VANCOUVER -- B.C.'s Green party leader says investors hankering to fund renewable energy projects are being shut out because of the province's regulatory barriers.
Jane Sterk says clean technology such as wind farms would create jobs faster than the far-off liquefied natural gas industry that Premier Christy Clark has been promoting as an economic saviour.
Sterk says current regulations are hampering investment even though the Liberals claim to be a free-enterprise party that's aiming to win the election on May 14.
Green candidate and climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who is running in Victoria, says Clark's LNG projections are a pipe dream while a clean energy sector would make B.C. into an economic powerhouse.
He says the government's 2007 legislation calling for a reduction in greenhouse gases of one third by 2020 can't be met without a clean energy industry and must be repealed.
Clark has said the development of LNG in northern B.C. has the potential to wipe out the provincial debt and eliminate the need to pay sales taxes.
