Pursue green power

Two stories in today's newspaper showcase the West Shore for being in the forefront of new technologies meant to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels

Our View: Editorial
Goldstream Gazette
Dec 06 2006

Canada's first-ever tidal turbine was installed off Metchosin with the ability to heat two homes and a research station, while in Langford, a hydrogen service station officially opened with the intention of eventually servicing a fleet of buses run on hydrogen fuel cells, and perhaps in the not-too- distant future, hydrogen-fuelled cars.

While both these announcements are good news as far as their potential for reducing our reliance on greenhouse gas-emitting cars and power plants, it doesn't escape our notice they are happening in spite of the provincial government's continuing reliance on traditional energy production, not through a deliberate strategy to develop so-called "green" power.

Over the next 20 years B.C. Hydro predicts the demand for electricity in B.C. will go up by a third, a projection that has the public utility scrambling to build new energy infrastructure to meet the burgeoning demand.

Hydro's "Integrated Energy Plan", released in 2004, explored the risks and benefits of green power like wind, micro-hydro, co-generation, and solar power, while also opening the door to coal-fired generation plants and good old run of the river hydroelectic power.

Here on the Island, the public utility responded to the threat of "rolling blackouts" with a controversial natual-gas powered plant at Duke Point south of Nanaimo.

The $280-million project was eventually shelved due to pressure from environmentalists and legal technicalities, but it did indicate B.C. Hydro's - and by extension the B.C. government's - willingness to use "dirty" over "clean" technology, such as a competing biomass facility at Gold River, to meet energy demand.

The government says it wants half of the new energy supply defined as "clean", but ultimately, the potential for using such power, whether the source is tidal, wind, or hydrogen, comes down to reliability, and cost.

As today's stories on hydrogen and tidal power indicate, the technology hasn't quite caught up with the market to make a business case for developing these more exotic sources of power.

At six cents a kilowatt hour, tidal power is not as profitable as hydroelectric power, which sells for 10 cents a kilowatt hour.

Hydrogen buses are expensive to build - nearly twice the cost of an electric-diesel hybrid - even though they stand to use half the energy as their diesel-belching counterparts.

And hydrogen-powered cars are still too new, and probably way too expensive, for anyone to get excited about just yet.

The prototype model Ford Focus gets significantly better gas mileage - between 160 and 200 miles on a tank of hydrogen compared to 120 miles on a tank of regular gas, according to the Ford website, but there is no market for these vehicles yet.

Even if they were available, nobody knows how much they would cost.

Still, even though the technology is in its infancy, we applaud the federal government for setting up the infrastructure to help the process along, and we encourage the provincial government to take steps to diversify the energy grid.

The science is clear. Climate change is caused by greenhouse gases, and the more we can do to reduce them, the better off we'll be.

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