Busting Myths about BC's coming electrification

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -According to some estimates, BC would have to double its electrical output if everyone switched to electric vehicles by 2035. Others talk about blackouts and rolling brownouts if we don’t back renewables up with LNG or nuclear power. Clean Energy Canada has just released a report that claims this is not true, the province’s electricity grid can handle the increased demand from EVs, heat pumps and extreme weather events, while electricity trading keeps energy bills low.

“Over the last year or two, we've been seeing quite a bit of incorrect information on BC's electricity system.  It's being circulated and reiterated in the media. The purpose of this report was to do some myth busting and do some deep dives into the actual data to figure out what trends are actually happening,” explained Mark Zacharias, Executive Director of Clean Energy Canada. 

 “We went into three areas. The first one is looking at EVs and heat pumps. What they would do to the grid due to future demand and whether there is a need to go back and revisit government climate policies around EV sales mandates. The second one is there has been lots of commentary on how much power BC is importing from the US over the last year.  We wanted to  explore the balance between imports and exports and what's the value of the trading? The third one that we looked at was there are lots of commentators that talk about wind and solar as not being affordable and not being able to integrate into our grid because they're intermittent."