bcbusiness.ca JUNE 2016 BCBusiness 21
you were part of premier
clark's climate leadership
Team set up in May 2015,
which recommended mea-
sures that would allow the
province to meet its legislated
emissions targets. can b.c.
have
lnG and still meet these
targets?
The
CLT modelled that we could
have a modest amount of
LNG—
one medium-sized plant and a
couple of small ones—and still
meet our 2050 targets. The truth
about
LNG is that it's not clear
that it's going to take oœ for B.C.
The price of gas is down, there's
a glut of gas on the market, and
other countries are ahead of us.
Now a report [by the Washington
D.C.-based Brattle Group] came
out recently that shows how
renewables, wind and solar
ener°y, have dropped signi•-
cantly in cost over the last •ve
years and are now competitive
with natural gas in several Asian
countries, which are our target
markets. So I would encourage
the government, for prosperity,
not to put its eggs in the natural
gas bucket.
does that mean you are, in
premier clark's words, one of
the "forces of no?"
I think I'm a force of realism.
The fact is that renewables have
become competitive with gas
over the last •ve years. B.C.
needs to pay attention to this
information because we ignore
it at our peril.
is this related to what you
learned in the Great bear
rainforest—that econom-
ics is actually the answer to
environmental problems?
Yeah. If you look at the clean
tech sector, it's already a piece
of British Columbia's economy.
It already employs 68,000
people, it added 8,000 new
jobs between 2010 and 2014—
and it can grow.
Hydroelectric power is consid-
ered clean energy. What's your
feeling about site c?
I would like the economics to
be redone, because I think we
are likely making a bad •nancial
decision. The price of renewables
is only going down—whereas
eight out of the last 10 large hydro
projects that were built around
the world came out almost twice
what the predicted budget was.
is there any fossil fuel that you
wish you could eliminate from
your life?
Last month I bought an electric
vehicle. It's been really helpful
to understand the anxiety when
you need to get to a charging
station, but it really isn't an
obstacle. It just requires a little
bit of change and you can make
it work.
DROP IN
RENEWABLE ENERGY
TECHNOLOGY'S
UNSUBSIDIZED
COSTS SINCE 2009
Utility-
scale
solar PV
Wind
energy
61%
SOURCE: LAzARD'S LEVEL-
IzED COST OF ENERGy
ANALySIS
82%
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