Sustainable Energy

 From the first solar cells in 1883 with their 1% efficiency to today’s research lab cells that claim over 40% efficiency, the progress of the solar revolution has been bumpy and often uncomfortable for the major solar players, but it has been nonetheless steady.

It seems so natural that BC should be a leader when it comes to wind power. We have such huge resources, especially in BC’s northeast, but we seem to be stuck at 390 MW, compared to over 2,000 MW in Ontario and 1,648 MW in Quebec, which has similar constraints of huge hydro resources and cheap power.

There’s another 548 MW lining up to enter the grid by 2016, for a total of 938 MW, but compared to BC’s total power capacity of 43,000 MW, it’s still small game. In the same timeframe, Quebec will bring on 2500 MW.

And what about those other critical questions?

We identify two baskets of economic risk with the BC LNG export scheme; the risk to capital and economic stability, and the net financial impact to household, commercial and industrial energy consumers.

It seems far away, but it’s extremely relevant, since the mass adoption of solar PV in China could accelerate the dramatic fall in solar prices.

A year ago, China had a goal to install 5 GW (5,000 MW) of solar PV by 2020 - the equivalent of 2.5 million houses each with a 2kW system. With 5 GW installed in 2012 alone, however, China increased the target to 21 GW by 2015 – and then last week, it increased it further to 40 GW by 2015.