The government has been promoting electrification without knowing where the electricity will come from. The dire consequences for BC’s economy are becoming clearer.
CleanBC
The NDP took office in BC in 2017 thanks to support from the three Green party MLAs. The price of the Greens’ support included a promise that the NDP would “Implement a climate action strategy to meet our targets”.
This they did with gusto. The 2018 CleanBC Plan ambitiously set out how the province would achieve its legislated greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. Spending on CleanBC rose, from $281 million in 2018/19 to $2.6 billion in 2023/24, as the government promoted and subsidized electric vehicles and heat pumps in an attempt to reduce GHG emissions.
Electrification of the economy was central to the plan, but there was no mention in this plan of where the additional energy would come from. It simply said that there would be a “structural review” of BC Hydro, the provincially owned electric utility, who would then prepare an Integrated Resource Plan to “develop a new path forward for electricity in B.C.”
Ministry of (lack of) Energy
While the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy was making grand promises of broad, LED-lit uplands, the Ministry of Energy, who was responsible for BC Hydro, was moving with considerably less gusto.
The “structural review” of BC Hydro issued a report in February 2019, in which it was estimated the utility would require just 4,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of additional electricity by 2030 (the new Site C dam produces around 5,100 GWh) to support CleanBC, and that this could “mostly be met with existing and planned resources”. No additional capital would be required; in fact, the review announced a reduction in BC Hydro’s capital spending of $2.7 billion between 2020 and 2029.
Phase two of the review (March 2020) added nothing constructive about additional supply, merely suggesting that the utility should be allowed to increase its electricity imports.
BC Hydro’s long-awaited Integrated Resource Plan was filed with the BCUC in December 2021. These plans cover 20 years, long enough for utilities to consider new assets that take many years to build, such as new generation.
The plan’s reference (i.e. “most likely”) planning scenario included 5,853 GWh of energy for electrification by 2030, but stated this wouldn’t be enough to meet the CleanBC goals (which would require an additional 8,000 GWh by 2030). Even so, BC Hydro would still be short of energy by fiscal 2029 (fiscal 2027 for the South Coast region).
Despite these forecasts, none of BC Hydro’s “near-term actions” in the 2021 plan (for the next 5 years, i.e. to 2026) included building new generation. It is inconceivable that the Ministry of Energy was unaware of this.
Warning signs
Eventually the Ministry of Energy’s years of inaction came home to roost. At the end of 2022, the government suddenly announced a temporary 18-month moratorium on new cryptocurrency businesses (or “miners”), which are large users of electricity.
BC Hydro had insufficient surplus power, which the government wanted to preserve “for people who are switching to electric vehicles and heat pumps, and for businesses and industries that are undertaking electrification projects”.
If the cryptocurrency miners had been allowed to get into BC Hydro’s “first come, first served” queue for new customers, they would have been ahead of the electrification projects, delaying them by years. More than four years after the CleanBC Plan was released, there was still official denial about the need for new generation.
Few tears were shed for the cryptocurrency miners, which create few jobs and have a reputation of increasing costs for other electricity customers. But the principle that a monopoly utility had an obligation to serve new customers, even if they had to wait for the utility to build the capacity to serve them, had been undermined.
Hallelujah!
Finally in June 2023, four and a half years after the publication of the CleanBC Plan, BC Hydro acknowledged in a filing to the BCUC that it would need to add more generation, which it would have to get from the private sector. This led to the 2024 Call for Power, which will add nearly 5,000 GWh of intermittent wind and solar energy, although not before 2031.
Better late than never, the Minister of Energy acknowledged in June 2024 in a “Clean Energy Strategy” that electricity use would “likely double” by 2050, but failed to offer anything more creative than holding repeated calls for power every two years.
Things picked up a bit after wholesale changes in leadership (the Minister of Energy was replaced that November, BC Hydro’s board chair was replaced in January 2025 and its CEO’s retirement was announced in May). The government announced, also in May, a further call for power one year earlier than planned, and also started looking for private sector providers of firm energy to back up the new intermittent wind and solar.
The caged bird squawks
Even this was not enough, however, and in October 2025 the government announced it would now have to ration electricity for new data centres. The previously imposed moratorium on cryptocurrency miners turned out to be the proverbial canary in the coalmine, but this time, with data centres, the stakes are much higher.
While the Ministry of Energy and BC Hydro were dithering over adding enough electricity to satisfy CleanBC, the artificial intelligence boom took off. ChatGPT was launched in late 2022, and suddenly technology businesses were putting in orders for large amounts of electricity to power new data centres. The International Energy Agency estimates that electricity demand in the US is projected to grow by nearly 2 percent a year until 2030; around half of this growth is due to new data centres.
Under the guise of “launching a bold set of actions designed to drive investment in major projects that will grow the economy, diversify markets and create new jobs”, the Ministry of Energy announced that it would limit electricity sales to new data centres, including those serving artificial intelligence customers. The regulation issued January 30 this year confirms that BC Hydro will provide at most 100 megawatts (MW) of electrical power for conventional data centres and 300 MW for artificial intelligence data centres over the next two years. If companies want to buy more, they’re out of luck.
Contrary to what Minister Dix said in the legislature last year about Cabinet not picking winners and losers, this is exactly what it has done. Any other business may still request electricity from BC Hydro, and the monopoly utility must serve them, even if they have to wait in the queue. Data centres, however, have lost that right (along with cryptocurrency miners and hydrogen-for-export companies). They are most definitely losers.
This is bad
The data centres coming to BC are not just for the big US-based companies that develop “large language models” like the one underlying ChatGPT. More important users in our economy could be the start-ups that want to build on these models to create new services, and universities doing research. Also, local data centres allow businesses to train artificial intelligence on their own corporate information without having to ship it to other jurisdictions where it might be at risk.
The lack of available electricity will constrain BC’s economic growth, prevent us diversifying away from natural resources industries, and misses an opportunity for the province to become more economically secure. While other jurisdictions are furiously adding new generation to serve the new businesses that want to set up there, including gas and nuclear power as well as renewables, BC will be left behind.
Conclusion
There is plenty of blame to go around. BC Hydro’s 2021 Integrated Resource Plan was deficient in not having clear plans for how it would meet increased load, which it knew was coming. The BCUC failed to call them on it and meekly rubber stamped the application. But ultimately the government owns this one.
Quite why the Ministry of Energy dithered for so long is not clear. My speculation is that it was searching in vain for a solution that would satisfy its conflicting ambitions for energy that was at once clean, reliable and affordable, while simultaneously promoting the government’s First Nations reconciliation agenda.
It’s also possible it was influenced by some delusional thinking going around in certain policy circles at the time, but hopefully debunked now, that energy efficiency programs alone could release enough spare energy for electrification. Or it could just be regular, run-of-the-mill government dysfunction. Regardless, the years of delay will cost BC dearly.
Even now, with BC Hydro’s electricity procurement activity picking up, the government is displaying a marked lack of ambition. After BC Hydro was created in 1961, the W.A.C. Bennett government poured in public money to expand generation on the Peace and Columbia rivers, enabling decades of growth in the province. These large projects are what public money has historically been well used for in BC. We have yet to see a similar vision from this government.
The 2018 CleanBC Plan claimed it was “an opportunity for British Columbia to mobilize our skilled workers, natural resources, and booming technology sector to reduce climate pollution and create good jobs and economic opportunities across B.C”. Unless the government’s climate goals are matched by a similar level of ambition for electricity generation, we can say goodbye to that booming technology sector – and perhaps other parts of our economy too.