An interview with Roger Dall’Antonia, President and CEO, FortisBC

Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. Can you tell us a bit about the career path to your current role as President and CEO of Fortis BC?

Having begun my career in the energy industry in 1993 with Westcoast Energy Inc., where I worked in corporate and project finance, I joined FortisBC in 2004. I have had the opportunity to hold several leadership roles throughout the organization, including executive oversight of customer service and technology, regulatory affairs, energy solutions and demand side management, strategic planning and corporate development, finance and treasury.

Throughout my time with FortisBC, and particularly now as president and CEO, I have continued our customer-focused approach to delivering an affordable and sustainable energy future, with particular focus on the safety and reliability of our energy delivery system, while advancing a lower-carbon energy future and prioritizing our work with Indigenous communities.

B.C. is in many ways at the centre of Canada’s conversation on natural gas – as a significant domestic producer and user, and as the leading exit point for what could be an enormous export industry. How do you see FortisBC playing in this very exciting time for the industry, the province, and the country?

As a critical energy provider in B.C., we believe FortisBC will play a critical role in helping lead the lower-carbon energy transition. Our primary focus is to ensure we provide our customers and communities with safe, reliable and affordable energy, including natural gas, electricity, Renewable Natural Gas^[1] (RNG) and other lower-carbon energy sources.^[2] But this doesn’t mean our industry or FortisBC is taking a business-as-usual approach. There are significant challenges and opportunities in the energy transition, and we see the value in both the electricity and gas systems as the platforms to lead to a lower-carbon future. We see a key opportunity in integrating the electric and gas systems, to work together to better meet energy needs, in particular peak capacity challenges, and support emissions reductions. There is also a significant emissions reduction opportunity through greater demand side management to reduce energy usage, while adopting lower-carbon energy to meet that reduced throughput. That lower-carbon energy will not just be renewable electricity, but also renewable gases such as RNG.

There is also an opportunity to consider how our systems can decarbonize other sectors. In many jurisdictions, transportation is the single largest sector for emissions. Decarbonizing in this sector includes expanding the adoption of electric vehicles, as well as utilizing liquified natural gas (LNG) and renewable gases in heavy duty fleet applications and marine fuelling. As our most recent Sustainability Report shows, during 2023 we helped customers avoid greenhouse gas emissions by using LNG in marine fuelling, displacing diesel with compressed natural gas in the transportation sector and supplying RNG.

We were the first company in the world to offer a truck-to-ship onboard LNG fuelling system for our customers. In 2023, we had just over 1,700 LNG ship bunkering events with local ferry operators, and the same year reached a multi-year milestone of more than 7,000 LNG bunkering events. Our marine customers avoided a total of 40,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023 by using LNG for marine fuelling instead of traditional bunker fuel.^[3]

You’ve just had a pretty fascinating election. What do you see happening in British Columbia’s gas policy and regulatory space

FortisBC has been serving the province of B.C. for well over 100 years, and we have almost 1.3 million gas and electricity customers across 135 communities and 58 indigenous communities. As a community-facing provider of critical services, we strive to maintain proactive relationships with all levels of government, as ultimately we are serving the same constituents, which are the people of B.C.

The recent re-election of Premier Eby and his government can be expected to provide continuity to both environmental and energy policy. We remain committed to working with the province to advance the lower-carbon energy transition and provincial climate goals. In recent years we have worked to advance provincial policy objectives as outlined in the CleanBC and CleanBC Roadmap to 2030 plans as well as B.C.’s energy action framework. We are, for instance, expanding our renewable and low-carbon energy portfolio, exploring abated gas opportunities to procure natural gas with lower lifecycle GHG emissions, encouraging energy efficiency, customer energy savings and GHG emissions reductions in our conservation and energy management plans, and piloting and expanding deep energy retrofit programs and dual fuel heating solutions. We believe our expertise running both electric and gaseous energy systems gives us the needed insight to help develop a diversified pathway that supports a more resilient and affordable energy transition.

FortisBC has been actively advancing its work related to RNG and hydrogen. What role do you see these gaseous fuels playing in the near and long term?

Our gas system plays an important role in helping to meet the energy needs of British Columbians and we believe it will continue to do so in the years to come. With its ability to store and quickly dispatch large volumes of energy, the gas system is especially important for periods of cold weather. For instance, earlier this year FortisBC’s gas system delivered approximately double the energy B.C.’s electricity systems provided on Friday, January 12, 2024, when the province was at its coldest, with electrical providers delivering 11,300 megawatts (MW) compared to FortisBC’s gas system delivering over 21,700 MW at the highest point of demand.

“FortisBC’s gas system delivered approximately double the energy B.C.’s electricity systems.”

We believe our gas system plays an important role in helping to meet the energy needs of British Columbians, and we recognize the need to move to lower-carbon energy options. In 2010, we started the first voluntary RNG program in North America and have since worked with farms, landfills, green energy companies and municipalities to supply us with RNG.

We’re continuing to expand the supply of RNG we acquire for our customers, by looking to partner with more organizations and governments. An RNG facility under construction at the Vancouver Landfill will be our largest RNG project in B.C. In 2023, we acquired 2.8 petajoules (PJ) of RNG for our customers, enough energy to run about 27,500 B.C. households for a year, and we have approved contracts to acquire 18 PJ over the next few years. Our supply of RNG helped customers avoid nearly 265,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023—equivalent to taking more than 57,000 gasoline-powered cars off the road.^[4]

We’re also looking at ways to advance other renewable and low-carbon gases, such as hydrogen. We’re using provincial funding to research delivering hydrogen through the gas system in B.C., investing in innovation to support the potential for hydrogen production and use and advancing multiple hydrogen-related projects. This year, for instance, we announced our membership in a collaboration formed by a Memorandum of Understanding between ourselves and Hazer Group Ltd. to develop a hydrogen production pilot project in British Columbia. If the pilot is scaled up, it would be expected to produce approximately 2,500 tonnes of hydrogen per year—roughly 300,000 gigajoules of gas.

On the electric side, we recently announced a Request for Expression of Interest for up to 1,100 gigawatt hours of energy to serve the growing demand in B.C.’s Southern Interior region.

What advice do you have for someone just joining the gas delivery industry?

Never lose sight of the fact that as a member of this industry you’re at the centre of a very large and very important undertaking—that of helping solve the energy trilemma. By that I mean keeping the three elements of that trilemma—reliability, sustainability and affordability—in balance. In the gas delivery sector, this will mean supporting a diverse energy mix, and continued use of the existing gas system, with lower-carbon fuels like RNG and, potentially in the future, hydrogen.