Changes coming to the ferries in 2027

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - 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, which is great news. In addition to that,  as part of this capital investment that will be electrifying or putting a lot more power into 2 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 Nicholas 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?  
Nicholas 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? 
Nicholas Jimenez: "I'm going to have to follow up on that  because we're in the process right now of negotiating with the shipyard. 1 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? 
Nicholas 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? 
Nicholas 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."