Power-Hungry Canadian Province Tees Up $4 Billion of Wind Farms

(Bloomberg) -- Canada’s third-most populous province is giving the go-ahead to wind farms worth as much as C$6 billion ($4.2 billion).

The electricity company BC Hydro, owned by the west coast province of British Columbia, awarded 30-year purchase agreements to nine projects promising almost 5,000 gigawatt hours per year of electricity, adding about 8% to the region’s grid by 2031. BC will also exempt wind projects from environmental assessments.

The province’s power demand is expected to rise by 15% or more by 2030, so it will issue more calls for new power generation over the coming years. BC is “well-positioned to add more intermittent renewables” while its dams “act as batteries,” the Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions said.

The renewable-friendly approach positions BC at odds with its oil-rich neighbor Alberta to the east and US President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a hydrocarbons-focused mantra of “drill, baby, drill.” 

“That presents a huge opportunity for us,” Premier David Eby said at a press conference in Vancouver, referring to BC’s neighbors.

Eight of the nine winning projects are 51% owned by Indigenous groups known as First Nations. A minimum First Nations equity stake of 25% was a requirement to apply. 

The call for power was source-agnostic but wind proposals had the best cost profiles, Eby said. The average price from successful projects is about 40% lower than the utility’s last call for clean power in 2010, the energy ministry said.

BC — a rugged region of fjords and mountains — has enjoyed abundant hydroelectricity for years, but growing demand is pushing it to embark on a grid-wide upgrade worth C$36 billion over the coming decade. In recent years, due to drier weather, it also imported significant amounts of power.

“You’ll see more and more permitting reform,” Eby said at a press conference, pointing to potential improvements in mining.

Private-sector bidders who partnered with First Nations for the successful projects include Elemental Energy, Capstone Infrastructure, Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., Ecoener SA and EDF Renewables, the BC government said.

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