last 40 years is unreported, and frankly unknown,” says Cedric Schilder, environmental protection analyst for the Yukon government. “There was a whole period of time where it was pretty cowboy.”

All the diesel in Yukon needs to be trucked in one load at a time; there are no ports or pipelines connecting the territory to the south.

So it’s not surprising that when it does make it to its destination, diesel produces the most expensive power in Canada.

Sky-high electricity prices

The average electricity price in Canada is about 11 cents per kWh. Northwest Territories and Nunavut customers can expect to pay at least three times that.

In Kugaaruk, Nunavut, the price for a residential customer is currently $1.12 per kWh — more than 10 times the national average. Those prices are subsidized; the average unsubsidized diesel price across Canada, according to a 2015 engineering journal article, is $1.30 per kWh.

That’s hamstringing housing agencies whose budgets are eaten up by the cost of heating. Power and fuel alone cost the Nunavut Housing Corporation about a quarter of its operating budget in 2016-2017.

By comparison, the B.C. public housing corporation spent less than one per cent of its billion-dollar budget on total utility costs that year.

Heating makes up the lion’s share of northern energy use overall, and doesn’t require fancy new technology. Scott of Ecology North is unsurprised that this relatively simple change gets less attention than electricity.

“The focus is on electricity because it’s easy,” he says. “People can see it.”

But efficiency retrofits to homes and businesses, and switching to wood or wood pellet stoves, can be as effective as switching energy systems.

Without those kinds of retrofits and changes, heating can be expensive enough that some families are forced to do without — and living in a cold home can increase the risk of physical and mental health problems. According to an editorial from the British Medical Journal, the risk of respiratory illness doubles among kids living in cold homes, while risk of cardiovascular disease and arthritis grow among adults. Adolescents see a fivefold increase in mental illness.

“It’s probably the most pressing issue facing many off-grid communities,” says Nick Mercer, PhD Candidate in the department of geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo.

Mines run on ‘phenomenal’ amounts of diesel

All of this — the high cost of electricity, the billowing emissions, the uncertainty of delivery and the likelihood of spills — is causing even mining companies to think twice about working in the North.

Agnico Eagle has two mines near Baker Lake, Nunavut; one, the Meadowbank mine, is in full production while the other, Meliadine, is under construction. Together the two mines need 130 million litres of diesel fuel per year, at a cost of about a dollar per litre. Eighty million of those litres are burned annually to generate electricity.

It’s a “phenomenal” amount of fuel, the company’s vice president of Nunavut operations, Dominic Girard, tells The Narwhal. Agnico Eagle buys nearly two and a half times as much diesel each year than the government of Nunavut, which owns the power corporation.

The company is planning to install wind turbines at the Meliadine mine that would cut those needs down. The turbines wouldn’t eliminate the need for diesel entirely — only about 15 per cent of it — but that would still amount to millions of dollars saved per year.

The first three of 12 giant wind mill blades, each 35 metres long, are prepared for the trip to Diavik diamond mine. The German-made blades will power a quartet of wind generators, the first such installation at a mine in Canada. Photo: Diavik Diamond Mine

A wind turbine is installed at Diavik diamond mine. Photo: Diavik Diamond Mine

Other mines have already taken up that challenge. Diavik and Raglan mines both employ wind power in the North to offset their diesel demands, a model Girard says Agnico is looking at in developing its own project, but with a twist: he wants them to be owned by the local Inuit community. The details of that arrangement haven’t been worked out, but he says it could be mutually beneficial.

“We’re not an energy producer — we’re a miner,” he says, adding turbines could be in place by 2021.

The turn to local, Indigenous ownership in energy projects may be just what’s needed to help many remote communities kick diesel once and for all.

Indigenous-owned projects illustrate path forward

The small Arctic hamlet of Old Crow, Yukon, plugged in its first solar panels in 2009. Producing about a fifth of one home’s energy requirements, or 3.3 kW, it was a modest start.

That modesty is all gone now.

Old Crow has ramped up its commitment to solar and will soon be producing as much as 940 kW — enough to offset 24 per cent of its diesel use over the year — and completely shut down the generator during much of the summer. In one community, some of the time, there can be quiet.

“We burn a lot of fuel up here per capita and we’re trying to reduce that,” William Josie, director of natural resources for the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, told The Narwhal’s Matt Jacques in March 2017.

“Anything that affects our community, we want to have control over. That’s our goal with this project, is to have ownership over the facility.”

Meet the First Nation Above the Arctic Circle That Just Went Solar

Similarly, Burwash Landing, Yukon, is building its own $2.4 million wind installation that will displace a fifth of its diesel needs.

In Nunavik, a joint venture between the Makivik Corporation and the Fédération des Coopératives du Nouveau-Québec was founded in 2017 to deliver renewables to its communities, where 100 per cent of the electricity is currently provided by diesel.

On the doorstep of the oilsands, in Fort Chipewyan, Alta., a solar project received a $3.3 million provincial grant in early February. The new panels and batteries will increase the community’s solar electricity production more than sixfold, and provide a quarter of its energy. It will be Canada’s biggest solar project in a remote community.

But in the North, these small-scale, locally owned projects are the exception. Lovekin, of the Pembina Institute, says that may start to change with new policies.

“One shift that we’re seeing is government starting to open power up to independent power producers,” he says. Yukon, for example, recently introduced an independent power producer policy that includes remote communities. Nunavut is exploring independent power production options as are other provinces

“Good things are happening,” Lovekin says.

Across the mountains, however, the government is pushing for an expansion of a 60-year-old facility. The lynchpin of the Northwest Territories’ plan to reduce diesel use is expanding the Taltson River dam.

The hydropower station north of Fort Smith has been credibly blamed for inspiring the territorial government in the 1960s to force out the community of Rocher River, which today sits abandoned at the edge of a degraded river.

Adding a new power generator, triple the size of the current one, makes up 44 per cent of the territory’s planned carbon reductions under the Pan-Canadian Framework.

In Nunavut, large-scale also appears to be the favoured approach, but that hasn’t caught on. A two-part hydro plan in the works for Iqaluit since 2005 (with $10 million spent so far) has ground to a halt due to a lack of further funding.

A wind turbine at Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. Photo: Diavik Diamond Mine

‘Not all technology will work at minus 40’

Pamela Gross grew up in and around Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, where she is now the mayor. The hamlet had four small wind turbines installed in 1987, when she was just a child.

“I remember them as a kid,” she says. “We had a few of them, then some of them started falling over.”

The four turbines lasted just four years. Another wind turbine was installed in the community a few years later, larger than the first four. It was torn apart in a blizzard just eight years after it was installed.

The realities of extreme weather are slowing progress toward distributed, small-scale power projects everywhere in the North.

Wind power is not alone in facing challenges particular to the climate. Small-scale hydroelectricity, which has been deployed successfully in off-grid communities in B.C., runs into problems with ice buildup in frigid northern waters.

“If that can be overcome, then micro-hydro can be feasible for many northern communities,” says Robert Cooke, a technology officer with the Canadian High Arctic Research Station, which has been looking at how best to get distributed energy systems working in the North.

Eight Nunavut communities have been studied for micro-hydro potential. Costs are high, but in Arviat, for example, a government analysis determined that a $9.8 million micro-hydro site could more than meet the entire community’s peak energy needs.

A plan to replace diesel with a wind-powered microgrid in Iqaluit (including batteries to store energy) recently won the CanInfra Challenge, a competition for infrastructure solutions. Its proponents said a high upfront cost would save $378 million over 20 years, including carbon tax costs, in that one community alone. The model, they suggested, would be scalable to other remote communities as well.

Ultimately, though, the climate determines what works and what doesn’t.

“Not all technology will work at minus 40,” says Cooke.

Just getting the materials to where they’ll be installed is a challenge. When Diavik installed its wind turbines — custom-designed to withstand temperatures up to -40 Celsius — at the Lac de Gras mine, the blades were the largest objects ever to be hauled in along the long ice road connecting Yellowknife to the mine. It took 60 truckloads, using purpose-built trailers, to bring all the materials to the site.

Construction of the turbines at Meliadine and Meadowbank will be planned around the barge season. One year the foundations will arrive; the next, the turbines themselves. If complications arise — for example, if heavy sea ice or bad weather slows the delivery — the entire project could be set back a year or more.

There have been successes so far despite the headwinds. In Colville Lake, a Northwest Territories hamlet of around 150 people, solar cells work well enough that in the long days of summer — when peak energy demand is lower and the sun is shining brightly — the diesel generator can be switched off entirely now and then.

“Community members talk about how important that project had been,” says Cooke — not just for energy savings but for empowerment of a more personal nature.

He says people felt as though they themselves were invested in the success of the project, lending it a greater significance than if the project had been decided upon and followed through solely by outsiders.

That approach also makes projects more likely to succeed long-term. In remote places, Cooke says building capacity so that locals can operate and maintain the infrastructure is just as important as building the actual turbines or solar panels.

The cost savings can be significant, too; the wind proposal that won the CanInfra Challenge estimated a project in Iqaluit — even at a cost of more than $230 million — would pay itself off within a decade and then the community will save nearly $30 million a year compared to the status quo.

Self-sufficiency has always been part of the northern way of life. Diesel, with its long supply chain and high cost, runs directly contrary to that spirit. That’s where Cooke says alternatives have an edge — and why, with careful planning and a lot of work, they may finally be able to edge out fossil fuels.

“On a basic level, if you look at wind energy, solar energy, hydro energy, it’s sustainable and very much in line with traditional values.”

*Thank you to data scientist Joshua Cook for the help crunching spill database numbers.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Karen Goodings avoids the Site C dam area on the Peace River because she finds it too heart-wrenching to look at the havoc caused by construction work, but, for the first time in years, she is now holding out hope that the $8.8-billion project will be scrapped.

“I want to see it permanently stopped and now I think there is enough information out there to talk about alternate sources of power that are more economical and less devastating,” said Goodings, a Peace River Regional District director.

Her optimism has been boosted by reports underlining financial uncertainties with Site C and emphasizing that B.C.’s power needs can be met by wind, geothermal and solar projects.

ICYMI: If Saskatchewan Can Build a Geothermal Power Plant, Why Can’t B.C.?

“I’ve not had a feeling that it was looking good for us until the Deloitte report came out, but now I think there is still an opportunity. Someone is going to listen,” she said.

A report by the auditing firm Deloitte LLP, requested by the B.C. Utilities Commission, looked at the economics of the controversial project and BC Hydro’s forecasts of electricity demand — and that information could be a game-changer, Goodings predicted.

Deloitte, which provides consulting services to government, found there were risks that the project could be delayed because of geotechnical and contractor problems and that, if a 2019 deadline for diverting the river was missed, it could add up to $1.8-billion to the cost.

Terminating #SiteC Dam, Building Alternatives Could Save BC Over $1B: Economist https://t.co/RwKoB8U5eX #bcpoli @SavePeaceValley

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 14, 2017

The study concluded it would be cheaper to cancel the project, at a cost of $1.2 billion, that to delay it at a cost of $1.4 billion.

The estimates join a separate April analysis conducted by researchers with UBC’s Program on Water Governance that found stopping Site C by this past June would have saved B.C. between $500 million and $1.65 billion.

Similar to UBC’s analysis, the Deloitte research also found that BC Hydro regularly overestimated demand for power by up to 31 per cent. Between 1964 and 2016, BC Hydro overestimated future electricity demand in B.C. 77 per cent of the time, according to the Deloitte report.

ICYMI: B.C. Scales Down Energy-Saving Measures to Manufacture Demand for Site C: UBC Report

The Utilities Commission is preparing to produce a preliminary Site C report by September 20 and, following a series of round-the-province hearings, will provide final recommendations to government in November.

In addition to the Deloitte report, a submission to the commission by renowned hydroelectric consultant Robert McCullough, who was contracted by the Peace Valley Landowner Association and Peace Valley Environment Association, concluded that renewables could meet B.C.’s power needs at a much lower cost than Site C.

Calls for construction to be halted were buoyed Wednesday when McCullough, in a review of Deloitte’s facts and figures, concluded that terminating Site C and building a renewable portfolio of wind and geothermal would save between $700 million and $1.6 billion.

There is no need for Site C to act as a back-up battery for times when wind and solar are unavailable as the Williston Reservoir already has that capacity, the review found.

“It is not financially prudent to finish the Site C project,” McCullough said at a Vancouver news conference.

“The cost of building a renewable-based portfolio excluding Site C will be much less costly and still meets the province of B.C.’s clean energy goals.”

McCullough was supported by Harry Swain, former chairman of the Site C Joint Review Panel, who said the findings provide solid proof of what experts have been saying for years.

“B.C. does not need this power and, even if we did, we have lots of less expensive alternatives,” Swain said.

The PVLA and PVEA are calling for an immediate end to “reckless spending” on the dam and Goodings is keeping her fingers crossed that the BCUC has enough information to recommend scrapping the project.

Her only disappointment is that BCUC members have not been able to accept an invitation to tour the entire area and, instead were shown the construction site by BC Hydro representatives.

Goodings, who, with Hudson’s Hope Mayor Gwen Johansson, sent an invitation to Utilities Commission panellists to tour the area, said she wanted to show them the surrounding farmland, wildlife habitat and Indigenous sites and how, with the construction, the surrounding land sloughs off.

“We’re not only going to lose what’s under the water, but also the land around it,” she said.

An abandoned cabin sits perched on the edge of a cliff created by unexpected sloughing along the banks of the Williston Reservoir, created by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam,  in 2008. Photo provided to DeSmog Canada by West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Willson.

Goodings said, despite her disappointment, she understands the commission’s timelines are extremely tight.

Utilities Commission chairman David Morton said in an e-mailed statement that panel members and Deloitte representatives visited the construction site and the Highway 29 realignment area on August 10 and 11 and received a briefing from BC Hydro’s on-site team, but did not receive the invitation from Goodings and Johansson until later that month.

“This inquiry is working under an extremely tight timeline, so the panel was unable to schedule a second trip to the area,” Morton said.

The B.C. Utilities Commission is looking for feedback from as many British Columbians as possible during upcoming community and First Nations input sessions — including two in Fort St. John and one in Hudson’s Hope, he said.

Meanwhile, Goodings and her colleagues have invited Premier John Horgan and several ministers to come to the Peace River region, but have not yet had a reply.

“We were looking forward to sharing with BCUC a balanced view of the losses which have been minimized by BC Hydro throughout the joint review,” Goodings wrote in a letter to Horgan.

However, even if the ministers are not able to come to the Peace, area representatives are hoping to meet with them during the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention later this month, she said.

Image: Site C construction June 2016. Photo: Garth Lenz | DeSmog Canada

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What do electricity prices have in common with the rain? Politicians don’t control either. However, hearing the Ontario Conservatives and NDPs slamming the Liberals this week for rising electricity costs and pretending they somehow have the answer, you’d hardly know it. But the fact is, any politician who promises low electricity rates is selling a lie — one that all of us end up paying for sooner or later.

Ontario’s electricity woes stem back to the late 1970s and, over the past 40 odd years, all three parties have had a hand in them. It started with the building of the Darlington nuclear station, which the Bill Davis Tories approved and the David Peterson Liberals saw through to completion — 10 years late and almost $12 billion over budget. No one could afford to pay the real cost of Darlington, so Ontarians carried that debt for the next three decades.

Over that time, electricity — like cars, and coffee, and just about everything else we buy — didn’t get cheaper, it got more expensive. And when the recession hit in 1993, and electricity prices were rising, people got angry. The party in power at that time, the NDP, did the popular thing; it froze electricity rates, halting investment in the power system.

Electricity became a wedge issue yet again in the election that followed. This time it was Conservatives elected on a promise of cheaper electricity through the power of the free market. They broke up Ontario Hydro and created Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation to unleash competition.

But instead of prices going down, they skyrocketed — increasing a-250-fold at one point. Why? Years of artificially suppressed electricity prices, massive nuclear debts, and U.S. trading partners that paid far more for electricity than Ontario. It turned out that no one wanted to pay the “fair market price” of electricity after all. And, just as the NDP before them, Conservatives quickly shut down competition and froze electricity rates.

However, they didn’t do it quickly enough to win the next election, which was, again, all about electricity prices. The year was 2003, and the McGuinty Liberals had inherited a seriously broken system. Not a single power plant had been built in Ontario in 10 years, and blackouts were forecast for the coming summer. So the government had a choice: build infrastructure and raise prices, or do nothing and risk the political fallout of failing to maintain basic electricity service to the province. They built. Costs leapt. And the lights stayed on

Cutting Through The Spin on Ontario’s Electricity Prices https://t.co/Yv01pUX6sv #cdnpoli #onpoli @brucelourie pic.twitter.com/yDbSqvFrIm

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 28, 2017

Once the reliability was stabilized and the electricity planning function restored, the government began the challenging process of ramping down the aging and polluting coal fleet and augmenting the gas plant investments with hydro upgrades, nuclear refurbishments and renewable power. Huge investments in distribution and transmission infrastructure continued apace.

Billions of dollars were spent over a 10-year period to make up for more than 20 years of neglect and ill-informed policy decisions by all three political parties. And that is the long answer to why Ontario’s electricity rates have risen over the past decade.

Here’s the short answer: electricity requires infrastructure, infrastructure costs are tied to commodities and labour, and these costs go up over time. What people pay for electricity in any given region is a product of geographic luck (the availability of cheap hydro for example) and having rare — but possible — infrastructure foresight (the ability to plan effectively for the electricity of the future).

No politician can snap their fingers and make electricity instantaneously cheaper — at least not without making it simultaneously more expensive for all of us down the road.

That isn’t to say we can’t look after those who are clearly and legitimately harmed by price increases — specifically rural Ontarians with limited options. Last week, the government passed a law preventing electricity disconnects for Ontarians in winter. That is the right thing to do and it is supported by all parties — a rare moment of non-partisan sanity, in what has been an insanely charged political discussion.

But more needs to be done, especially to make sure Ontarians are in safe and efficient homes where electricity isn’t being wasted. We should hold all of our politicians to account for their past records and future claims regarding electricity — including how they will deliver it in a way that is clean and consistent and fair. But we should never trust a politician who says they will “make electricity cheap again.” It might win them the election, but it won’t do us any good at all.

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Last week, Mark Jaccard — a renowned climate policy analyst and professor at Simon Fraser University — published a short paper exploring federal approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The report was quickly shared by other climate policy experts, including the University of Alberta’s Andrew Leach, Clean Energy Canada’s Dan Woynillowicz and York University’s Tzeporah Berman.

Unfortunately, many news outlets, including the Toronto Star and Metro, ran articles suggesting that Jaccard was petitioning against a carbon tax, with emissions reductions entirely accomplished via regulations.

That’s clearly not the case if one bothers to read the paper (a reality Jaccard spent much of the following days pointing out on Twitter).

Given the recent announcement by federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna that the government is examining carbon pricing as a tool to meet 2030 targets, actually reading Jaccard’s report is very much worth the time.

The premise is simple.

A price on carbon (either via a tax or cap-and-trade system) is often politically unpopular even at low levels (one need look no further than Alberta), let alone in the neighbourhood of $200/tonne, which would actually be required to prompt an energy transition. (Hence the name of his paper: Is Win-Win Possible: Can Canada’s Government Achieve its Paris Commitment … And Get Re-Elected?

So why not pay attention to the vast possibilities of “flexible regulations,” combining policy options like industry-specific performance standards, mandatory market shares and partial-zero-emission vehicle obligations with a $40/tonne carbon price?

On Thursday, DeSmog Canada spoke with Jaccard about his report, the significance of political viability in building meaningful climate policy and how California is leading by example. The following transcript has been lightly condensed.

What compelled you to write the report?

This took six months. Really, this is a long-standing reaction to the election of a new government almost a year ago, a government that said “okay, we want to take action.”

We noticed … that there’s a real barrage of messaging going to the government that we must price emissions.

So I had a lot of people saying to me: “This isn’t correct. It’s actually factually incorrect to say we must price emissions. It’s a choice.” And so people said to me: “Shouldn’t somebody point that out?” And I said: “Well, I can point it out but it takes six months.”

And here we are. People say to me: “Ah, we see, you tried to time it just after Catherine McKenna said we’re going to price emissions.” And it’s like: “You don’t understand.”

It’s released now simply because I’m going away to Oxford tomorrow and I told my students two months ago: “Come on, we’ve got to try to get this out before I go away, it would be nice to get out before there is a provincial-federal meeting and so.”

So basically, the motive — and I’m going to be really careful because I’ve been misquoted here in the last two days quite a bit — was simply a response to the factually incorrect message that we must price emissions. That doesn’t mean I’m against it or for it. I’m against untruths.

And as an academic, how could we help with that? Produce a report in which emissions pricing doesn’t play the dominant role. We kept it in there because we were trying to do something that was practical and kind of in line with what’s been happening so far. You do have a federal government that says “we want a minimum emissions price across the country” so one of our scenarios has them relying almost completely on an emissions price.

And the other says: “Let’s assume that you do this minimum that you talked about but you find it politically difficult to go beyond that minimum. Does this mean that you can’t achieve Paris?”

And that’s the motive for the study.

.@MarkJaccard on Political Viability, ‘Untruths’ And Why You Should Actually Read His Latest Report https://t.co/8fCl37O6OT #bcpoli #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 26, 2016

Do you think it’s fair to say that political viability has been historically underestimated by researchers and economists?

Yes. That’s my take. I did a study for the Mulroney government in 1988/1989 as a new professor saying: “Oh yeah, you want to reduce emissions. That’s neat. And Margaret Thatcher says that and Ronald Reagan. Here’s emissions pricing: have a really small price on emissions, let it rise over time.”

And the government even paid for me to go to Paris to a meeting at the International Energy Agency with economists from other countries. And we all came back to our countries and said, “yeah, price emissions.”

Thirty years have gone by since then.

So there have been little cases where people have priced emissions. But I think at some point, somebody needs to point out those have been really low prices compared to what you need to cause an energy transition. And that’s why our report is laden with terms about energy transition.

You can increase the price of gasoline by 10 cents a litre; the carbon tax in B.C. doesn’t even do that. But we know that price of gasoline has gone up and down 50 cents. You really think adding 10 cents is going to get people to buy electric and biofuel cars? Almost all modelling shows that it won’t do that.

Where I get misquoted is people will say: “Oh, Jaccard thinks the policy should be ‘a’ or ‘b.’ ” I’m actually not saying what the policy should be. I’m saying if you are severely constrained politically, is all hope lost? And then I just said: “If you look around, how is California reducing emissions? How did the Swedes reduce emissions?”

And that’s the purpose of the report: to inform decision-making.

A popular critique of flexible regulations is that on a national scale it could be more difficult to administer or track as opposed to the potential transparency of a carbon tax. Do you buy that, or do you think it’s more about the actual design of the regulations?

If it’s the transportation sector, of course that’s a false statement because we’re already regulating the transportation sector! Even Stephen Harper ramped up emissions regulations — because he copied Obama — and in fact it’s better to do that nationally rather than provincially.

The auto industry will say “don’t do it, don’t do it.” But if push came to shove and you were actually doing it in one province, they would say: “Oh no, no, it should be federal. It should be the same across the country. Don’t try to make us hit different targets in Ontario and Saskatchewan.

If it’s electricity, then I would partly agree with that statement. It’s harder for the federal government to go after electricity. We’re very careful on that end of the report. Again, Stephen Harper put in a coal plant reg. Now, it was a soft, weak reg but it did require coal plants to close down or do carbon capture and storage. So what we’re talking about is just ramping that up.

In fact, you don’t even have to ramp it up in Ontario because they already did everything. You don’t have to ramp it up in any of the hydro-dominant provinces. You don’t have to ramp it up in Alberta, because they already said they’re going to not use carbon pricing but just regulation to shut down the coal plants.

It’s quite funny. People will talk about: “Oh look, Alberta has a carbon tax.” But they knew the carbon tax wasn’t big enough to close down the coal plants. It would have to be about $80 or $90/tonne. So they’re saying “close the coal plants.”

So if the federal government tightened the Harper national coal plant electricity reg, it’s really only Saskatchewan that would raise bloody hell. Even Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have already sort of put in policies like Alberta. So then maybe we say in there “give a little bit of money to Saskatchewan.”

But when it comes to industry across the country: again, federal government is better to do it. And industry would tell you that at the end of the day. Stephen Harper had this whole process going on. Of course, he wasn’t really pushing it because he didn’t really want to do anything. He wanted to look like he was doing something.

But the regs they were designing: I had a look at them nationally for a performance standard for emissions. It’s really not much different from the effect of a carbon tax. You can do that federally as well.

You mentioned California. Are there other jurisdictions that you or other climate policy academics look to as inspirations or role models, harnessing regulations for this purpose?

I’m shocked that an entity like the Ecofiscal Commission, and I write about it in the report, say “we have to have fiscal solutions.”

And I’m like “why did they never write about the renewable portfolio standard, which several European countries and something like 30 U.S. states have?”

It has a lot of the benefits of emissions pricing in terms of flexibility. And oh my goodness: half of the U.S. states are using this to get greenhouse gas emissions down in the electricity sector. Why is no one talking about that? Why isn’t the Ecofiscal Commission talking about that?

Likewise, California’s vehicle regs, its low-carbon fuel standard: there’s several of these. If you looked at California today, maybe people will say “oh, they’ve got an emissions price and cap-and-trade that now Ontario and Quebec have joined.”

But actually, the top modellers in the U.S. tell me that about 90 per cent of the reductions in the last eight or nine years, and the forecast for the next eight or nine years, in California are occurring because of the flexible regs, not because of that very low floor price in their cap-and-trade, which works out to about $15 U.S., or half the B.C. carbon tax.

Why do you think it is that the Ecofiscal Commission but also various newspapers do seem to focus on an either/or scenario, either carbon tax or regulations?

Yeah, and to add to your comment: either a carbon tax or command and control regulations that are really economically inefficient.

Well, I have one little paragraph in the report — because I try to anticipate, because I know them so well, all the arguments that will be made — and point out that it looks like there are two types of people who really want to ignore other evidence and stay on this emissions pricing.

One kind is conservatives who really just don’t want big government and they’re afraid that any kind of regs have transaction costs and administrative costs and so on. And some of that’s true. But it’s not as bad as Ontario taking the emissions price revenue that it’s got and deciding to create $2.3 billion of programs over a three-year period. It’s hilarious. So don’t tell me that emissions pricing is automatically more economically efficient.

The argument is that we should do this with minimal government. And they think emissions pricing is easier because you can put a carbon tax on and use that to cut corporate taxes. In other words, do what Gordon Campbell did. When Campbell was bringing in that emissions price — the carbon tax in B.C. — I was the one who said: “Good. Give the money back. You don’t need to create big government.” He did that.

That’s kind of a model for the C.D. Howe Institute, the Ecofiscal Commission and the new head of the Conservative Party in Ontario, Patrick Brown. People like him, who are saying “we conservatives are not just Stephen Harper types, sort of denying climate change or doing nothing about it, but we don’t want to create big government in doing it.”

That’s one group of people who don’t seem to even want to look at flex regs.

The other ones are, as I said, economists and the Ecofiscal Commission kind of seems to have all of that together who just don’t want to think too much about political acceptability and say: “Our job is to just tell you the lowest cost option, and you do what you have to to get political buy-in. But this is the way you should do it.”

Any final thoughts?

I beg people to read the first nine pages.

Photo of Marc Jaccard giving a  speech at Enbridge Northern Gateway protest in Vancouver, by Chris Yakimov via Flickr.

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There just aren’t enough solar training centres in Alberta to keep up with demand from former oilpatch workers, according to Randall Benson, owner of Gridworks Energy Group, an Edmonton-based company that designs, supplies and installs solar panels.

Benson, who has worked in the solar industry since the year 2000, said more capacity is needed to upgrade the skills of the province’s vastly underemployed oil and gas workforce which has lost thousands of jobs in the wake of plummeting oil prices.

“We do a lot of training,” Benson told DeSmog Canada. “The interest in training is unbelievable, it's gone up two or three fold just in the last couple of years. And it continues to grow.”

Benson, who said he’s had to turn people away from full classes, is currently considering opening up another training centre in Calgary to keep up with demand.

But as reports of overburdened solar training centres start to emerge, the biggest question — of who will employ all the newly trained workers — remains unanswered.

Benson estimates 98 per cent of his students are from the energy sector and are either out of work or they're “seeing a switch happening.”

“Something is telling them that it's time to diversify their training and skill set. Worldwide solar and other renewables are going to be the biggest source of jobs soon,” Benson said.

But so far Canada has bucked the worldwide trend, with low to medium demand for solar energy workers, Benson said. The best option for recent grads of solar training programs is independent contracting, installing solar panels on private homes and buildings, he said.

This reality might change in the next couple of years.

Lliam Hildebrand, founder of Iron and Earth, an organization of former oilsands workers committed to renewable energy projects, says utility scale solar projects will go into construction mode in late 2018.

“Over the next two years we have an incredible opportunity to be proactive with our training programs,” Hildebrand said. “If we wait until [2018] to prepare the workforce then we'll be behind the ball and these companies might just hire workers from North Dakota who have a lot more experience than any of our trades people in Alberta.”

The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan both recently committed to renewables — Alberta to the tune of 30 per cent renewables by 2030 and Saskatchewan to 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030 — and they’ll need to procure that renewable energy from somewhere.

#Oilpatch to Solar Field: #Alberta Oil & Gas Workforce Lines Up for #Solar Training #ableg #cdnpoli https://t.co/JRTugja1lX

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 29, 2016

But there's still a lot that has to be done in the form of funding and policy work if Alberta is going to truly harness it’s solar potential. The Alberta government is currently providing up to $5 million to finance the cost of setting up solar power in buildings such as offices, fire halls, community centres and farms.

But, for those on the inside, $5 million is not nearly enough to kickstart the solar industry.

“It’s a great start, but we're gonna need a lot more programs like that in order to help prepare us for this larger boom that's going to be happening in 2018,” Hildebrand said.

Hildebrand hopes to get funding from both the federal and provincial governments to start training programs. Hildebrand wasn't ready to go public on the amount of money he hopes to get — only that he expects 50 per cent to come from Alberta and the other half from the federal government. He recently had an invitation from federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna to meet with her and discuss a proposal.

“Until then what's going to be creating the most jobs in renewable energy, and the energy sector in general, is smaller operations like small residential projects, because those can happen almost over-night,” Hildebrand said.

That's just funding though — there’s also the issue of policy.

According to Sara Hastings-Simon —the Pembina Institute’s Clean Economy program director — in order to understand what it takes from a policy perspective to further grow jobs, it's important to distinguish between two types of solar: distributed solar, which is where the home owner or business owner put panels up on their roofs, and utility scale solar which would include larger solar farms.

“The first overall point is that there is a lot of potential for jobs in solar in Canada, and in Alberta specifically, we have one of the best solar resources in all of Canada,” Hastings-Simon said.

Unlike B.C., Alberta has a de-regulated market, this means that every hour energy operators bid a certain amount of energy for a certain amount of money. Then it’s up to a grid operator to line them up in order, from the lowest price to the highest, until he has amassed all the energy needed to meet demand that specific hour. This means the most expensive bidders get left out and the remaining energy operators get paid the price of the highest bidder who's power is being used.

“It costs renewable producers less money to create power if their panels are already built, so they will bid less money,” Hastings-Simon said. “If solar had a large enough share they could bring down the price of electricity.”

“In the U.S., states that increased their use of renewables saw the cost for consumers go down by as much as 10 per cent.”

The problem is utility solar only gets cheaper once you deploy it at scale because the maintenance is much cheaper then other forms of energy production. But if businesses aren’t pushed in the direction of renewables, they will just continue with the status quo, Hastings-Simon said. This means another way to provide policy support for renewables is by lowering the cost of financing, like providing loan guarantees.

The federal government does currently provide tax breaks to investors.

In a statement provided to DeSmog Canada, Natural Resources Canada said they encourage investments in specified clean energy generation and energy conservation equipment. This provision allows the capital cost of eligible equipment acquired before 2020 to be deducted at a rate of 50 per cent per year. And certain intangible start-up costs associated with renewable energy projects are eligible for 100 per cent tax deductions.

According to Natural Resources, the 2016 budget is providing $50 million to Sustainable Development Technology Canada to support “the development of new technologies that address climate change, air quality, clean water and clean soil.”

An additional $82.5 million is being provided to support research, development and demonstration of clean energy technologies. Natural Resources did not specify what percentage of that budget is destined for solar.

Unlike utility scale projects, in the case of distributed solar — private home and business owners with solar panels on their roofs — the big policy driver isn’t funding, it’s accounting.

Alberta uses a net billing system which means that, while you’re sending excess energy to your neighbours, you're paid back for the electricity charges but not other variable charges like transmission and distribution.

Changing this policy to more fairly value the energy that is generated on people's roofs is one way the government could make sure the distributed market — which Hastings-Simon says is very good from a jobs perspective — is more attractive.

“Alberta is following the same trend as other jurisdictions: we’re in the transition to clean our energy, both for the environmental and health benefits, but also simply because it makes more and more economic sense.”

Image: A solar technician with Great Canadian Solar inspects a panel at the Leduc solar field. Great Canadian Solar has more than doubled its staff in 2016 already. Photo: David Dodge/Green Energy Futures via Flickr

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It sounds like a renewable energy utopia of the distant future.

Twelve million houses with roofs covered in solar panels. Wind turbines whipping the equivalent energy of 170 Site C dams onto the grid. A popular type of hydro called pumped storage, which often leaves a pinky toe of an environmental footprint compared to the imprint of large dams and their reservoirs.

But this is no futuristic climate-friendly Shangri-La. It’s all part of the U.S. government’s national Hydropower Vision for the next 15 to 35 years, a report unveiled in late July at the world’s largest annual hydro event in Minneapolis.

Developed by the U.S. Department of Energy, the report outlines a very different energy path than the “one dam fits all” approach of the B.C. government, whose single-minded focus on building the $8.8 billion Site C dam on the Peace River blew the Canadian Wind Energy Association right out of the province earlier this year.

In the U.S. vision, construction of new large dams is supplanted by more environmentally-friendly energy development, focusing on a fast-growing type of hydro called pumped storage and the deep integration of hydro with wind and solar power.

“The report tries to articulate a future for hydro that is really built on new types of hydro power facilities that intrinsically find themselves to be smaller in size,” Jose Zayas, the Director of Wind and Water Power Technologies for the U.S. Energy Department, said in an interview with DeSmog.

Zayas said “it would be difficult to imagine” that large hydro facilities like the Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam will be replicated in the U.S. given “environmental considerations” and as long as there are renewable energy alternatives.

Instead, he said existing large U.S. dams will be updated with modern equipment to increase their energy output, and they will dovetail with more variable wind and solar power to ensure a steady electricity supply.

Joining wind and solar is a third musketeer in the U.S. renewable energy transition: pumped storage, a smaller footprint form of hydro that was examined by BC Hydro in 2010 and found to be viable in British Columbia.

A 21st Century Electrical Grid

In a keynote address to the hydro convention, which drew almost 3,000 delegates from around the world, Zayas said the U.S. hydro industry wants to partner with a “growing set of technologies such as solar and wind, and it wants to partner quickly.”

“Think about hydro and pumped storage as an enabler for the transmission and modernization of our 21st century electrical infrastructure.”

In keeping with that objective, Zayas and the many stakeholders who worked on the vision report, including industry and the environmental group American Rivers, dubbed it “A New Chapter for America’s First Renewable Electricity Source.”

The U.S. vision stands in sharp contrast to what Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, called a lack of opportunity to develop new wind projects in B.C., despite a “tremendous untapped potential” for wind development in the province. Hornung said the association was withdrawing from B.C. this year to focus on Alberta and Saskatchewan, “markets which provide the greatest opportunities in the short term to see more wind energy deployed in the country.”

As the Canadian Wind Energy Association exits B.C., wind power in the U.S. will amplify by 150 percent over the next few decades, according to Zayas. Wind facilities in the U.S. already generate 75,000 megawatts of energy a year, while Site C’s projected output is a fraction of that at 1,100 megawatts.

“When you look at the growth curves of wind and solar they’re quite exponential, Zayas said in an interview. “What you find into the future is quite a bit of renewables.”

Complementing the projected increase in wind and solar energy, the U.S. Department of Energy points to the potential expansion of pumped storage, which is capable of generating 36,000 megawatts of new power in the U.S., or the equivalent of building 33 Site C dams.

Rendering of the Yecheon Pumped Storage Hydropower Facility. Image: U.S. Department of Energy

Pumped Storage A Potential for B.C.

A 2010 study commissioned by BC Hydro concluded that pumped storage is a viable renewable energy option in the province, raising questions about why the B.C. government has not embraced pumped storage to produce more environmentally-friendly energy than Site C, which will put more than 100 kilometres of the ecologically-unique Peace River Valley and its tributary valleys under water.

The Royal Society of Canada said the environmental impact of Site C would be more severe than any other industrial project ever examined under Canada’s current environmental assessment act, including the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project.

Former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen told DeSmog that BC Hydro has “too much of a vested interest” in large hydro projects.  The only serious way to examine alternatives to Site C, including pumped storage, would be to establish an independent review body, said Eliesen. “You would have to create an independent commission of inquiry to look into this.”

DeSmog twice asked the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines why pumped storage was not chosen as a lower-impact hydro option than Site C, but received no reply. BC Hydro also did not respond to a phone call asking for comment.

Previously, BC Hydro has said Site C is the cheapest option for generating new electricity in the province.

U.S. Hydropower Vision Exposes B.C.’s Short-Sighted Thinking on #SiteC Dam https://t.co/Ue2KBXtePJ @sarahcox_bc #bcpoli #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 10, 2016

Pumped Storage Facility in the Works for Ontario

In pumped storage, water is moved back and forth between two smaller reservoirs in a system that can be closed, effectively recycling the water. Reservoirs can be natural water bodies, blasted in rock formations, or they can be repurposed former mine and quarry sites.

“Water is pumped to the upper reservoir at night when electricity prices are low and released down to the lower reservoir during the day to generate power when needed,” explains Northland Power, the developer of a proposed pumped storage facility in Ontario that will make use of an abandoned mine pit filled with water.  

“It’s the project that keeps on giving,” John Wright, Northland’s lead developer for the project, told DeSmog. “It was an open pit iron mine…Then it was used for crushing gravel and at the next phase of its life it’s going to become a long-term clean energy asset. It’s a pretty good use of a natural resource, the ultimate use in my point of view.”

Construction of the Marmora pumped storage facility will cost Northland Power $900 million and the facility will produce 400 megawatts of power, according to Wright, or about 36 percent of the energy that would be generated by Site C. Northland is seeking a power purchase agreement with the Ontario government and will spend four to five years developing the facility once permits are received.

Wright said pumped storage, developed more than a century ago in Italy and Switzerland, is undergoing a worldwide “renaissance” as governments and industry realize it is a perfect complement to more variable wind and solar energy systems.

Significant Alternatives to Site C Available in B.C.

After former Premier Gordon Campbell announced in April 2010 that the provincial government would seek regulatory approval to build the Site C dam, BC Hydro commissioned a report to evaluate the potential for pumped storage in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.

Despite the Vancouver-based Knight Piésold consulting firm being given just six weeks to analyze pumped storage potential in southwestern B.C., it came to some thought-provoking conclusions. 

“Are there potentially viable greenfield pumped storage hydroelectric sites in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island region of southwest British Columbia that are economically viable?” Knight Piésold said in its 44-page report. “The answer to this question is YES, there are numerous potential pumped storage sites that meet the basic criteria established for this study.”

After eliminating pumped storage options in terrestrial parks and salmon-bearing rivers, Knight Piésold, an employee-owned firm with offices in 15 countries, concluded that there are 194 potential pumped storage sites in southwestern B.C.

Each of the 194 sites is capable of producing 500 to 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

Of those sites, Knight Piésold identified 45 as the cheapest to develop.

“Freshwater pumped storage is a proven technology with projects operating worldwide,” said the report, which contains a chart of more than 60 pumped storage projects across the globe, each generating more than 1,000 megawatts of energy.

Pumped storage facilities are common in Europe and Asia as well as in the U.S., where 22,000 megawatts of energy are already generated by this method.

B.C. Pumped Storage Would Steer Clear of Salmon Rivers

Pumped storage facilities around the world range from tiny installations that generate less than 100 megawatts of energy to large facilities in China and the United States that create the equivalent power of nearly two or three Site C dams. A 1,700-megawatt pumped storage facility in Wales, the Dinorwig Power Station, was constructed on the former site of slate quarries that closed in the 1960s.

A 2012 report for BC Hydro found that B.C.’s north coast also has a “high potential” for pumped storage hydro at sites that exclude terrestrial parks and salmon-bearing rivers.

In that report, Knight Piésold identified 33 potential freshwater pumped storage sites on the North Coast, each capable of producing 500 or 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

However, the firm cautioned that the North Coast potential for pumped storage was “slightly less than in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, primarily due to the relatively undisturbed nature of the landscape and the lack of many existing hydropower and other man-made reservoirs suitable for use as part of a pumped storage facility.”

Eliesen said times have changed and B.C. needs to re-examine its focus on producing most new electricity from large dams, taking into account factors such as the environment, agriculture, recreation, and the ability to produce electricity more locally.

“Now, because of the trade-offs that are involved, this is a serious matter. There’s no question that a full evaluation of alternative forms of generating energy without seriously impacting the environment…and on a local basis…has to be looked at.”  

On the same day the U.S. Department of Energy released its vision report, it also announced a US$10 million contribution to help build “next-generation” pumped storage facilities and for power generation projects at dams that currently have other uses, such as flood control. Unlike in Canada, where hydro is publicly owned, the U.S. has a mix of public and private hydro.

Zayas said the U.S. Department of Energy is striving for an integrated system of wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and hydro. “We invest in all of those.”

Image: Site C Construction along the Peace River. Photo: Jayce Hawkins/DeSmog Canada

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Another year, another U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) assessment report that makes the agency's own forecasters look foolish.

In the latest Electric Power Monthly report, which covers all twelve months of 2015, the EIA revealed that renewable energy sources accounted for nearly 13.5-percent of the nation’s utility-scale electrical output. This is up by more than 2-percent over 2014. But get this: less than three months earlier, in the “Short-Term Energy Outlook,” the agency predicted “total renewables used in the electric power sector to decrease by 1.8% in 2015.”

The EIA’s record for long-term forecasts is no better. In fact, it’s consistently worse.

As Ken Bossong, Executive Director of the SUN DAY Campaign, recently pointed out, the agency’s “Annual Energy Outlook 2012” forecast that non-hydro renewables would provide about 250,000 thousand megawatt-hours of electricity by 2015. The new EIA tallies put that figure at over 300,000 thousand megawatt-hours, roughly 20-percent higher than predicted. (You could more simply state this as the 300,000 gigawatt hours actually produced in 2015 is 20-percent higher than the 250,000 gigawatt-hours predicted, but for some reason, the EIA likes to use the clunky “thousand megawatt-hours" factor.)

"Just a few years ago EIA had forecast that renewables might provide 15% of the nation's electricity by 2035," said Bossong. "It now appears that goal could be reached within the next two years and quite possibly sooner!"

This isn’t the rare instance of the EIA getting something wrong. Rather, it’s something of an annual tradition. Consider these examples, taken at random (and culled from links I’ve bookmarked over the past few years under the tag, “EIA wrong”):

• “In 2009, the federal government’s Energy Information Administration made a forecast for the next two decades: U.S. wind power would grow modestly, reaching 44 gigawatts of generating capacity in 2030, while solar power would remain scarce, inching up to 12 GW. Just six years later, U.S. wind capacity is already up to 66 GW, and solar has shot up to 21 GW. There's now enough installed wind and solar to power 25 million American homes— more than three times what the EIA expected before President Obama took office.” Michael Grunwald in Politico
• “In 2005, EIA forecast that U.S. solar power capacity would hit about 1.2 GW in 2013. Where are we right now [in 2013]? According to Greentech Media, the U.S. is closing in (if it already hasn’t passed) the 10 GW mark in solar PV capacity right about now, and that’s not even counting solar thermal power generating capacity (according to this article, you can add another 1 GW or so of U.S. solar thermal power capacity). In sum, EIA forecast 1.2 GW of U.S. solar power capacity in 2013; the actual figure is around 11 GW – nearly 10 times higher than EIA forecast!” Former EIA employee Lowell Feld, in 2013.  
• “The report this year [2015] predicts that by 2040, the U. S. will have added only 48 gigawatts of solar generating capacity. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) expects that the industry will add half of that by the end of 2016. “ Samantha Page in ThinkProgress
• In an update on June 2015, the EIA projected that the cheapest solar deployed in 2020 would cost $89 / mwh, after subsidies. That’s 8.9 cents / kwh to most of us. (This assumes that the solar Investment Tax Credit is not extended.)…How has that forecast worked out? Well, in Austin, Greentech Media reports that there are 1.2GW of bids for solar plants at less than $40/mwh, or 4c/kwh. And there are bids on the table for buildouts after the ITC goes away at similar prices. Ramez Naam

So why does this matter? That predictions about something as complex as energy markets are always wrong shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

Yet, as Jeff Deyette, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ThinkProgress about the EIA forecasts, "real policies are being designed around these assumptions."

This becomes particularly troubling when the assumptions consistently favor investment in fossil fuels, and shortchange the potential of renewables.

Steve Yetiv and Lowell Feld break it down further in an important article for the Journal of Energy Security called, "Why Energy Forecasting Goes Wildly Wrong."

Why does any of this matter, and why should any of us care if energy forecasts are off base most of the time? To the extent that policymakers believe erroneous forecasts, they can make wildly incorrect policy choices. For instance, if they believe that oil prices will remain far lower in the future than is the case, their forecasts will undermine efforts to conserve or to switch to alternatives. Why would nations, businesses, entrepreneurs, and individual consumers take such steps if oil prices are predicted to remain low? At a minimum, this will be one factor working against conservation and movement away from fossil fuels.

Crucially, these forecasts are used by governments to guide policymaking. And this goes all the way to the top.

As Lorne Stockman notes, "The White House’s key energy policy document cites the EIA’s oil demand forecast, and its outlook for steady oil demand decades into the future, as the basis for the latest round of lease sales in the Outer Continental Shelf, which includes areas in the Atlantic Ocean offered for the first time in decades together with new areas made available north of the Arctic Circle in the Chukchi Sea."

Two years ago, a group of CleanTechnica readers were so alarmed by the EIA's 2014 Annual Energy Outlook, they wrote a letter to the Secretary of Energy suggesting that the forecasting and reporting methods and models be overhauled.

We also feel that the EIA has made thousands of forecasts in the past which never seem to be publicly visited again, for example in the 2010 AEO it was forecast that we would reach 0.45 GW of solar PV on the grid by 2035, in November 2013 we reached 7.11 GW according to the FERC.

Surely, in making new predictions it would be appropriate for the EIA to address how their models could produce a 25 year forecast which has already been surpassed 16 times over in less than 3 years. What changes have been made to the models to improve this terrible forecasting record? If none, then should the renewable forecasts come with a disclaimer that they are highly unreliable and have a history of massive underestimation of renewable growth, surely burying them deep in the data of the report is not an appropriate strategy.

Solar and wind trade groups are also outspoken about the need to reform the EIA's outlooks.

"All forecasts are going to be inaccurate. What is concerning is when you see consistent systemic bias in your projections from EIA," said Michael Goggin, of the American Wind Energy Association. "There seems to be consistent bias in EIA's projections against renewable energy, and that's a different thing from being inaccurate."

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A record US$367 billion was invested in renewable energy in 2015, according to a new report out today by the Clean Energy Canada initiative of the Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University.

Renewables investment increased by seven percent since 2014, with China, the US, and Japan representing more than half of the total investment last year, shows the report.

The report also finds that for the first time, more money was invested in clean energy than in new power from fossil fuel ($253bn).

This unprecedented scale of investment is particularly remarkable given the significant drop in oil prices over the last year.

“Turmoil in fossil fuel markets led many analysts to suggest clean energy investment would similarly stall out. How could renewable energy possibly compete with cheap oil, gas and coal?” asks the report.

As it explains: “New clean energy deals were widely expected to stall last year as the price of oil and other fossil fuels declined around the world. Instead, growth in the clean energy sector beat expectations, delivering the best year yet.”

Lower Costs

According to the report, declining technology and financing costs have helped to spur growth in renewable energy. For example, between 2009 and 2015 the cost of wind power in the US dropped 61 percent, while the cost of solar power fell 82 percent.

Much of the speculation was the result of a lack of understanding of renewable energy technology, trends and markets, explained Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada.

While renewable energy competes head to head with natural gas (unlike with oil) “it has a range of attributes that make it attractive,” said Woynillowicz, “energy security, zero air pollution, price certainty, zero carbon, etc.”

Woynillowicz continued: “Renewable energy costs keep falling – and will keep falling – and the long-view suggests they will outcompete natural gas.”

“It’s also worth noting,” he added, “that as the costs fall, it means we get more energy for every dollar invested. So if investment remains stable or increases, we’ll see greater amounts of renewable energy actually deployed.”

Globally, wind power deployment led the way last year, up 31 percent since 2014 with nearly 64 GW installed, with deployment in solar power growing 23 percent.

“The fuel – sun, wind, water – is free,” Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, said in a statement. “There’s no wonder clean energy is gaining momentum around the world.”

“Clean energy is taking off because it offers value that can’t be beat – it’s local, so it offers energy security. It’s a climate solution. It reduces health issues from smog. It’s increasingly competitive, and there’s big money to be made.”

Developing Countries

Last year also marked the first time that developing countries saw more investment in renewable energy ($167bn) than developed nations ($162bn).

India took fifth place for the most clean energy investment in 2015 ($10.9bn) behind China ($110.5bn), the US ($56bn), Japan ($43.bn), and the UK ($23.4bn). Meanwhile, renewable investment in Canada dropped 46 percent from $7.4bn in 2014 to $4bn last year.

As the report describes, 2015 saw a “geographical broadening of clean energy as more developing countries got in on the action.”

Between 2014 and 2015 investment in clean energy in Africa and the Middle East grew 54 percent, up £13.4bn.

Going forward, the report predicts that both of these regions have “significant” potential for clean energy growth due to their growing populations and abundance of wind and solar resources.

Woynillowicz also expects the “staggering rate of investment and deployment” in China to continue. Meanwhile India, which has set aggressive renewable energy targets, will also be one to watch, but Woynillowicz asks: “Will they prove effective and efficient in attracting and deploying capital?”

Going Mainstream

With more than a third of a trillion dollars invested worldwide in renewables last year, Clean Energy Canada is optimistic, stating that “clean energy is going mainstream.”

“That’s serious money,” Smith writes in the report. “Clean energy has real momentum and the commitments underpinning the Paris Agreement on climate change will keep that momentum going.”

The report’s findings are “very encouraging” agreed Woynillowicz, “especially recognising that we saw a third of a trillion invested before the Paris agreement.”

We should expect to see more money being driven into renewables over the next few years Woynillowicz predicts, due to the continued increase in cost competitiveness of renewables and progress in reducing costs of energy storage technologies, combined with the climate benefits of renewables and goals set in the Paris Agreement.

Photo: Tony Webster via Flickr

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The shift away from coal and towards renewable sources of energy is slowly beginning to gain traction, two recently-released reports from American and global energy agencies show.

“The biggest story is in the case of renewables,” International Energy Agency executive director, Fatih Birol, told the Guardian as this year's World Energy Outlook was released. “It is no longer a niche. Renewable energy has become a mainstream fuel, as of now.”

Almost half of the new power generation added in 2014 came from wind, solar, wave or tidal energy, the report found, and renewables now represent the world's second largest source of electricity after coal. Coal, whose share of the world's energy mix has been rising since 2000, has peaked, the agency indicated, predicting that within two decades, renewable energy sources will replace coal as the backbone of the world's electricity source.

Domestically, the growth of renewable energy has been especially pronounced in Texas and other states long famous for their drilling and mining histories, data released by the U.S.-based Energy Information Administration shows.

Texas has become the largest wind-power supplier in the country, helping to slash as much carbon from the state's emissions in 2013 as both Vermont and New Hampshire combined produced that year, if Texas had gotten that power through burning an equal mix of coal and natural gas instead of wind.

Still, the transition away from fossil fuels is coming too slowly to prevent catastrophic climate change, the IEA warned.

"There are unmistakeable signs that the much-needed global energy transition is underway," the agency wrote in its report, "but not yet at a pace that leads to a lasting reversal of the trend of rising CO2 emissions."

For the world to have a shot at keeping emissions below the 2 degree of warming threshold, the agency identified five key steps: the least-efficient coal plants must be banned, many fossil fuel subsidies must be ended, infrastructure like buildings and transportation need efficiency improvements, investment in renewable power must rise from $270 billion in 2014 to $400 billion by 2030, and methane leaks from oil and gas companies must be slashed.

The good news? Those measures could be taken at "no net economic cost," the agency concluded.

All told, this year, renewable energy sources represented over 17 percent of the U.S. electrical generating capacity — an unprecedentedly high number, but still far less than fossil fuels.

Remaining dependent on fossil fuels brings economic as well as environmental risks. The IEA warned that while oil prices remain low currently, the cost of a barrel is expected to roughly double over time, and that in some situations, the world's oil industry would be vulnerable to shocks that cause oil prices to spike.

But many policy makers have yet to absorb this message. Despite concerns about the environmental and economic prospects for fossil fuels, the oil, gas, and coal industries continue to benefit from roughly four times the amount of government subsidies as the renewable energy sector, the IEA said.

"[W]e estimate this global subsidy bill [for fossil fuel consumption] at around $490 billion in 2014, although it would have been around $610 billion without reforms enacted since 2009," the agency wrote. "Subsidies to aid the deployment of renewable energy technologies in the power sector were $112 billion in 2014 (plus $23 billion for biofuels)."

Not Just CO2

While energy agencies are primarily focused on carbon emissions, evidence is growing that methane leaks from oil and gas drilling, fracking, pipelines, and other infrastructure pose a grave climate threat that the U.S. government has underestimated.

"Because of the increase in shale gas development over recent years, the total greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use in the USA rose between 2009 and 2013, despite the decrease in carbon dioxide emissions," Prof. Robert Howarth, a scientist whose pioneering work on methane emissions suggests that burning natural gas — which the IEA predicts will be the only fossil fuel to gain market share — may be even worse for the climate than burning coal, wrote in a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Energy and Emission Control Technologies. 

Methane, especially from shale gas sites, is leaking from the gas industry at a far higher rate than previously believed, Howarth said, writing that while the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that leak rates are just 1.8 percent, those conclusions are based in part on flawed data collection.

The true methane leak rate, Howarth concluded after reviewing the available research, may in fact be more than 10 times that rate in some cases — and on average,12 percent.*

There are some signs that energy experts worldwide are increasingly taking note of the hazards of methane leaks.

"Emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, along the supply chain will dent the environmental credentials of gas if there is no concerted policy action to tackle these leaks," the IEA noted in its report, though it also labeled the fuel "a good fit for a gradually decarbonising energy system."

But the carbon emissions from burning natural gas are significant as well. In 2013, the U.S. produced roughly 2.17 billion tons of carbon from burning oil and 1.7 billion tons from burning coal — and another 1.4 billion tons came from burning natural gas, the EIA reported, making natural gas responsible for 26.7 percent of America's CO2 pollution.

A Shift to Pure Renewables?

The Obama administration has made its support for an "all of the above" energy strategy that envisions increasing reliance on natural gas in the short term as a "bridge" to the eventual shift to renewable energy.

But even without subsidies, there are already some markets where renewable energy remains competitive against fossil fuels, even as oil and gas prices have nose-dived this year.

In Houston, TX a newly built solar plant is expected to provide electricity for an average of 4.8 cents per kilowatt hour for 20 years.  That's roughly half a cent more than Houston's fossil-fuel based power plants in today's over-supplied market — but two cents per hour cheaper than the 5-year average cost of conventional fuels, highlighting the unpredictability of the market for those fuels.

And wind power in that state has become so abundant that the New York Times is reporting it is literally too cheap to meter at night.

Meanwhile, keeping oil and gas flowing is expected to become increasingly costly. The IEA estimates that “just to compensate for declining production at existing fields and to keep future output flat at today’s levels,” the oil industry will require $630 billion in investments.

And building new pipelines to deliver oil and gas from areas like shale drilling regions adds to the expected costs.

“Keeping these project costs under control (contrary to numerous recent examples of overruns) will be vital to the future competitive positioning of gas,” the IEA said.

Crunching numbers like these has some environmentalists targeting a near-term transition away from all fossil fuels, not just oil and coal.

“The impossible is becoming possible. The global breakthrough of renewable energy has happened much faster than anticipated,” Emily Rochon, global energy strategist at Greenpeace International, told EcoWatch. “We believe that with the right level of policy support, the world can deliver 100 percent renewable energy for all by 2050.”  

*Ed note: This sentence was clarified following a reader's suggestion.

Photo Credit: Arial view of a solar farm under construction in the UK, via Shutterstock  

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British Columbia has been praised the world over for its wildly successful carbon tax which, according to polls, the majority of British Columbians actually like paying.

Now a new analysis shows that B.C.’s efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions is compatible with growing jobs and a strong economy in coming decades.

The report by Clean Energy Canada shows that while pursuing strong climate policies the province could add 270,000 new jobs to the market by 2025 and possibly triple that figure to 900,000 by 2050.

The analysis, conducted by Navius Research, also found the economy would enjoy steady growth, about two per cent per year, at the same time as bringing new opportunities to sectors and communities across the province.

“We hear a lot of fear mongering claims that climate action is going to hurt our economy. But this research shows the opposite,” Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, said. "We found that B.C. can cut carbon pollution — and still create hundreds of thousands of new jobs across all sectors and see the same level of economic growth we would otherwise. That’s a big win for British Columbians, for businesses, and for our climate.”

“In other words, climate leadership pays off,” Smith said.

This past summer’s wildfires and drought “provide a glimpse of the costs in store for our province as the climate becomes increasingly unstable,” the report states.

Cutting carbon pollution goes hand-in-hand with building a strong economy, the report argues.

“Leading on climate and building a prosperous economy are two sides of the same coin,” Smith said.

By 2020 B.C. plans to reduce emissions 33 per cent from 2007 levels. And under the targets agreed to under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, the province plans to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

However, according to Environment Canada, B.C. is on track to increase greenhouse gas emissions 11 per cent by 2020 (from 2005 levels, which the federal government uses).

According to Matt Horne, policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, B.C.’s natural gas and LNG aspirations will make it impossible for the province to meet its targets.

The Clean Energy Canada analysis says a number of new B.C. jobs will remain in the traditional natural resources and natural gas sectors. By 2025 an estimated 35,000 jobs will be added to these sectors.

“Looking out to 2025 and beyond, iconic industries like forestry, mining and agriculture remain important and healthy in a context where B.C. remains a climate leader. The main difference is these industries will produce less carbon pollution,” the report states.

A more aggressive push into clean energy markets “means some industries will transition and transform, and new opportunities will emerge,” the report’s authors write.

B.C. could take advantage, like many other countries, of the opportunities in clean technology, low-carbon, and sustainable energy markets.

“In the past year we have seen significant leadership on climate from many of our trade partners, including China, the U.S. and India,” Smith said. “This report shows that further leadership on climate action in B.C. will bolster our reputation and reinforce our competitive advantage as the rest of the world continues to act.”

Clean Energy Canada recommends B.C. set strong standards that require buildings, vehicles and industry to emit less. At the same time, more clean economy investment is needed to keep businesses competitive.

Premier Christy Clark will join incoming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Paris this fall for the COP21 climate talks. Global leaders plan to leave the negotiations with a binding international climate agreement beyond 2020.

Image: Green Energy Futures

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