Governments of any stripe can do a lot more for the economy and the environment with cash than with green energy calls
Some British Columbians are keen to prescribe windmills for what ails our environment and our economy.
Sadly, hopes for what wind power can do are premised on a weak understanding of electric grids and greenhouse gas accounting.
It's not that wind power is never viable, only that its environmental and economic success depends on the carbon footprint of its construction, the type of fuel that its operation will displace, the cost of the transmission to connect it and the subsidies it has to compete against.
These factors are unfavourable in B.C.
British Columbians deserve to have their heritage hydro assets put to the most valuable use possible, where "value" is properly measured in many ways: on environmental contribution, on job creation and on economic returns. Giving away valuable storage capacity from our heritage hydro assets to B.C.-based wind generators through green energy calls is suboptimal in all respects.
Revenue that B.C. generates by selling its generation flexibility externally provides real cash to invest in all manner of environmental, social, economic or job creation programs. Governments of any stripe can do a lot more for the economy and the environment with cash than with green energy calls.
B.C.'s heritage hydro capacity already enables development of green/intermittent energy supply from Alberta to California on a large scale.
However, our ability to do so is finite. Every windmill we backstop (for free) in B.C. is one less that we can backstop (at a profit) elsewhere.
Domestic wind advocates overlook this.
Our environment neither knows nor cares that these generators are not physically located in B.C. They are located in jurisdictions where governments have been willing to pay much higher subsidies than B.C. or Canada think is affordable or prudent. U.S.-based wind generators currently enjoy federal tax credits of $22/MWh (megawatt-hour) in addition to various state incentives.
Wind's eco-credentials are based on displacement of fossil fuel burning. To make wind acceptably reliable its advocates suggest pairing it with heritage hydro – a green one-two punch. But when we pair wind with hydro it loses much of its eco-cred because it no longer displaces a fossil fuel.
In B.C. we have the Pacific Carbon Trust, a provincial Crown corporation paying folks to not cut trees, while wind power proponents would cut down swaths of forest (to build transmission), both claiming similar environmental contributions. Obviously somebody's carbon accounting is flawed.
In Scotland, there is now a debate over whether wind farms built on peat (an excellent carbon sink) can in their useful lives even offset the carbon liberated by their construction.
Natural gas is not a perfect fuel, but it is the most thermally, economically and environmentally friendly, on-demand, non-nuke fuel that exists today.
Gas-fired generation improves wind power by making it reliable, and wind power improves the environmental performance of gas because when the wind blows it displaces fossil fuel burning.
Wind and gas working together produce reliable and efficient power that we can build an economy on, and they add to the flexibility we have to sell externally. Not benign, but it's the best alternative we have now.
It sure beats giving the unique heritage hydro capability away for free to B.C.-based wind generators so that we can lower B.C.'s export revenue and drive up power costs while contributing nothing incrementally to the environment.
Wind developers eager to build projects advance their interests by playing the green and job creation cards, and so far this advocacy has had some traction. The idea of a free, carbon-less fuel is indeed intoxicating, but we must not let hope and good intentions lead us to let our analytical guard down.
In B.C., wind power simply cannibalizes the heritage hydro capacity for no environmental benefit and limited economic benefit to anyone except its developers.
Wind power's future in B.C. should come when and if it can stand on its own economic and environmental bona fides. In the meantime we should enjoy selling heritage hydro's capability outside the province and then fighting over how to spend the money.
