Sustainable Energy Dilemmas at the BC Utilities Commission
Bill Andrews shares some thoughts about the sustainable energy dilemmas he has to tackle
Much of BCSEA’s work before the BC Utilities Commission is to support clearly good things like energy efficiency and conservation, when BC Hydro or FortisBC bring forward their plans.
But some issues involve difficult trade-offs between our vision of a completely greenhouse gas free energy system and the on-the-ground difficulties of achieving some GHG reductions while maintaining the energy services that society demands.
FortisBC is an interesting case. For the last several years, its natural gas arm has worked to develop innovative, low- or zero-GHG products and services that diversify its core business of delivering natural gas to customers by pipeline. The proposed new products include biomethane, natural gas vehicles (NGVs) and thermal energy services. Fortis’s long-term vision would see a decline in the proportion of BC’s thermal energy requirements being met by natural gas from around three quarters currently to about a third in 2050. Is this enough?
Fortis got Utilities Commission approval last year to take biomethane from two projects: an agricultural waste project in Abbotsford run by Catalyst, and a landfill gas project in Salmon Arm run by Columbia Shuswap Regional District. The biomethane will be fed into the Fortis distribution system and marketed at a 10 % premium to interested customers as a lower-GHG alternative to regular natural gas. (Of course these customers only notionally receive the lower-GHG fuel: the biomethane is thoroughly mixed with the gas that all customers receive.) BCSEA cautiously supported this application on the grounds that it could open the door to more ambitious plans in the future; however, we remain concerned about the ‘greenwashing’ potential of marketing a blended (10/90) gas product as ‘green.’
This year, Fortis made several BCUC applications to provide natural gas fueling service to commercial vehicle fleets, and it provided incentives to heavy duty vehicle owners to buy NGVs (either compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas) instead of diesel vehicles. BCSEA cautiously supported the plan to begin to switch Waste Management’s fleet of garbage trucks from diesel to compressed natural gas. This involves a slight GHG reduction, and a considerable reduction in regular air pollution. However, we have asserted our opposition to any plan that would seek to switch cars and light-duty trucks to natural gas because we would like to see these electrified instead.
However, Fortis’s plans to expand its NGV services have been seriously set back by a Utilities Commission’s ruling that NGV incentives cannot be made from the funds that Fortis is allowed to spend on efficiency.
Meanwhile, the Energy Services Association of Canada and Corix Utilities Inc. have complained to the Commission, alleging that Fortis is taking unfair advantage of its position as a regulated monopoly to compete for market share in alternative energy services. The Commission has opened an inquiry into the issue. The main bone of contention is competition for providing thermal energy services, such as district energy projects and discrete geo-thermal projects. BCSEA is intervening, but it is too soon to say how or whether sustainable energy issues can be promoted here.
On the south side of Vancouver, River District Energy Limited Partnership filed an application with the Utilities Commission to approve a district energy system for the River District Development, a residential, office and retail mix of 700,000 square meters on 130 acres along the Fraser River.
The system will pipe hot water from a central energy facility to small energy transfer stations in each building, which feed hydronic space and water heating. The central energy facility will use natural gas boilers for a few years, until the development is built out to the point where the load is large enough to warrant a more sustainable solution. The favoured plan is to pipe hot water four and a half kilometers from Metro Vancouver’s Waste-to-Energy Facility in Burnaby, using waste heat from the plant. River District LP, the City of Vancouver and Metro Vancouver are discussing this option. Alternatively, the central energy facility could use any of several possible renewable heat sources, such as wood waste from Metro parks. BCSEA looks forward to learning more details of how much greenhouse gas reduction would be achieved, how the utility would be regulated, and how to ensure that the development does in fact add a renewable heat source as soon as possible.
In the northeast of BC, BC Hydro has applied to the Utilities Commission to approve a large reinforcement in its transmission capacity in the Dawson Creek – Chetwynd area. The main driver for this is the demand by unconventional gas developers in the Montney Basin for electricity service for their gas compressors and other equipment. BCSEA opposes any increased development or production of natural gas in BC, and on those grounds, we might take a stand against the transmission reinforcement. On the other hand, most or all of this development would likely proceed with or without the additional electrical service, except that in that case, the compressors would be powered by natural gas. Which would be preferable? Curbing the production of natural gas is ultimately a matter of government policy, and beyond the scope of the Utilities Commission’s review. BCSEA will also consider whether the transmission reinforcement would help renewable energy development, for example the very large wind potentials in the area.
