Good. No reason at all to add carbon based sources to our already almost completely clean grid.
It’s also good to anticipate what might be coming in case your main source of “free” energy is under producing. Ie, if hydro is main, what happen if we encounter drought when we no longer have snow packs to melt during summer? (Ps. I don’t know BC’s main source of energy come from.)
Almost 90% is hydro
Droughts have not historically caused problems for electrical generation here, water levels do get managed for fisheries reasons but the bigger rivers overfill the reservoirs significantly every year.
The biggest dam in the province right now is only 8 meters below its maximum capacity, and it was full at the start of the dry season, we’ve had drought years for a few in a row now.
I think the 90% figure is why they want to diverse, cause you can’t plan this like 5 years ahead of problem. ie. say eventually climate change leads up to year where hydro might have issue to provide the same amount of energy, if you start diverse when it going to happen 5-10 years later it might be too late. to cover the overlap, since energy use is going to go up for AC/heater due to more temperature extremes.
While we have more heating/cooling days in our destroyed climate, the fact our building code doesn’t enforce more effective insulation and builds that reduce fire risk and reduce climate-control energy costs low shows that either we’re going to simply waste whatever gains we make by diversifying and expanding into sources of energy less reliable and cheap than hydro into less efficient builds that still cost more and bleed heat; or that climate-control at home is less an issue than the costs of heavy industry. (I say this knowing about the home-heating situation in the UK)
My old building (25+ years) with it’s leaky and thermal conduct metal frame window cost me probably a couple hundred dollars each year. I did what I could with close cell form taps, etc to keep the heat in, and reduce increase temperature with IR blocking curtain in summer. And a couple year down the road the whole building is gonna replace windows, it’s gonna be some big ticket item as well, but I guess that’s better than what I have to deal with now.
BC has very few solar farms of a substantial size so I am interested to see what new solar projects come around.