Yukon Energy Perspectives

Yukon Energy Perspectives 

Yukon Energy Corporation hosted a comprehensive, broad public energy consultation and ‘teach in’ back in March. The process is continued with a series of events, each dedicated to a particular subject such as biomass power plants, Liquid Natural Gas etc.

There is a reasonably widespread understanding that within less than half a decade we need to add a little less of half on top of the electrical energy that is generated now. For some the gravity of it goes in one ear and out the other while there are also people who take the impacts of a possible shortfall seriously. Nothing materializes without an intact flow of energy, not food, not education, not transportation, nor livelihood or housing. The most dramatic push for power generation growth of any jurisdiction I can think of is here now. Residential use makes up about one third and industrial uses about two thirds of the projected demand increase.

YEC president David Morrison informed the attendants of last week’s biomass energy workshop that the planning work is carried out with a priority mandate for renewable technology as much as possible. 

One of the tentative YEC proposals aims at a wind farm project on Ferry Hill that could provide close to a quarter of the required annual energy increase, under 10 percent of total needs.  
This is well within a typical grid tolerance to make adjustments for the fluctuating wind power characteristic. Also there will be good winter performance when hydro output is reduced. After years of pilot work with the Haeckel Hill turbines Ferry Hill would be an important step for affordable Yukon sourced power. Spin offs of especially such a wind perspective would include an incentive to engineer for better grid stability and efficiency overall. It could include an up to date policy that allows citizens, electrical truck and car owners with bi-directional charge set ups and generally Independent Power Providers to sell energy back to the grid when it has demand.

A tentative proposal by YEC for a substantial biomass plant power generation generated a lively discussion at the dedicated workshop among the community stakeholders. A few smaller and pilot plants would spread jobs and other development benefits across the territory. Such a limited scope would require to make use of heat for buildings or greenhouses co-generated with electricity to achieve economically viable kWh cost. Midsize plants of a capacity that is sufficient for one unit to match the future Whistle Bend draw or allow to bring a new mine online can have a high efficiency just generating electricity. The significance of the Yukon Energy Corporation’s wood biomass proposal is that in combination with a Ferry Hill wind farm it offers a way out of alternative natural gas development at Eagle Plain. And it does so at competitive cost and with more realistic time frames when compared with larger geo-thermal or new hydro projects while similarly approaching a carbon neutral standard.


By comparison with many US jurisdictions, for example, it is fortunate that Yukon biomass power potential can compensate for the failure to not have developed over time sufficient non hydro renewable energy avenues. It’s been two generations of inaction in terms of a diverse energy industry since the 1973 oil shock got people worried for the first time. 
But the ongoing monolithic energy context of hydro and fossil fuel energy had not exactly been thought stimulating. From there, with some huffing and puffing, it appears that in Yukon a meaningful energy dialogue is narrowing between wood biomass and natural gas development options. 

The conversation in our community has just begun to explore some of the involved questions.

One is about how much of fire killed, beetle killed, highway maintenance/fire smart sourced fuel wood can be sustainably utilized. ‘Dead’ wood inhabits much of the boreal life and life cycle and much of it needs to stay right there. With this in mind stringent sustainability standards in a Northern boreal environment in Scandinavian jurisdictions are met with extraction intensities greater in orders of magnitude than what is considered here. Change in Yukon forestry practices towards selective use, well adapted and scaled equipment and away from clearing sections and soil disruption and compression is overdue anyways. Then because of a respectful vision, Yukon trees do grow back.
However, there are a few more real incentives to think it through and adapt annual allowable cuts and land use plans toward this end. This will happen when the alternative of natural gas development and natural gas power plants is considered a bit more comprehensively.

Natural gas consists mostly of methane, over 20 years or even 50 years it creates several times the diesel equivalency of global warming impact. With the adoption of such a relentless fossil fuel vision Yukon looses its standing in climate negotiations. The idea of ‘clean’ natural gas originated from valid concerns about a range of air pollutants that are higher in gasoline, diesel or coal combustion.
Natural gas greenhouse impact is a different matter and undergoes a profound change in perception as we speak. A natural gas branch land industry requiring big capital equipment expenses from us would stay for generations. The calculation that one could protract the methane break down of the natural gas emissions over a century, and then end up with a similar or slightly smaller green house effect when compared to diesel and gasoline is wrong. In fact it denies already expanding troubles like permafrost thawing or ocean acidification. Events that are tied into feed back loops which are derailing in response to green house emissions through the next five to fifteen years.
Possibly even federal transfer payments could be affected if Yukon gives up a sense of self preservation in the climate and energy conversation. 
Further, the development of LNG export to Southern markets could needlessly undermine local energy security as under existing rules of proportional energy sharing Canada cannot retreat from energy export levels to the US which under stress take preference over domestic needs.
As temporary fuel supplement for existing diesel plants, LNG from existing Southern sources can have a useful purpose.

The core of Yukon’s energy infrastructure are public assets that like roads and highways are understood as part of the commons. This understanding has geographical and practical limitations in reaching 100 percent of the community but in principal everybody has access. The commons concept not only connects Indigenous, European, Asian and other heritage roots but from it common good and ecological responsibility extend. The contention by some who are not happy with existing mining oversight and permitting procedures such as YESAB, who don’t want to extend energy infrastructure to new mines by way of quasi alternative or alienated regulation, breaks this bond. More helpful will be to ask for an energy dedicated green fund contribution from large scale users who’s life span is too short to compensate the public for the related capital equipment burden.