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and the dierence between gas and electricity wasn't that much," he says. "But now that we're growing, it makes a huge dierence over the course of the four locations." Cost isn't the only reason for the switch. "The gas- powered equipment that we're buying, it has a more consistent temperature throughout so that there's no hot spots in the ovens," explains Olson, who says many of his peers are follow- ing suit. Purchasing high- e ciency convection ovens and deep fryers gets Railtown a big rebate from FortisBC, he adds. In the Lower Mainland and other parts of the prov- ince, FortisBC has more than 1 million natural gas custom- ers, says Cynthia Des Brisay, vice-president, midstream services. About 80 per cent of the gas used by clients such as Railtown comes from northeast B.C., where cities like Dawson Creek and Fort St. John depend on the enerŒy sector. A delivery company, FortisBC doesn't produce nat- ural gas or own any reserves, Des Brisay notes. The BC Chamber of Commerce mem- ber buys most of its gas from a market hub in the northeast called Station 2. From there, FortisBC transports the gas to its service territory via Enbridge Inc.'s BC Pipeline transmission system. To supply the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, the company connects with the pipeline at Huntingdon, near Abbotsford. But as Des Brisay points out, the BC Pipeline system also hooks up with the North- west Pipeline, which serves the Interstate 5 corridor all the way south to Portland. "About 70 per cent of the gas that's consumed or burned there is also coming from northeastern B.C." The average annual load on FortisBC's system is roughly 350,000 gigajoules a day, Des Brisay says—almost 332 million cubic feet of natural gas. Over the winter, that tally climbs to 600,000 gigajoules daily, versus 200,000 during summer. Overall, demand has stayed relatively ›at for the past few years, a trend that Des Brisay attributes to more enerŒy- e cient appliances and build- ing codes. "Although we're continuing to add customers to our system, we see that those customers on average are using less," she says. "And that's a good thing." For restaurateur Olson, it looks like more natural gas is on the menu. As Railtown has opened locations in new buildings that oer both elec- tricity and gas, the company has saved by negotiating higher usage of the latter in its leases. "This city is tough enough to earn a buck in," Olson says. "You scrape by every way you possibly can so that you're taking something down to the bottom line, or else what's the point?" —N.R. COURTESTy RAiLTOWN CAFE elon musk, Co- founDer and CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc., rolled into Vancou- ver for a much-hyped TED Talk last April. But chances are everyone's favourite entrepreneur hasn't visited the areas of the province he may come to depend on. Since Tesla released its Model S in 2012, auto giants like BMW AG, General Motors Co. and Daimler AG have scrambled over each other to produce their own electric cars. To do so, they need plenty of copper; thanks to the circuitry in their motors, these vehicles require up to four times more of the metal than conventional four-wheelers. Last year worldwide sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids surged about 50 per cent over 2016, to just below 1.2 million, according to the Electric Vehicle World Sales Database. Such vehicles now account for more than 2 per cent of all automobiles. In 2016, B.C. mined roughly 345,000 metric tonnes of copper, Statistics Canada reports. Ontario was the country's second-largest producer, with just over 200,000 metric tonnes, while all other provinces were below 50,000. "We're going to have a really big global demand for copper here," predicts Bryan Cox, president and CEO of the Mining Association of BC, who stresses that copper is a key material in the production of everything from homes to electronic goods. "So we need to be able to plan for that well in advance, and ensure we have that supply on the market." Today there are seven active major copper mines in the province, according to Cox: two in Williams Lake and one each in Campbell River, Dease Lake, Fort St. James, Kamloops and Princeton. Copper ores and concentrates were B.C.'s fourth-largest export in 2016, account- ing for a combined total of more than $2.7 billion from countries like Japan, China and South Korea. "Each direct job at a copper mine in B.C. has at least two supplier jobs that are attached to it, and many of those jobs are located in the Lower Mainland," Cox says. "Mining is a unique industry in B.C. natural resource–wise, because we truly do touch every single quarter of the province." –N.C. Pedal to the Metal As Canada's top producer of copper, B.C. stands to gain from the electric car revolution LIGHT IT uP As railtown Cafe grew, much of the business converted to natural gas FEBRUARy 2018 BCBusiness 35

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