As the Alberta government shuns wind power, British Columbia plans to welcome the industry by exempting all new wind energy projects from an environmental assessment that usually takes one to two years.
Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix announced the exemption on Dec. 9 at a press conference while confirming nine new wind power projects co-owned by First Nations will receive 30-year production contracts with BC Hydro.
Dix said the wind projects will involve up to $6 billion in private investment and produce the same amount of power as the publicly funded $16-billion Site C dam in northeast B.C., which flooded the Peace River Valley this fall after more than nine years of construction.
“We need to get these projects up and running as quickly as possible,” Dix said about the wind projects. He said all future wind projects in B.C. will be exempt from environmental assessment while “ensuring that First Nations’ interests and environmental mitigation are protected and maintained.”
Removing the environmental assessment requirement will allow wind projects to “advance through development to construction and completion more quickly and start delivering clean power to the grid sooner,” Dix added.
Under the current rules, wind projects generating more than 50 megawatts of power or involving 15 or more turbines are subject to an environmental assessment, according to the B.C. Environment Ministry.
In an emailed response to questions, the ministry said wind projects have typically taken one to two years to complete the environmental assessment process — although no wind projects have been reviewed since B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Act was updated in 2018.
B.C. opposition parties and an academic who has studied environmental assessments were quick to raise concerns about the exemption.
“Building out these projects should not come at the cost of environmental protections or set a precedent for sidestepping environmental oversight, particularly for the construction of high-impact transmission lines to bring clean energy to the power grid,” Green Party MLA Jeremy Valeriote said in a press release that was generally supportive of the announcement.
In a post on the social media platform X, BC Conservative MLA David Williams called the decision to exempt wind projects from environmental assessment hypocritical.
“Clean energy and self-sufficiency is important but at what cost?” Williams, the party’s BC Hydro critic, said. “Have alternatives been explored? In addition, there are many worthy projects that our economy depends on. Are they going to have exemptions?”
Jessica Dempsey, a professor with the University of British Columbia’s geography department who has studied how environmental assessments affect endangered species, also had unanswered questions about the plan, especially given Dix’s emphasis on speeding up approval timelines for wind projects.
“What, if anything, are we sacrificing for that speed, that streamlining, and are we sure that it’s achieving the objectives that we want?” she asked in an interview. “I think that’s yet to be known.”
Whether the new system for approving wind projects improves on the current environmental assessment process is unclear, Dempsey said.
“Change is welcome, but the proof will be in the pudding, and this seems hastily announced and lacking the details that would make anyone feel confident about it.”
The nine wind projects will be built all over the province and range from 94 megawatts to 200 megawatts. The Brewster wind project on Vancouver Island near Campbell River, B.C., is a partnership between Capstone Infrastructure and the Wei Wai Kum First Nation. In September, the Strathcona Regional District recommended Capstone contact caving and paleontology experts, noting the area has many unique limestone cave formations. It’s not clear if the new rules will require such consultations.
B.C.’s decision to lighten the regulatory burden for wind power follows the Alberta government’s move in the opposite direction by placing onerous restrictions on the sector — creating an opportunity for B.C. to woo away disenfranchised power producers.
“We’re seeing major jurisdictions move away from clean energy investment,” B.C. Premier David Eby said at the news conference. “Alberta with new rules restricting wind energy, for example. South of the border, we’ll see what decisions the new administration makes around clean energy. We know here in British Columbia that that presents a huge opportunity for us.”
In place of assessments conducted by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, wind power projects will now be assessed and approved via a “one window permitting approach” overseen by the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, with input from BC Hydro, according to a press release from the province.
Some permits will be issued by the Energy Ministry’s clean energy and major projects office, the release stated, while other ministries will provide support to ensure “co-ordinated and efficient consultation with First Nations,” public engagement and efficient and transparent decisions.
The BC NDP has promised to make the province a clean energy powerhouse positioned to benefit economically from global efforts to boost electrification and reduce carbon emissions. Increasing power production is also crucial to the province’s plans to provide cleaner power to emission-intensive industries like liquefied natural gas (LNG) and mining. BC Hydro estimates total electricity demand will grow 15 per cent by 2030.
“We need more power; this gives us more power,” Dix said. “We need urgent action on climate change; this is urgent action on climate change. We need to ensure that First Nations are involved in the economic development of the province and have an equity interest — it does just that.”
The exemption announcement did not include details about what kinds of regulatory or permitting processes wind projects will now be subject to. The Energy Ministry did not respond before publication time to The Narwhal’s request for more information.
It’s not just wind projects that could soon see big changes to permitting and approvals. Eby hinted his government has set its sights on overhauling regulatory processes for a range of industries in the near future.
“The commitment that we’ve made [to] project proponents in British Columbia is that we’re going to do all we can to accelerate the permitting process, to eliminate unnecessary or duplicative steps, to make sure that their projects are able to get shovels in the ground sooner,” Eby said during the news conference.
The province is keen to “expedite approval for new mines without compromising environmental protection,” Eby said. He said his government wants to offer cheap and reliable power to companies interested in building major projects in B.C. — projects with power needs greater than what the province is currently able to provide.
“That has been frustrating for me,” Eby told reporters. “I think that the more electricity we can generate, the more we’re going to see these major industrial customers coming to British Columbia and these are industrial customers that reflect major employment opportunities.”
The majority of B.C.’s power mix is clean and renewable, but much of it is used by extractive industries with heavy carbon footprints, such as mining and oil and gas production — a scenario Dempsey worries could intensify over the next few years if more small-scale power projects are brought online quickly through a streamlined approval process.
“I think we still need to ask these questions about this speeding up and in what interest,” she said. “The way that this gets portrayed is that this is needed for the energy transition, but it’s hard to take that seriously when you see a 40 per cent increase in natural gas production over the last five years in B.C. and huge amounts of water increasingly needed for our hydro power in fact being used in fracking.”
B.C.’s current environmental assessment process leaves room for the new wind power regulations to address shortcomings and improve efficiency, according to Kevin Hanna, an associate professor with the University of B.C. Okanagan’s faculty of earth, environmental and geographic sciences.
Hanna was involved in the development and implementation of the most recent updates to B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Act and is a member of the federal government’s technical advisory committee on science and knowledge, which advises the Impact Assessment Agency.
“There has been a conversation at different levels of government for a little while now about how to move green energy projects or low carbon or no carbon energy projects through the permitting process in a much more timely way,” Hanna said.
“There’s a very good understanding of impacts across the project life cycle for wind and how to mitigate those … I don’t think you need a full blown environmental assessment, to be perfectly frank, to achieve that.”
Hanna said he would like to know more about how the province intends to ensure adequate environmental protection, impact mitigation and public consultation, as well as meaningful engagement with First Nations.
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