Greening Vancouver: BC Clean Tech Incentives

With clean energy technology playing a key role in many industry sectors, this area of technology will significantly impact BC’s work force, its environment, its citizens’ daily lives, and the province’s overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Implementing clean energy technology and making it work is crucial and will become more and more so in the future. However, the development of an efficient and competitive industry won’t happen automatically nor by coincidence; it will depend on changes in customer attitudes, industry needs or paradigm shifts in society. Government has a key role to play in this regard and its ability to provide incentives is a policy tool which merits serious consideration.

On the one hand, incentives are a good instrument for the stimulation and development of this new technology industry in British Columbia and can create new green jobs and business opportunities long-term. For example, the BC carbon tax encourages consumers to reduce their consumption and adopt new and smarter choices. On the other hand, opponents of incentives argue that companies might take advantage of subsidies. For example, a company could accept incentives then move on to other jurisdictions or that incentives will create another form of competition between jurisdictions in the same way that varying tax policies do now.