Renewable Energy Could Supply Most of BC's Energy Needs
23 kW solar array in Delta, BC Blair King's recent blog post (August 17th Huffpost British Columbia) “Dispelling Some Myths About British Columbia's Energy Picture” attempted to create a more complete picture of BC's energy use. He makes an important point that we need to move beyond rhetoric about renewable energy and focus on practical solutions based on quantitative analysis. Unfortunately, King made some miscalculations and inaccurate statements in his piece. He is correct that electricity is only part of the picture when it comes to BC energy use. King points out that gas and diesel accounts for about 78,000 GWh of energy. But he then incorrectly assumes that if we converted all these vehicles to electric the consumption would be the same. Electric vehicles are about 80% efficient compared to 20% efficiency for internal combustion engines. So if we converted all vehicles to electric it would account for only about 19,000 GWh of electrical c...