Energy Choice at the Ballot Box: BC Coalition Urges Voters to Push Back on Natural Gas Bans

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We are going to turn things now to whether your choice of energy should be at the ballot box. Since 2024, the BC Coalition for Affordable Dependable Energy has been advocating to eliminate this patchwork quilt of energy regulations that the province adopted over so many municipalities. It's a very complex issue. I guess the argument is that it costs more to build and operate with electricity when B.C. has a lot of natural gas. Well, joining us now is Bill Tieleman, director of the B.C. Coalition for Affordable Dependable Energy. Bill, thanks so much for joining us in studio.

Thanks, Robin. Appreciate being here.

Should this be an election issue?

Well, it is an election issue municipally. And what's happened is the provincial government passed an energy, a Clean Energy Act, and it includes the zero carbon step code. So the idea is climate change and improve the environment, et cetera, all noble goals. But it doesn't come into effect in BC across the board until 2030. But they put a weird position in this legislation that allows municipalities on their own to decide to implement this early. And there's four stages of this code that get progressively more difficult. So what it does effectively is if you adopt that, it effectively bans natural gas. So you can't build new buildings, residential, commercial, industrial businesses or homes with natural gas in those municipalities. And over 30 municipalities have adopted some level of the zero carbon step code. Now, this is at a time when BC hydro costs have gone up 7.5% the last two years. We haven't even started paying off the $16 billion cost of the Site C dam, which we desperately need. And so the BC government got rid of the consumer carbon tax. We've seen EV mandates go, all sorts of things. And then we've got the energy security issue because BC has 100 years of natural gas. We have lots of sources of renewable natural gas, which is recognized as a renewable fuel. And yet we're exporting liquefied natural gas. But municipalities are allowed on their own to say, hey, look how green we are. We're going to ban natural gas in all new construction. They don't have the background or the expertise or the resources of a provincial or federal government where the jurisdiction should lie. So we've got a patchwork quilt of regulations across municipalities.

Are we getting mixed messages when you just mentioned it? We're expanding LNG. And then we have these bans on using natural gas. What kind of message are we sending in this province? It's a

bizarre world. I mean, it's a very, very bizarre situation. We're saying it's okay for others to use it, but not us? Yeah, don't do what we do. Do not do what we do because we want to sell you liquefied natural gas. But we're not going to let... People who