There has been a lot of attention around LNG lately, including the letter that was printed in the Citizen from Karen Tam Wu of the Pembina Institute in Vancouver. I am not an expert, but based on personal experience, I have a few ideas about the use of LNG.
My family lives just outside the city limits of Prince George, which is a maximum 15 minutes to drive home from the eowntown area. Living in a rural area, I am also very concerned about emissions, but I do not believe that abandoning LNG projects is the answer.
Outside the cities, there is an obvious lack of access to natural gas for rural areas in British Columbia and the whole of Canada for that matter. In areas where residents do not have access to natural gas to heat their homes, the common sight and smell of fire wood smoke is in the air, especially in the colder months. The natural gas line stops about 1.5 kilometres from our property and Fortis has informed me that it would cost approximately $6,000 to just bring the gas to our property line. Then it would cost at least another $1,000 to bring natural gas from the property line to our house.
This initial cost is out of reach for most rural property owners, as it would be for city home owners if they had to pay this much to get natural gas. The various levels of government subsidize the cost of making gas available to everyone within the city limits. Rural home owners are left with the choice of only propane or wood. Propane has to be trucked in which adds diesel emissions and extra delivery costs. Meanwhile, despite the emissions, firewood is much more popular with rural property owners because it is "free." There is no incentive for rural people to switch over to a cleaner energy source.
Our family is building an Energy Star rated house with in-floor heat that will be at much more energy efficient than the house my parents bought in Prince George back in 1972, but they still had natural gas. We are facing the probability of using propane to heat our house, which is more expensive and definitely dirtier than natural gas (if only because of how it is delivered).
When we lived for a short time in the Winnipeg area (1998), a subsidy was provided to have the natural gas line brought to our house, which was much more efficient than the old electric baseboards. Isn't it about time that the government and LNG players pursue additional markets in their own back yard, here in Canada?
I would also like to say that natural gas is safer than burning wood. Every year, rural people burn wood for heat and then lose their home to a fire, and if that weren't enough, many do not have insurance because the insurance corporations make buying coverage out of reach for many homeowners (city and rural) but that is another subject for another day.
Getting Government and Industry to subsidize access to natural gas would certainly increase the need for natural gas. Once the infrastructure is in place to distribute the gas to rural homes it will surely pay off as rural customers use "Safe, Clean Natural Gas."
Prince George and the outlying areas are growing now, which is also bound to increase the use of less-desirable, higher- emission fuels but that could be avoided if natural gas were readily available. Burning wood is so wasteful when it can be used to build and make other useful products. Also it is already known that our timber Inventory in British Columbia is shrinking due to fires and increased usage.
Jane Gall
Prince George
