In the first of a two-part interview, Rafe Mair grills BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix on private power, Site C Dam and BC’s flawed environmental assessment process. What will the NDP do with existing and future private river power projects (a.k.a. IPPs) if they form the next government – and where do they stand on Site C Dam? Watch and find out…and stay tuned for part 2 Thursday, dealing with Enbridge, LNG and salmon farms.
Let us be clear about the record. BC Hydro managed to produce and deliver to its three classes of customers about 50,000 GWhrs per year at the start of the century. They did this with about $11.6 B of toatal assets & $10.4 B of liabilities. By 2011 those nos increased to $19.5 B & $16.6 B. In that same period demand increased from 48,000 GWhrs to 50,600. So those sharpest guys in the room borrowed and spent $6 B to get 2,600 GWhrs only. A breathtaking example of investing to get reduced productivity. The above debt does not include the extra $2.3 B in reulatory accounts that is a debt of the ratepayers and should be taken away from the total assets figure above. Worst still, the BC Auditor General projects this last debt to increase to $5 B in the next couple of years.
Financial illiterates does not begin to describe this crowd.
Rafe doesn’t seem to understand that private power produces energy at costs quite BELOW that of BC Hydro new generating stations. About 6 cents vs. 13 cents for BC Hydro.
When Rafe says cost of private power is twice or TEN (!!) times that of private power he is confusing heritage assets with a newly constructed power plant, and, also confusing the fact that there are billions of dollars of loans on these heritage assets and BC Hydro is paying interest through the nose for such debt, effectively raising the cost of heritage assets.
Now what happened to these 13 billion dollars of loans that BC Hydro is saddled with? Just ask the highest paying salary company in BC and its public union to explain that to you. Have you heard of waste and inefficiency by people who spend other people’s monies?
Oh, and the $41 billion liability is actually $7 billion if you remove the 70% of contracts that will never result in power production. And a huge part of the $41 billion contract is to BC Hydro’s own subsidiaries like the Brilliant plants and Waneta Generating Station. In return for the $7 billion contracts, BC Hydro is receiving about $15 billion of green, clean, & sustainable energy.
The last ten years of energy policy by the BC Liberals has been all about helping the IPPs, at BC Hydro’s expense.
BC Hydro owes about $41 billion to IPPs for future power contracts, whether or not the power is needed in BC. See p. 80 of BC Hydro’s 2011 Annual report.
http://www.bchydro.com/etc/medialib/internet/documents/annual_report/2011_BCH_AnnualReport.Par.0001.File.2011-BCH-Annual-Report.pdf
I did not understand all the details, but what came clearly through, is that BC Hydro was badly managed and used by the liberal government to give sweetheart deals to their friends. Is this not fraud?
The proposed LNG plants will need a huge amount of power. Site C would be a source of power. BC Hydro would lose money selling power to LNG plants at the low industrial rate.
The BC Liberal’s idea of BC Hydro exporting power to the US turned out to be a hugely expensive failure. Why would we expect the LNG export idea to be any better?
And why should we be so eager to sell off our natural gas? How will we heat our homes in the future?
This interview was taped the day after Christy Clark announced all the power from Site was destined for the Shell LNG project: http://energeticcity.ca/article/news/2012/02/09/site-c-essential-lng-development-clark
More to come on LNG in part 2 this Thursday.
First Lekstrom and Campbell say Site C is for export to California but there really isn’t a market there…
then Conway said it was to power 440,000/450,000 homes (the number kept changing) but in reality domestic demand has dropped over 5% since 2008…
then Senator Neufeld said the power from Site C was intended for the Horn River Basin with the market for that gas being the Oil Sands…
finally now, Clark has admitted that 100% of the power from Site C is to go towards LNG production for some supposedly lucrative Asian market (taken with a grain of salt)…
Quite the moving target there… definitely makes you wonder! I find it strange that Dix is still on page 1 and 2.
Wow… I can’t believe how elusive Dix was on Site C. I used to think he was opposed but now I’m not quite so sure where he stands. He didn’t sound like he realized the connections to the O&G industry and he mistakenly thought energy was needed for BC citizens or for export. That has all changed anyway with Clark now stating that 100% of the power from Site C is going to LNG production. There is no uncertainty where Site C power will be used… it is clearly going towards accelerating NGas extraction with BC taxpayers and ratepayers subsidizing big industry.
We would all love to know what the NDP will do if they win the next election.The telling may cost them dearly. Truth is what we want but it is also what the other side needs.This gives the opposition, corporations and the bought and paid for news MSM the ammunition they need to launch a coordinated propaganda campaign. We have seen it in the past and will definitely see it in the future. With more than a year until the next election there is plenty of time to form a game plan. We will hear the likes of Baldry, Palmer, Leyne, Fletcher etc. telling us about all the tens of thousands of jobs that will be lost, the investments that will not happen and the taxes that will have to be raised because there is no activity in the province. Then we will get the CKNW spin using an endless supply of financial experts, Chamber of Commerce, Building Associations etc. (including Mikey Campbell) telling us about the businesses that will depart in droves, leaving BC with an economy about the size of PEI. Corporations will spend thousands telling us the same thing and don’t forget the burden of removing the HST. How do you win?
The cost of rescinding any Energy Purchase Agreements
currently (no pun intended) issued by BC Hydro for lake draining hydoelectric IPP’s will pale in comparison to the cost to our environment and the hit to the pocket book of future generations of taxpayers…and…what about the consequences of losing jurisdiction over our natural resources to investment funds and foreign corporations? I don’t want reviews…..Dix is being interviewed by a Common Sense Canadian…..you would think he would know there are a lot more of them out there than just the interviewer. Why the wishywashiness? Is there something else we don’t know about the mission to get these things up and running?
Watching this makes me wonder if or not the NDP are serious at all about what they claim to oppose.
I have a question I would like to get an answer to by anyone with the expertise to give a legitimate answer to.
My question is can BC tax these (profanity removed) corporations, so much that giving them away will be a better option for these corporations than keeping them?