By Cheryl Jahn

Northern BC reaches EV milestone

Mar 5, 2025 | 2:54 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – For a very long time, the Province has been pushing electric vehicles. In fact, the Zero Emissions Act sets some goals. It requires that 26 per cent of the sales of light-duty and Class 2B – or full-sized pickups, SVU and vans – need to be zero-emissions by next year, 90 per cent by 2030 and a hundred per cent by 2035. But EVs have been a tough sell in this region. Why? For years, the lack of charging stations. But the region has reached a significant milestone.

“There are a couple of dozen [charging stations] all around northern BC, sometimes in communities that previously had no public charging,” says Rob van Adrichem with the Community Energy Association. “So through all of those 60 ports that are around northern B.C. now, there has been enough electricity coming through these wires to enable a million kilometres of travel.”

He says the fact is, though, there is a move toward more electric vehicles in this region. But there still comes down to the comfort levels of the average motorist.

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“I think it comes down to what people do for their driving. All of my driving is around town going to appointments and bringing kids around and that kind of thing. And for me, it’s been a great move to go to an electric vehicle. It really suits the driving that I do. So I think that depending on the driving that you do, maybe an electric car is great, maybe it isn’t.”

There are more than 20 charging stations in Prince George currently and, according to Plug in BC, nearly forty more between here and Prince Rupert. But, there could always be more.

“There are different circumstances in the North. We know this, but that simply requires that we keep building up the infrastructure to make it possible so that everybody in the province whether it be Prince George or Maple Ridge,” says Adrian Dix, Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions.

But Rob van Adrichem says the world is getting away from how we moved around for decades and, granted, that transition is different from country to country, from province to province and region to region.

“This is happening worldwide. There is a shift away from fossil fuels and there are a lot of questions, about the speed of that transition. And is that speed potentially different in a place like Vancouver than in a place like Prince George or Fort Nelson or Whitehorse? Those are all fair questions. But the fact is that this transition is supposed to occur.”

The milestone of a million kilometres of potential as achieved in Northern BC is the equivalent of across Canada more than 120 times.