BC’s solar energy industry is trying to shine a light through what it believes is a glaring gap in B.C.’s energy policies.
The Stand Up for Solar campaign – officially launched May 31 at the recent SolarWest 2011 conference in Vancouver – is designed to pressure the B.C. government into adopting policies that would encourage more solar energy use in B.C.
But one of the conference’s keynote speakers, Mark Jaccard – professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University, former chairman of the BC Utilities Commission and author of Sustainable Fossil Fuels – threw cold water on the industry.
If governments are going to directly subsidize renewable energy, it makes little sense to pick the most expensive one, he told Business in Vancouver.
“While I support policies that will help renewables, including solar, I don’t think it’s wise to run around pretending that every jurisdiction is going to copy a policy that is extremely biased toward solar at the expense of other renewables,” Jaccard said.
Roughly 50 companies in B.C. are involved in solar energy in one form or another. Dave Egles is president of one of them: Victoria’s Home Energy Solutions.
Last year, the company was commissioned to install a $1.5 million solar energy system for the T’Sou-ke First Nation. The project received some help from the B.C. government’s Green Technology Fund.
But Egles, who sits on the Canadian Solar Industries Association (CanSIA) board of directors, said the B.C. government’s energy policies virtually ignore the solar sector.
“We want to see B.C. include solar energy in its portfolio,” he said. “Up until now, they’ve said they’re only interested in cheap electricity, and they have put out really, really lofty goals for conservation.”
The government of Ontario directly subsidizes solar power through feed-in tariffs. But as Jaccard points out, those kinds of subsidies are vulnerable to political whim.
“The party that is leading in the polls for the upcoming election in Ontario says they’ll kill that thing,” he said.
And due to a glut of solar products – followed by reductions in feed-in tariffs in Europe – Vancouver’s Day4 Energy Inc. (TSX:DFE) has been hammered recently by falling orders and prices for its photovoltaic modules.
Jaccard said the viability of a given renewable energy is largely dependent on its region. In places like the Mojave Desert – or even Kamloops – solar energy may make economic sense, whereas it might not in overcast coastal B.C.
In San Bernadino County, California, for example, BrightSource Energy is building a massive $2.2 billion solar thermal energy plant that capitalizes on the region’s sunny climate.
It will use 347,000 mirrors spread over 5.5 square miles focusing sunlight onto tower-mounted boilers, which will produce steam to drive turbines and produce 370 megawatts of electricity.
Such a project in B.C. is unlikely, because solar power can’t compete with B.C.’s cheap, clean hydroelectric power or plentiful and relatively cheap natural gas. That’s especially so, Jaccard said, when industries that burn natural gas can use the atmosphere as “a free waste receptacle.”
Egles said his industry is not trying to compete with large-scale utility power generators. But he added that solar can make sense as a form of energy conservation on smaller scales, especially given that BC Hydro’s future energy policies are largely posited on conservation.
“Seasonally, it can contribute, and in the not-so-far future, it’ll contribute cheaper than anything to do with fossil fuels,” Egles said. “It will be the cheapest source of electricity that a homeowner could choose to buy.
“It’s more expensive now, but as it grows it’s clearly on a track for grid parity. Within about 10 years, solar electricity will be cheaper than BC Hydro’s electricity.”
However, Jaccard said that such claims are counter-productive. For one thing, an MIT study that he presented at last week’s conference shows natural gas prices remaining cheap, thanks to abundance created from newly discovered shale gas reserves all over North America – something he said solar industry advocates appear to be ignoring.
Secondly, he said it lets politicians “off the hook” because they conclude that the solar energy industry can compete with other forms of energy production without any government support.
Jaccard believes governments need policies that encourage renewable energy. He favours policies like the one Japan recently adopted, in which all new buildings must have solar thermal energy for heating water included in the building.
But he doesn’t believe governments should pick and choose which renewable energy sectors to support through direct subsidies, especially the most expensive one.
“Our goal is not to have solar – our goal is not to destroy the planet,” he said. “And if you try to achieve your goal the most expensive way possible, you risk putting in place a policy that won’t endure.”