AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
by Richard Barkwell, Councillor, District of Summerland
I had no intention of being a youthful climate warrior; I just hoped to use my position on Council to lead us in the right direction; however, I must share the following facts which lead to the inescapable conclusion that by building a solar farm we are contributing to climate change and wasting taxpayers’ money.
Consider this:
The production of Solar power creates five times (50g CO2eq/kWh vs 8.5 g CO2eq/kWh) more Green House Gases than our current and future electricity supply.
The Net Present Value of solar project is negative $1,631,413. This means the cost of the electricity it produces will cost us $1.6 million more than the equivalent power from Fortis. This does not include the $2,000,000 value of the land being used.
As both more expensive and more damaging to the environment solar power cannot be considered a Distributed Energy Generation system.
Solar power does not provide any resilience to the current electricity supply.
Explanation
The Green House Gas emissions (GHGe) associated with electricity production are measured in terms of grams of CO2 equivalent (CO2eq) per kWh of electricity produced (g CO2eq/kWh). I will shorten this to just g/kWh.
The term CO2eq incorporates all the various Green House Gases that are produced from a source, most notably Methane which is 25 times more damaging to the environment than CO2, therefore, one gram of Methane will add 25g to the CO2eq calculation.
When calculating Green House Gas emissions (GHGe) for electricity production of a new source of power all the inputs for the construction of the power source, as well as the emissions from its operation must be considered. This is called a Life Cycle Analysis.
The Green House Gases for the construction of a power source, plus the total of the annual emissions, are divided by the total amount of power it is expected to produce, to determine the Green House Gases per kilowatt hour of power generated.
An analogy would be to take the cost of purchasing a car, plus all of its expected operating costs, and dividing this total by the total number of kilometers you expect to travel to get a cost in $/km.
Information provided to Council
I have been seeking information from staff as to what the GHGe’s from the Solar Panels proposed in Summerland would be.
Staff provided a link to an article on Treehugger.com which said GHGe’s from Solar Panels were 50g/kWh (Note 1). Notice where hydro is on the chart in that article.
All scientific literature on the subject agrees with the Treehugger.com article. That is, the lifetime GHGe’s from solar panels are 40-50g/kWH.
I also received two irrelevant articles projecting what the GHGe’s from solar panels manufactured in 2050 and 2040 would be. I don’t know why they were provided but I have included them for the sake of completeness.
A relevant comparison to new solar electricity is new hydro electricity from Site C, which will provide BC with a surplus of power until into the 2030s. Stantec Engineering has completed an analysis on Site C and found its GHGe’s will be 8.5g/kWh.
At 40 to 50 g/kWh, Summerland’s proposed Solar farm will have over 5 times the emissions of Summerland’s current and future hydro supplies.
Some will note that Fortis gets a portion of its electricity from BC Hydro. Its latest published numbers show that it averages around 10g/kWh.
Net Present Value calculation
The fact that the Solar project has a negative Net Present Value of $1,631,413, before the $2,000,000 cost of the land is salt in the climate damage wound!
Furthermore, the net present value calculation provided by Fractal (Summerland’s consultant) uses a 35-year life for the solar panels. This is not realistic. You will not find a commercial enterprise that is premised on a lifespan of 35 years. Using a lifespan of 35 years instead of 30 years will markedly underestimate the loss from investing in solar panels.
So many websites advise that you can expect 25-30 years from your solar panels that I have not bothered to link to any particular one. The reader is invited to Google the life expectancy of solar panels.
A proper financial analysis would include the value of the land involved. Our NPV calculation does not. Council agreed to have an appraisal on the land and it was valued at $1.8 million to $2 million dollars, but this value was not incorporated in financial analysis.
This value has since gone up considerably with the rest of the market and more so now that we have removed any uncertainty about the environmental risk by cleaning up the site.
Location
A separate issue is that the land chosen is:
In the Urban Growth Area, is at the end of sewer line, and has long been part of the Official Community Plan as the next step in development West towards Deer Ridge.
If you really had to have solar despite the environmental cost, you could have houses there with solar on their roofs.
Distributed Generation systems
A Distributed Generation system is premised on providing power at a lower financial cost and/or environmental cost. This project is far from providing either cheaper power or power with fewer emissions.
While electrical transmission line losses are often mentioned as a reason for Distributed Generation systems, they average 5% North America wide. It is easy to see that a 5% loss through transmission would have no material impact in the financial or environmental value of our Solar project.
For example, if the GHGs at Site C are 8.5g /kWh, and 5% of the electricity is lost in transmission to Summerland, the GHGs would now be {8.5g /kWh}/0.95 = 8.9g /kWh.
Resiliency
The resiliency value of the Solar is so miniscule it is not worth mentioning.
We already have generators backing up at all important sites. Wiring in the battery storage was extremely expensive and cannot be considered. It is another feel good idea that makes no environmental or economic sense.
Solar back up would have to be specially wired into a particular building or two to provide the correct amount of current and voltage for the few hours of summer sunshine the panels produce power. Hardly worthwhile.
District of Summerland’s website
How did the District get this far down the path towards solar? Council has never received complete and documented information such as what is in this article.
The whole story would require a second article, but in part, you can look at things like the fact that the District of Summerland’s website says the following “Thus, the solar power we produce will be “greener.” It takes a careful reading to understand the context of that statement.
In my view, Council should ask staff to remove this statement from our website and advise the public that the solar project will in fact increase our green house gas emissions.
BC Hydro
BC Hydro both imports and exports electricity daily. On a yearly basis, some years it has been a net exporter and some years it has been a net importer. When it exports to Alberta it is largely (90%) replacing fossil fuels, when it imports from the US it is from a mix of Gas, Hydro and a tiny tiny fraction from coal in Wyoming. Fortis produces 45% of its electricity from its own dams and buys the rest from BC Hydro and other sustainable sources which results in very low GHGs. Some might argue that Hydro has its own environmental drawbacks, such as when farmland is flooded, but the fact is, Site C has already been cleared. It is a done deal. It will produce a large surplus of power for at least the next ten years so that issue is irrelevant.
Solar in Summerland will not save an inch of farmland.