Poor planning, funding shortages, and plans to build new critical mineral mines are imperilling Yukon’s plan to reduce emissions 45% by 2030, even as the territory’s climate leadership council maps out a pathway to success.
The 45% target is included in an agreement [pdf] between the Liberal and NDP caucuses, reports CBC News. It calls for widespread electrification, but officials at Yukon Energy say it will be challenged to produce enough renewable power to meet the goal.
The utility predicts that non-industrial power demand will grow 36% out to 2030—an increase driven largely by the electrification of transport and home heating. But most of Yukon’s fossil-free electricity is already spoken for.
Hydroelectricity accounted for 80% of total generation in 2019, with four plants generating a total capacity of nearly 95 megawatts. But this capacity drops precipitously in the cold of winter. At the largest dam, Whitehorse Rapids, generating capacity drops from 40 MW in summer to 25 MW in winter. Historically, most of the slack has been taken up by diesel, but the territory has been steadily shifting over to liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Both fossil fuels come increasingly into use during periods of peak demand.
Alongside this hydropower capacity, residential and commercial customers receive incentives to produce electricity from renewables and sell the surplus to the grid under a 10-year-old micro-generation policy. In 2021, Yukon had 510 solar micro-generators connected to the grid with a combined capacity of 6 MW, up from 155 generators totalling 1.38 MW in 2018.
A 0.9-MW solar array with battery is operational in the fly-in community of Old Crow, and new solar projects have been proposed, including a 2.9-MW solar farm in Watson Lake and a 1-MW project near Whitehorse. Yukon leads western Canada in solar panel units per capita, says the Canada Energy Regulator.
On the wind front, Scott Pressnail, energy analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society, told The Energy Mix that a 4-MW wind turbine array on the outskirts of Whitehorse, 100% owned and operated by the Kwanlin Dün First Nation, came online October 31. Plus, a 7-MW grid-scale battery storage system in Whitehorse is under construction, “anticipated for the winter of 2024-25.” The system is expected to be the largest of its kind in northern Canada.
But none of this is sufficient to get Yukon where it needs to go.
Major Projects Stalled
All major projects, like the 35 MW Moon Lake pump storage, are now on hold, Yukon Energy’s acting president Chris Milner told a legislative committee in early November.
“We’re going to have to be really specific in the projects we look at in the short-term supply plan because the options to us are limited,” he said. Meanwhile, the Atlin hydro expansion project, while technically ready to go, is still short of the money it needs to get started, writes CBC.
“The stage we’re at right now, [is] just looking at energy planning in the region and how best to work with First Nations on moving projects of that size and nature,” Milner said. “Until we can get some clarity around what that looks like, projects like that are going to be slow to move.” LNG and diesel will be needed in the interim, he added.
Energy Minister John Streicker admitted Yukon’s government has moved faster on vehicle electrification and incentives for small power producers than it has on big-ticket green energy projects, but it still intends to fulfill the 45% by 2030 promise, writes CBC.
“It is a hard target to meet, but it’s an important target to meet,” Streicker said. “We never said it would be easy.”
But factoring in emissions from the territory’s mining ambitions could make the target impossible. As many as three new critical mineral mines are in the works (albeit moving slowly), and all of them are off-grid, according to a June, 2023 webinar produced by the Yukon Conservation Society. In the absence of onsite renewables, this will mean serious emissions.
“Should these off-grid mines come online, the Yukon’s overall emissions will explode,” Pressnail said. He noted that “very little consideration has been made for onsite renewable energy and electric mining.”
‘Bold Rethinking’
But the Yukon Climate Leadership Council provided the government with a clear pathway towards meeting its targets in a report [pdf] released in September, 2022.
“We believe that meeting the 45% challenge—in effect, doing more—necessitates a bold rethinking of how the government approaches climate action,” the council wrote, in a call for decision-makers to give up “status quo systems of governance.” Government departments and agencies must be mandated to “explicitly factor carbon emissions into budgeting and decision-making” at a rate of between $250 and $400 per tonne, the report said.
The responsibility for emission reductions by sector must be assigned to specific departments, like Highways and Public Works for transport emission reductions. And fossil fuel subsidies must be replaced “with targeted support for exposed industries that reduce their vulnerability and dependence on fossil fuels”, plus energy rebates to offset the impact of the energy transition on low-income families.
Buildings must shift to clean, locally sourced heat (waste heat from power generation, solar, and geothermal are mentioned), and a “pollution fee” surcharge must be imposed on all fossil heating appliances sold in the territory, coupled with rebates for clean energy investments.
All buildings constructed after 2025 and 2027 must be required to meet Tier 3 and Tier 4 standards under the National Building Code of Canada 2020. As an incentive for more climate-friendly density, the council suggested updating Yukon’s property tax regime to increase the assessed value of land relative to the assessed value of improvements.” It also recommended focusing resources “towards land development within municipal boundaries and around community centres instead of rural residential.”
Increased support for electric vehicles and related infrastructure is a must, the council said, but so are investments in active mobility and public transit. Yukon could reduce or eliminate minimum parking requirements in municipalities, and increase operating funds for municipal transit to improve service levels and increase ridership.
The council also urged strenuous efforts to protect Yukon’s vast reaches of carbon-sequestering wetlands and forests.
