BC Hydro is introducing a suite of programs to promote household energy efficiency as the province looks to ramp up the electricity available to power a growing slate of incoming major mining and liquefied natural gas projects.
Supports will include free $350 smart thermostats for homes with baseboard heaters, up to $200 per year in household incentives for lower energy use, as much as $325 in support for energy efficiency in income-qualified homes and up to $200 in rebates for select energy-efficient products.
Premier David Eby says the program, dubbed Power Smart 2.0, has two goals.
“First of all, it reduces your monthly bill,” he said. “Second, it frees up that electricity to be able to drive economic activity here in the province.”
Eby put this in the context of inflationary pressure driven by the war in Iran. B.C.’s inflation rate held steady at 2.5 per cent from March to April, while the national rate edged up from 2.4 per cent to 2.8 per cent, according to the latest figures from Statistics Canada.
“As a government, it’s a responsibility and a priority for us to ensure that we’re supporting British Columbians with affordability,” Eby said. “Wherever we can provide a little bit of support for families, for seniors, that goes a long way.”
Additional funds will be made available under the program for commercial and industrial users to pay for projects that reduce energy use.
Power Smart 2.0 aims to save 800 megawatts of grid capacity by 2030 — equal to 2,200 gigawatt hours of annual energy use and roughly enough to power 220,000 homes. BC Hydro plans to spend $1 billion on the program, hoping to avoid or defer spending $2 billion on new infrastructure.
This is the second iteration of the Power Smart program, which the government says has reduced electricity demand by 7,500 megawatts since 2008.
Power Smart 2.0 is being unveiled as BC Hydro simultaneously seeks to increase capacity through two recent calls for power that will provide a system-wide boost of approximately 8,500 gigawatt-hours from 14 new wind and solar projects.
Most of this power will likely go to industrial users. As of last summer, there were almost 7,000 megawatts worth of electrical connection requests in BC Hydro’s queue, only 334 of which were for non-industrial use.
Much of this is for proposed LNG projects, some of which use as much as 600 megawatts each.
But unlike elsewhere in North America, AI and data centres are not going to make up the bulk of new connections with B.C.’s newly imposed limits on data centres and cryptocurrency mines created through legislation that passed last fall.
These new rules restrict new data centre connections to 400 megawatts over the next two years, and put a moratorium on new crypto mines. Companies are also being required to bid for the right to connect.
Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix said the recent increase in energy demand follows 18 years of flat growth. Demand from some industries did increase during this period, but this was offset by a rapid decline in electricity use by the forestry sector, as logging operations scaled back and mills closed.
Now that the curve has trended skyward, with a cluster of energy-hungry LNG and mining operations due to come online or complete permitting and investment decision processes soon.
“There’s industrial opportunity for jobs in B.C., and BC Hydro’s obligation as the electricity provider in almost all of the province is to provide that,” Dix said. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
While the province ramps up energy use and builds new transmission lines and electrical generation infrastructure, Eby said the government is trying to maintain costs below the rate of inflation.
“We can’t afford to go back to that model of using the public assets in a way that drives up cost for British Columbians,” he said.