Transport generates about 37% of the province’s annual greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, but cleaner options are now in the works.
For nearly two decades, Ballard Power Systems Inc., Burnaby, has been developing clean-energy solutions for mass transit. Fuel cells, the group’s core technology, produce zero emissions by combining hydrogen and oxygen to create electricity without combustion.
During the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, 20 hybrid-electric buses powered by Ballard’s FCvelocity-HD6 fuel cells hit the roads in Whistler, shuttling spectators to alpine sporting events. Now almost fully integrated into the resort town’s regular transit system, the buses operate with less noise, lower maintenance costs and a reduction of 62% in GHGs as compared with traditional diesel buses.
Guy McAree, Ballard’s director of cor-porate communications and marketing, said that the Olympics provided an opportunity to showcase the company’s clean transportation technology to the world.
“The Games certainly gave us some great momentum and generated a lot of additional international interest in our motive-power products,” he said. “As transit agencies around the globe start looking at different ways to address the environmental issue, we’re seeing a significant amount of demand from North America and South America, in particular Brazil, as well as Europe.”
With its technology proven to work in winter conditions, Ballard has struck a deal to provide HyNor Oslo Buss with the same fuel-cell modules as in Whistler. The company will install them in five buses that should be in service in Oslo by end-2011.
“Because the performance and the environmental benefits are there, government funding to support this type of technology is increasing. People are coming to B.C. because we’re recognized as leaders in the field,” said McAree. “As volumes of fuel-cell buses grow, we anticipate continued decreases in cost for these systems, which will help our solutions to compete effectively with current transit technologies.”
Rapid Electric Vehicles Inc. (REV) in Vancouver is building 100%-electric vehicles (EVs) that can store and redistribute energy back to the grid.
“Imagine [that] we have a brief blackout downtown and a building needs power because it’s running critical equipment,” said Jay Giraud, founder and CEO. An electric vehicle “plugged into that building can power that entire building to ride out that power outage.”
REV’s 300 ACX EV is a Ford SUV with its internal-combustion engine and related drive and fuel components removed. Its original driving characteristics are left intact. High-performance lithium battery packs, an electric motor and other power electronics are installed. The result: an EV with zero emissions, faster acceleration, increased horsepower and improved safety.
REV has also developed “bi-directional” vehicle-to-grid (V2G) wireless technology that allows the car’s battery to communicate with the electrical grid when it’s plugged in. The utility can thus draw energy off the vehicle’s idle battery if it needs it.
“Everyone is looking at how utilities can manage all the energy consumed by a house, but nobody is working on making cars smart,” Giraud commented to The Tyee. “For 16 hours a day, utilities could use very small amounts of energy from parked [electric] cars.”
Three-year-old REV has expected orders of more than 200 vehicles from the North American construction, utility, military and municipal sectors this year. Now, Giraud plans to focus on enabling other fleet companies’ EVs to be V2G ready.
“You know, whenever you’re flying, you just look down over those warehouses around an airport and you can see medium and heavy-duty trucks sitting, hundreds of them in a row,” Giraud said. “Every one of those vehicles, if they were electric, … could back up the buildings and … the grid, and we would be dealing with literally gigawatt hours of energy storage that would increase the efficiency and reliability of our grid and of society in general.”
Canadian National Railway (CN) hopes to take more trucks off B.C.’s highways by encouraging rail freight. Rail is up to six times more efficient than heavy trucks in that it consumes a fraction of the fuel needed to transport one ton of freight one kilometre.
In May 2010, CN introduced a modal-shift protocol to create new carbon-offset project opportunities for B.C.’s transportation sector. Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT), a leading provider of offsets, agreed to recognize the protocol for modal-shift offset projects in the province.
The protocol allows companies to generate offsets by shifting their freight shipments from truck to rail. Shippers that demonstrate lower emissions from using a modal shift and meet the British Columbia Emission Offsets Regulation can generate revenue by selling the offsets to PCT. Emission reductions may also reduce carbon taxes.
At the time, B.C. Minister of State for Climate Action John Yap said, “CN is showing the type of low-carbon mindset that we would like to see all industries in B.C. follow.”
This article is reprinted from BC Tech magazine, which will be delivered in the next issue of Business in Vancouver (1129; June 14-20).