A lot of people would like to end our reliance on oil; it’s a worthy goal. The fundamental problem is that oil is by far the most efficient transport fuel we have today. Electric vehicles are likely our best hope for ultimately replacing oil powered vehicles. Many governments, including our own, are subsidising electric vehicles in order to give the industry a boost. I am a firm believer in electric vehicles but I think their mainstream adoption is still a long way off. One “bridge technology” that is particularly suited to northern B.C. could be natural gas fueled vehicles. Given our abundance of natural gas and the logistics of transport in northern B.C., the government should take a serious look at shifting its support away from electric vehicles and toward natural gas vehicles.
Electric vehicles offer the promise of 100% carbon free transportation. In many situations that isn’t technically true as a lot of electricity is generated by burning coal or gas. In these cases, electric vehicles simply shift the emissions from the car’s tailpipe to the power plant’s smoke stack. However, here in B.C. where our electricity is largely carbon free, electric vehicles can honestly claim to be carbon free. The problem for us in northern B.C. is that there are serious logistical issues with electrical vehicles; issues that natural gas may be able to overcome.
Range is the most talked about obstacles associated with electric vehicles. In urban areas such as the lower mainland where there is a high density of service stations, this isn’t so much of a problem. However, here in northern B.C. there can be over 200 km between existing gas stations, and who knows how far between electric vehicle charging stations. On top of this, electric battery performance diminishes substantially in cold weather. Additionally, natural gas is more suited to industrial heavy transport trucks like the kind we are seeing more and more of on our northern highways. This kind of growing and predictable traffic would be easier to plan a fueling network for than consumer based electric vehicles. These factors all favour natural gas over electricity as a fuel for clean vehicles.
The other point specific to B.C. is that we have one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas. Indeed, this is why we have such massive LNG potential. However, even if all of the planned LNG comes online, we will still have excess natural gas that we could put to productive use. Nurturing natural gas as a transport fuel will give B.C. another market to use our natural gas reserves. If the trend takes off across North America, B.C. will benefit the most because we have the largest gas reserves. In fact, there are already some examples from the US of LNG powered transport trucks.
Energy transitions take a long time. Despite advance in technology, we are going to be using oil for the foreseeable future. However, the world is clearly moving toward clean energy and B.C. should ensure that we follow the path that best suits our geographic and economic climate. Electric vehicles may be all the hype in other parts of the world, but natural gas vehicles are better suited to northern B.C.
