BC Ferries announced a series of changes coming in 2027,  including new vessels for the Campbell River and Cortes Island routes and the next steps towards electrifying the fleet.

“We’ve received approval from the ferries commissioner to procure  four new vessels, hybrid electric, and they will bring new capacity into the system. This is great news. In addition to that,  as part of this capital investment that will be electrifying, or putting a lot more power into, two routes that are going to eventually be able to run these hybrid battery electric vessels in the way that they’re built. For the purposes of the investment being announced today, it’s just  two routes, Nanaimo to Gabriola and  Campbell River to Quadra that will be serviced with this capacity to actually run these vessels in their electric form,” explained Nicolas Jimenez, CEO of BC Ferries.

“Currently we have 6 hybrid electric vessels in play in the island class series, but we don’t have the terminal infrastructure yet to support the charging to take advantage of the capabilities of these vessels. We had hoped for that to be true, but we didn’t have the funding needed in order to be able to electrify or put more power into the terminal.”

“So we’re building new capacity and the expectation is that when funding is available for this whole program, we’ll be able to electrify every terminal where these vessels are in service.” 

Cortes Currents: Are we talking fully electric?  

Nicolas Jimenez: “They will be fully electric when the terminals , the electrification component of the project, is in place. Yes, that is the expectation.”

“You need a lot of power in order to generate a charge on a quick turnaround, so the vessels can run all day long on their batteries.” 

“It’s really the beginning of the future, which is great news. I think both for the people who live in that part of the world, but also for our commitment to helping BC meet its climate goals.” 

Cortes Currents: When is the electrification expected to be ready? 

Nicolas Jimenez: “I’m going to have to follow up on that  because we’re in the process right now of negotiating with the shipyard. One of the items for negotiation is the undertaking of the power supply into those two routes that I mentioned.”

“It’s hard for me to give firm delivery timeframes when we’re still in the process. Literally: this week we are meeting with one of the shipyards that we’re in the procurement process with, to talk about how this work is all going to get done. We’ll have a little bit more  to say specifically when these negotiations are concluded.”

“I hope it’s going to be successful. Yes, we expect the vessels –  because we know what it takes to build a vessel. This vessel is already in service. We have the design. It’s well established. We believe that 2027 is a reasonable timeframe for these vessels to be built by any yard.” 

Cortes Currents: What about the electrification of the Campbell River and Gabriola routes? 

Nicolas Jimenez: “The expectation is we’re going to electrify Campbell River, Quadra and then Nanaimo and Gabriola.”

Cortes Currents: Another expectation is that one of the existing hybrid electric vessels will be going over to Cortes. Can you talk about that? 

Nicolas Jimenez: “I can. We are getting four new cleaner vessels and remember these are 40 to 50 year investments. So when we’re looking at this, we’re really looking at the latter part of the century that we expect these vessels would still be in service.”  

“That’s a great thing to be able to bring in hybrid electric and at the same time, we’re going to be able to redeploy the vessels that are currently servicing those routes and put them onto other routes. There’ll be vessels deployed to Crofton and Vesuvius, to Quadra and Cortes, to Denman and Hornby. All to increase the capacity in those particular routes.”

“So if I give you an example for Quadra to Cortes, we expect to see a 70 percent increase in the available capacity of ferry service from today. For Crofton to Vesuvius, it’s a 20 percent increase of available capacity. On the Denman to Hornby route, it’s really two times of the available capacity over the course of the year.”

“That’s all to be determined as we build up the schedules. We now have two vessels that we can take and move to other routes. This allows us to  identify where the hotspots are in terms of need/time a day/time of season, and then deploy them into service. So, it’s great news for people in that part of the world.”

Cortes Currents: But we’ll also be seeing electrification of the Cortes-Quadra  route?

Nicolas Jimenez: “I would think eventually, as we migrate all of the vessels. We’re trying to simplify the number of classes of vessels that we have in our program. So today we have  something like 6, it might be more, and we’re trying to simplify that.  We don’t want as many different types of vessels. Over time, as we retire the older vessels and replace them with newer vessels, we’re going to be putting in fewer types of vessels.  Our expectation in the future is that new vessels that are introduced into our fleet have a hybrid electric capability.”

“That’s obviously a future decision that future iterations of me will have to make. I don’t want to commit future versions of me to that decision, but I think the technology is rapidly advancing in this world.  When it comes to ferry design, you’re seeing more and more ferries being built with this kind of capability.”

“The one difference that we have, here in British Columbia, again is high frequency routes.  So the issue for us is always going to be around power supply. How do we get our terminals with enough power that these vessels can come in, charge quickly and then go back out to honour their service obligations?”

“That’s particularly difficult on the more populous routes  in the Lower Mainland, from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay and Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay. When we replace the C class vessels that currently service some of those larger routes our expectation is, and again the decision hasn’t been made, the expectation would be that we’ll have the ability to look for a hybrid electric design.” 

“The challenge will be not the design and build of the vessels, but the power supply into those terminals at Horseshoe Bay, Departure Bay, Swartz Bay, Tsawwassen,  Langdale, because those will require a lot more power because they’re going to be carrying more people,  more vehicles over a longer period of time.”

“If you think about it, the turnaround on those trips is typically about, let’s call it a half an hour. That is a very short period of time to deliver a lot of energy to recharge batteries on vessels that size. If you’re seeing those in service today in other parts of the world, Europe, et cetera, typically the turnaround times would be measured in hours, not minutes. That’s one of the hurdles that we’ll have to overcome eventually.”  

Cortes Currents:  Is there a,  I’m going to call it a dream because you can’t make commitments yet, to turn the entire fleet electric – not just hybrid, but fully electric?  

Nicolas Jimenez: “If it’s hybrid again, the idea would be that over time as battery capacity and technology improves and the power supply issues are solved,  you would think that you will have the ability to put in more installed battery capacity.”

“We’ll be turning over our fleet for as long as we’re a ferry company because vessels have essentially an end of life but  the expectation I would have, I think that’s generally where the industry is going.” 

“You’re seeing more electric only ferries in the smaller vessel (passenger only) cohort, because they’re lighter weight. They’re often aluminum. They have the ability to move faster and  it’s shorter distances in terms of the routes.” 

“Where we are at as a ferry system: I would say the technology hasn’t quite caught up  to us, but in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years, 80 years, I think that would be a very different proposition.  We might have different energy sources like hydrogen (and others) that today aren’t really being explored as viable in this industry, that could be with advances in technology.”

“I think we have to be open minded about the whole thing, but it’s definitely going to be a cleaner, greener future.”

Top image credit: The Island K’ulut’a currently serves the Campbell River to Quadra Island route – Photo by Wzelisk09 (Own work) via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

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