It’s not a black-and-white world in the energy business.
That’s inconvenient for political ideology, which relies on black-and-white sloganeering to confront complex issues.
Consider that the leader of the party that now appears to hold the balance of power in the province has no interest in developing an export market for B.C. liquefied natural gas (LNG).
BC Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver told Business in Vancouver during the election campaign that LNG “is simply not going to happen. … It makes no sense to try to chase the economy of the 20th century when other jurisdictions are moving toward a 21st-century economy.”
But energy and other natural resources remain fundamental to B.C.’s economy. And in the wider world, while solar and other renewable sources continue to increase their share of global electricity generation, they still accounted for less than a quarter of the 2016 total (22.4%) in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Combustible fuels, according to International Energy Agency numbers, accounted for 59.5%.
So LNG is far from not happening.
America, for example, appears to have seized another LNG opportunity with the recently announced 100-day action plan between it and China. Among other things, the initiative opens the door for Chinese companies to negotiate long-term contracts with U.S. LNG suppliers.
Massimo Di Odoardo, head of global gas and LNG research at natural resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie, called the agreement a win for both sides that “connects the U.S., the fastest-growing LNG supplier, with China, the largest LNG growth market.”
In B.C., meanwhile, those market opportunities face interminable delay and dithering from government in a black-and-white world where resource economy building blocks are routinely discounted by those who have swallowed whole the fantasy that renewable energy can displace fossil fuel in the short term without enormous taxpayer subsidy and without inflicting serious damage to the economy and B.C.’s standard of living.
