Building the strength of rural BC

Rural and remote communities stand to benefit enormously from new investment and jobs in small and mid-size independent power projects. Countries around the world are all looking at British Columbia with envy, as they try to find new sources of green energy that can help them meet their obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When the new regional “cap and trade” system kicks in, in 2012, this will be all the more important for British Columbia and all members of the Western Climate Initiative. The answer to today’s power challenges is not to do as the NDP would do, and abandon the commitment to electricity self-sufficiency, or reject private sector investment in clean power generation and lose thousands of potential jobs in rural BC. The answer is not to pretend that our population and our economy will not grow, or to neglect the new energy demands we will face from new electric plug-in vehicles and other technologies.

Rather, the answer is to embrace our potential in clean energy production and build on that advantage as a critical economic driver of jobs and growth, especially in rural and remote communities. As we develop these new technologies they become commercially viable products for export around the world.

To help ensure that we develop our electricity potential in a plan that meets British Columbians’ long-term needs, the BC Utilities Commission is currently conducting an Inquiry. See www.bcuc.com/sectionfiveinquiry.aspx

As stated in a recent public notice inviting all British Columbians to participate in that process, it will assess our electricity generation and transmission resources in BC that will potentially be developed during the next 30 years, and the most cost-effective and most probable sequence(s) of development by geographic area.

In conducting that public review, “The Commission must take into consideration various factors such as utility long-term resource plans, domestic load  requirements, export opportunities for clean, renewable or low-carbon electricity, and areas in BC that will be inappropriate for development of generation resources, including but not limited to, parks and protected areas... The Commission must not make determinations on the merits of specific generation projects or with respect to the specific routing or technology of transmission projects.”

This should give all British Columbians the confidence to know that we will develop our potential in run-of the-river projects and other forms of clean, renewable energy to meet public needs, in the public interest.

As that process continues over the next several months, a BC Liberal Government will also appoint a Green Energy Advisory Task Force. It will be comprised of leading climate change experts, academics, environmental leaders, government representatives and industry experts, and it will look at how we might maximize our growth in clean energy at the lowest net impact to our environment.

As we develop these new forms of green energy, supported by investments from the new Innovative Clean Energy Fund, we will also support new energy solutions in solar, tidal, methane capture from landfills, and fuel cell technologies. We will support new solar power solutions that can help remote communities eliminate their dependency on diesel power. We will create new incentives for homeowners and industrial property owners, to equip 100,000 solar roofs with solar water heating and solar photovoltaics by 2020.

A BC Liberal Government will open the first leg of the Hydrogen Highway in time for the Olympic. We will work in partnership with the Pacific Coast states, to establish hydrogen fuelling stations that will allow vehicles to travel from BC to Baja, California.

A BC Liberal Government will lead the way in commercializing the production of cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel, and will actively support our growing expertise in vehicles powered by compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas.