I have listened to Powering the Future a few times. There is much information to be gained, and a little misinformation was politely ignored. Check it out.

BC Hydro Chair Glen Clark should be applauded for joining the panel for a 90 minute conversation. Fellow panelists Jae Mather and Markham Hislop showed their broad knowledge of energy matters.

I believe that BC Hydro is gearing up to build another dam on the Peace River, this time close to the Alberta border. The consultants are all ready for another 15 years of lucrative employment. British Columbia’s public utility has been focused on hydropower since the company was formed in the 1960s. Corporate inertia keeps them on that path, even if new electricity costs more than double that from alternatives. Wind and solar power with battery storage can provide the least cost energy.

Why is more power needed in B.C. in the next several years? To serve the fracked gas industry, including LNG processing. AI data centres need massive amounts of power to replace all the humans that used to provide customer service.

This is what renewable expert Jai Mathers thinks about AI.

A Cornell University found that LNG from fracked natural gas is worse than coal. Yet the BC government spends heavily to promote its “clean energy” strategy. It spends even more subsidizing LNG processors.

Liquefied natural gas leaves a greenhouse gas footprint that is 33% worse than coal, when processing and shipping are taken into account, according to a new Cornell study.

The emissions of methane and carbon dioxide released during LNG’s extraction, processing, transportation and storage account for approximately half of its total greenhouse gas footprint, Howarth said.

Over 20 years, the carbon footprint for LNG is one-third larger than coal, when analyzed using the measurement of global warming potential, which compares the atmospheric impact for different greenhouse gases. Even on a 100-year time scale – a more-forgiving scale than 20 years – the liquefied natural gas carbon footprint equals or still exceeds coal, Howarth said.

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