It’s known as “the warm land”, and as soon as you get off the highway Vancouver Island’s Cowichan Valley certainly has the feeling of pleasant summer warmth, filled with agricultural fecundity. It was the Coast Salish Cowichan people who gave it the name - that’s what cowichan means in the Hul’q’umi’num language.
So solar energy lies deep in the heritage of the valley, and maybe its appropriate that British Columbia’s first solar bulk buy has sprung unto life here, and is pioneering a new approach to solar installations.
Energy issues featured prominently in the recent provincial election, with strong accents on both audacious development and sustainability. The new government faces immediate decisions on a couple of key energy issues: liquefied natural gas exports and BC Hydro’s planning. What do these look like from a sustainability perspective?
BCSEA is intervening in a BCUC rates proceeding regarding a new BC Hydro program to replace some 90,000 existing street lights with LED technology. The street lights are owned by BC Hydro and are attached to BC Hydro’s power distribution poles.
Energy Connections broke new ground this year, tackling the difficult but inspiring topic of community empowerment. People from across BC, heralding from various different backgrounds and industries, united under one roof for a day of information, inspiration and engaging dialogue.
Looking back on the event as a whole, it is difficult to envision a more appropriate keynote speaker to kick off this incredible day; a day marked by passionate and like-minded individuals learning from one another and engaging in the broad vision of sustainable energy.
The BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre is appealing a ruling of the BC utilities commission in late January that electricity rates designed to help low-income customers would be unlawful. The commission dismissed a major application by lawyers at BC PIAC for approval of a package of measures to assist the hundreds of thousands of BC men, women and children who are struggling to cope with the high and rising costs of electricity service from BC Hydro.
With Session 1 focusing on the political landscape of renewable energy and Session 2 looking into renewable energy success stories, Session 3 of Energy Connections 2017 will dive into the realm of energy conservation and efficiency. In simple terms, the concepts of conservation and efficiency can be summed up as: “doing more with less”.
We recently installed solar panels on our roof and I have never seen my hubby so excited and animated in such a long time. He had been fretting over the increasing cost of our hydro and the spectre of Site-C sending our hydro bills soaring.
