Clean Energy Classrooms - The Canadian Guide to Sustainable Energy Training News
Northern wind power surges in BC Hydro’s Clean Power Call
May 11, 2010
Scott Simpson, Vancouver Sun
Wind energy accounts for about half the new electricity supply contracted by BC Hydro in the 2008 Clean Power Call, which is finally close to completion.
Most of the wind projects are clustered in northeast B.C., particularly around Tumbler Ridge, and there is one on the east coast of Vancouver Island at Port Hardy.
Paul Manson, president and CEO of Sea Breeze Energy, said his company’s only complaint was the length of time the process took.
Sea Breeze’s Knob Hill wind project near Port Hardy was approved by B.C.’s environmental assessment office in 2003, Manson noted in an interview. Knob Hill is a minimum 99-megawatt wind farm with an estimated cost of $300 million.
Independent power producers have one operational wind farm in B.C., where hydroelectric resources have dominated for more than a century, another under construction and a third in development.
Wind projects have faced substantially less opposition from environmental groups — and other jurisdictions such as California have identified wind power as preferable to hydro as a premium-priced electricity import “product.”
