Hot air and hyperbole? New player joins B.C.’s gas wars

May 6, 2024

For months, Canada's natural gas utilities have mustered lobbying efforts and funded online misinformation campaigns to fight efforts by municipalities to phase out the climate-warming fuel. And now they have a new ally with deep ties to the province's NDP to push the pro-gas message in the province's lefty media.

In a recent op-ed in The Georgia Straight, former NDP political operative and lobbyist Bill Tieleman hammered municipal efforts to replace gas with electricity.

Tieleman is the director of the BC Coalition for Affordable Dependable Energy (BC CADE), a new lobby group of restaurateurs and fireplace installers and some labour unions and homebuilder organizations. He is a public supporter of Premier David Eby and an old-guard NDP member whose communications firm regularly works for unions.

"Drought-stricken British Columbia is quickly running out of hydroelectric power and needs affordable, dependable energy, but municipalities now banning renewable natural gas and natural gas are only making things worse," he wrote. The group is "asking municipalities" to pause efforts to phase out gas and reverse any existing measures to "protect (British Columbians') ability to heat their homes and run their businesses with dependable, affordable energy choices."

On its website, BC CADE adopts another angle, emphasizing the municipal rules are an "elimination of choice" for B.C. residents. That approach is nearly identical to the misleading messages spread earlier this year by Voice for Energy, a national online campaign with links to Canada's largest natural gas lobby group.

Claims made by both groups are flawed. Researchers at the University of Victoria have noted B.C. can develop its grid and renewable electricity generation capacity to meet both current and future demand. Even in recent periods of high energy demand like the January 2024 cold snap, B.C. has exported power to the U.S., according to a recent report by Powerex, BC Hydro's electricity trading subsidiary.

Moreover, Victoria, Nanaimo and other B.C. municipalities taking steps to reduce planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions are not banning gas outright. Instead, they are becoming early adopters of the zero-carbon step code, a provincial building code that will be implemented provincewide for new buildings in 2030 with stringent emissions limits.

According to a plain-language internal government summary of the regulations obtained by Canada's National Observer, the rules include exceptions that largely allow people to have gas fireplaces and restaurants to use gas stoves and exclude breweries, warehouses and other industrial buildings. Barbecues are also exempt from the rules.

In practice, the document notes this might lead to "relatively low demand" for natural gas, potentially making the installation of natural gas lines "cost-prohibitive" for FortisBC and developers.

Tieleman's op-ed is not the group's only use of questionable information. On its website, BC CADE references "numerous academic studies" to back its claims that electrification will be expensive — but provides no links to the studies. Speaking with Canada's National Observer, Tieleman responded to the omission saying BC CADE is "not a research body."

"I'm not an electrical engineer. I'm not an electrical electricity expert. I'm not a resource management person," he said. "I go with what I can see and read and what people are saying."

"I took the role with BC CADE because I am concerned about how B.C. can meet its energy needs without damaging our economy or losing jobs," he wrote in a subsequent email. "I also worked in favour of completing the Site C BC Hydro dam, working with construction unions on that issue."

In a followup email, he referenced a lengthy commentary — which is not peer-reviewed — penned by former senior B.C. civil servant Richard McCandless to back BC CADE's claims regarding the cost and challenges of electrification.

Tieleman also cited two Vancouver Sun columns by Postmedia political commentator Vaughn Palmer and an article in the same newspaper regarding BC Hydro's electricity imports in 2023 due to low water levels in the province's hydroelectric reservoirs.

The BC CADE website also promotes so-called renewable natural gas, a gas chemically identical to fossil-based natural gas but made from organic waste and manure and heavily promoted by FortisBC as a climate solution. But FortisBC's own estimates note the fuel will only ever meet a small fraction of B.C.'s demand for gas.

In a statement, FortisBC spokesperson Diana Sorace said the company is "not a member of BC CADE. However, we do support an open and informed dialogue on important energy issues around affordability and the reliability of the energy system."

“I see a lot of concern around our energy system’s future, but B.C. is much more resilient than places in the news like Texas,” said George Benson, the Zero Emissions Innovation Centre’s economic development lead. “And we’re not only resilient but on the edge of the wealth-generation opportunity of a generation. B.C. has a huge global opportunity in the zero-carbon economy — but the slower we go on climate action, the more room we leave to our competitors.”

Victoria Coun. Jeremy Caradonna added that the city faced minimal resistance from businesses when it started implementing the zero-carbon step code last year. For him, the "elephant in the room" is transitioning existing buildings heated with natural gas or heating oil to electricity — a much larger, complex and pricey challenge.

Moreover, despite the claims by BC CADE and other lobbying efforts and disinformation campaigns framing the zero-carbon step code as the key force undermining B.C.'s electric grid, the reality is more complex.

If B.C. builds all its planned liquefied natural gas facilities, the province will require an additional 43 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity annually — more than eight times the power generated by the Site C dam, according to Clean Energy Canada. Critics have slammed the province's LNG expansion plans due to their climate impact, and questioned their economic feasibility.

The development of other industrial facilities will also require more power, dwarfing the power demands of new buildings generated by cities adopting the zero-carbon step code, he said.

BC Hydro has committed to generate its future electricity from renewable sources, putting out a call for new sources of renewable power earlier this year to meet a projected 15 per cent increase in demand by 2030.

BC Hydro directed inquiries about BC CADE and the utility's plans to meet future power demands to the provincial Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation. The ministry did not respond to questions on the topic from Canada's National Observer by deadline.

In every single energy future scenario for British Columbia, regardless of what we do … we will need vastly more electricity, full stop," said Benson. "But the BC CADE campaign is framing the municipal efforts to decrease carbon pollution as the sole driver of increased electricity demand, which is only a small part in relation to the much larger industrial loads," said Benson.

[Top photo: Bill Tieleman is the director of the BC Coalition for Affordable Dependable Energy, a new lobby group fighting against municipal rules phasing out natural gas in new buildings. Photo provided by Bill Tieleman]