The Green party of B.C. joined forces Thursday with the province’s renewable energy sector to offer an alternative to an economy driven by fossil fuels, such as the massive export of liquefied natural gas.

Party leader Jane Sterk told a Vancouver news conference that she wants to remove the “impoverished thinking” that places renewable energy behind resource extraction in B.C.

The province should be a “green-tech power house,” she said, noting the Green party would address regulatory issues to assist renewable energy projects, including making BC Hydro focus on renewable energy.

Andrew Weaver, a climate change specialist and Green candidate for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, said B.C. is committing “economic suicide” by gambling its future on large-scale LNG exports.

He argued that agreements for the sale of Russian natural gas to China will undercut the economics of B.C.’s LNG export ambitions, adding that under a Liberal or NDP government LNG plants powered by natural gas will derail provincial greenhouse-gas emission targets.

Weaver cited a 2011 KPMG Cleantech Report Card that identified 202 clean-tech organizations in B.C. with estimated revenues of $2.5 billion in 2011 — a 57-per-cent increase from 2008 — equating to 8,400 jobs with an average salary of $72,000.

“B.C. used to have a leadership role in climate-change solutions,” he said, noting these figures could just be the beginning. “Unfortunately, that role is gone. We’re missing an amazing opportunity.”

Paul Kariya is executive director of Clean Energy B.C., representing 225 members, largely in the run-of-river sector, but also biomass, wind turbines and “emerging pre-commercial” fuels such as solar, tidal, and geothermal.

Twelve projects resulting from a BC Hydro call for clean energy are generating $2.6 billion in capital expenditures, representing 2,300 direct jobs during construction, including 690 jobs for First Nations. Some 125 native bands are involved in such “clean-energy” projects, including through “equity participation,” he said.

Kariya said that with the appropriate investments in infrastructure and transmission lines his organization’s members can help reduce the amount of natural gas needed to power LNG plants. “You can do it with a cleaner option ... through time,” he said.

Jason Bak, chief executive officer with Finavera Wind Energy, which received a BC Hydro contract for 300 megawatts of power in 2010, complained that wind farms are forced to jump environmental hurdles that forestry and even coal mining do not.

‘We’ve seen great challenges,” he said, blaming Liberal mismanagement of the Environmental Assessment Office. “There is not a level playing field....”

He said his company’s Tumbler Ridge wind project is atop an underground coal mine that is “allowed to extract thousands of tonnes of rock without an environmental assessment of its impact on the land” and also exists alongside commercial forestry that is allowed to clearcut “essentially anything you want in this province with very little guidance relative to the hurdles that we have to jump.”

Coal mines with a capacity of under 250,000 tonnes annually are exempt from a formal environmental assessment process in B.C.

Wind farms have been criticized for locating on the habitat of threatened caribou in B.C.’s northeast and run-of-river projects with killing juvenile salmon on the B.C. coast, issues that Sterk referred to the two industry representatives.

Bak said none of his company’s projects are slated for such caribou lands, while Kariya said he believes any fish kills are largely isolated and involve very young fish and that the Pacific Salmon Foundation has been commissioned to investigate the issue.

Of issues with bats and birds hitting turbine blades, Sterk said she believes that such kills are small and that “what we hear is prejudice, not founded in the evidence.”