Tag Archives: Water and Energy

A Wish List for Premier-to-be Christy Clark

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, ,
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This would seem to be as good a time as any to make out a wish list for premier to be, Christy Clark. These are in no particular order.

May we please have back out our right to make a judgment as to matters which happen in our own backyard? Such as Independent Power Producers’ (IPPs) plans for a private power plant? Or a double pipeline for oil from the Tar Sands? It would seem that the wish to develop trumps the right to people’s wishes.

Here is the inconsistency: If a town wants to put in, say, a Walmart, councils listen to people BEFORE making a decision, but the provincial government doesn’t believe in consulting people and only lets the public in when it’s a done deal and government and the company are pretending to let the public make suggestions as to the environmental standards to be followed. Apart from all else, Dear Ms. Clark, no one for a moment thinks that either the government or the company gives – forgive the vulgarity – a fiddler’s fart about the suggestions made.

May we please see copies of the deals forced on BC Hydro for IPPs and have full disclosure of their contents and accompanying documents. Please don’t tell us that they must be kept secret for confidentiality purposes. The whole process is phony – the public knows that and since the government has access to these contracts, we the people respectfully ask that you make them public.

Once they are public, please have a judicial process to determine whether or not these deals are conscionable. No one expects you to cancel a deal just because someone made a good deal through an open process, but if these contracts are, as many suspect, sweetheart deals, we ask that you cancel them and, if necessary, see the IPPs in Court.

With the deepest of respect, again, Ms Clark, may I suggest a bench mark of fairness.

If BC Hydro has been forced or is being forced into what’s called “take or pay” deals, surely this is a point of fairness for an independent adjudicating process. If, as is expected, Hydro has been  forced to take power it doesn’t need then either export it at a 50% or more loss or forced to use it and thus pay from 10% on up more than they can produce it themselves these contracts are unconscionable and the contracts should be deemed void.

You probably know, ma’am, that the British Columbia Utilities Commission has said that these contracts “are not in the public interest” of British Columbians. May we, again with respect to this energy policy, suggest you tube it. Get rid of it.

Let me, with deference, move into the environmental issue.

Notwithstanding the assurances given by Finance Minister Colin Hansen, these projects are scarcely “run-of-river”, leaving the flow of the water undisturbed, nor are they small projects run by small companies.

Now again, with respect Ms. Clark, you may not be familiar with Mr. Hansen’s statement but if you Google “Colin Hansen private power” you will see his grandfatherly talk in its entire 1 minute and 51 seconds of untruths. Indeed, I’m sorry to say that Mr. Hansen could not have stated the opposite of the truth with greater particularity.  If you wish a hard copy transcript I would be pleased to send you one and, if you so desire, a copy for each member of your caucus.

I certainly don’t wish to seem pedantic or be rude but it must be said.

BC Hydro and the provincial government which you will soon head talk about “appreciable fish values”. These are weasel words designed to imply that none of the Pacific salmon, Chinook, Coho, Chum, Sockeye, Pinks, and Steelhead, is endangered. Quite apart from the fact that this is clearly not the case in many projects, including the Pitt River proposal, other fish are valuable and critical to the ecologies their river sustains. These include Cutthroat Trout (actually the 7th Pacific Salmon), Dolly Varden and Bull Trout (the last two being Chars). There are other species like Arctic Char, Rocky Mountain white fish, sturgeon and so on which also sustain their river’s ecology. If the words “appreciable fish values” are taken on their plain meaning, there’s not a bit of running water in the province that doesn’t contain these values.

I believe – and I hope you don’t think me rude – that an elementary mistake has been made both with IPP projects and fish farms. The “Precautionary Principle”, so important to fair science and good legislation, has been upended so that instead of the user of the water being required to prove the environmental safety of the proposal, the onus has been shifted to the public. I’m sure if you took a moment to reflect on this – and I can provide you with loads of evidence that this is happening – you would immediately reinstate the Precautionary Principle. One name I can give you now: the highly respected John Fraser, who could hardly be called a leftist, is an excellent person to contact on this point.

Still on the subject of the environment, so far as I’m aware there is no process, no responsible part of government, to evaluate the totality of the environmental disruptions that are permitted – the aggregate impact if you will. This should happen and should be done by an independent body with the chairperson appointed by the Legislature and reporting to them.

Again, with deep deference, may I suggest that these issues will be very much in play from now until the next election. You simply cannot wish them away. You have two options as I see it – you can pretend that these matters are all unimportant or you can take immediate and firm steps to deal with them. We at The Common Sense Canadian devoutly and respectfully urge you to follow the latter course.

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British Columbians mourn the death of a great citizen, Allan Williams, QC.

Others knew Allan much better than I. I served in cabinet with him for five years and I can tell you that no decisions were taken until he had said his piece, such was his constant wisdom.

Allan served in local politics with distinction and was an MLA for 17 years and served as a highly respected Minister of Labour and as Attorney-General during some difficult times which he dealt with firmly and courageously.

One of the highest compliments I’ve received was when he asked me to be guest speaker at his annual constituency meeting.

It’s shocking to me that Allan never was awarded an Order of BC. Cato the elder put it this way: “After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one”. The Order of BC can grant honours posthumously and should do so.

To Marjorie, his wife of 62 years, and his family I know I speak for all BC when I say about Allan, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.“

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B.C. may face unprecedented native unrest if rights ignored

Mining, WATER,
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From the Vancouver Sun – March 3, 2011

by Tex Enemark

In an article in The Sun Feb. 14, (“The Skeetchestn
say enough already”), Rich Deneault, the Skeetchestn Band chief served
notice that the way business and governments ride roughshod over native
rights in British Columbia has to come to an end, or face the
consequences, which may not be pretty.

He says, very bluntly, “In
the days ahead, those companies and agencies that have not acted
honourably will be receiving letters from us, advising them to tell
their customers to expect possible service interruptions regarding their
operations in our traditional lands. We’re writing to the six Liberal
leadership candidates to advise them as well … [to ask if] … a first
nations community should be shredded for the betterment of forest
companies, or railway companies, or energy companies, or tax revenues.”

One
might have thought that such a threatened disruption of B.C.’s economy
might have stirred some debate among the Liberal leadership candidates,
but none was noticeable. And that is too bad because I expect that Chief
Deneault’s impatience might signal broader direct action in the native
community over the next few years.

Why, most B.C. people might
ask, has it come to this? Is there not a Treaty Commission charged with
getting modern treaties arranged with B.C.’s natives? Is not a lot of
money being spent on this by the B.C. and federal governments? Are there
not a lot of negotiators working to resolve matters?

The answer
is, of course the machinery is in place, but it is all jammed up for
lack of political mandates to actually operate, to see progress come out
of the end of the spaghetti machine. One does not have to sit around a
negotiating table for long to realize the elaborate charade taking
place. Able government negotiators stall, fiddle, obfuscate, redirect
discussion, and come up with more questions requiring answers than you
could believe existed all in the name of delay, delay, delay.

The
game is, a day of delay is another day the governments do not have to
pay for anything more than airfare and hotel rooms for negotiators,
another day of the native groups going further into debt to stay in the
game, another day of hopelessness for most on-reserve Indians and
another day B.C. and Canada avoid actually choosing to make difficult
choices. Frankly, what is taking place these days falls far short of
meeting any test of sincerity by either government, protestations to the
contrary.

The negotiators have honed their skills in being
helpfully not helpful for, now, a generation since B.C. consented to
being brought into the modern treaty-making process after 150 years of
shameful behaviour toward its native population.

Can you imagine
how frustrating and angry one becomes, sitting around a “negotiating
table,” literally for 20 and more years and achieving, well, nothing?
All the while, you see members of your community, whom the Supreme Court
of Canada have ruled have aboriginal title to the lands and resources,
suffer Third World levels of unemployment and health outcomes, the
country’s highest suicide, crime, and substance abuse rates? You see
those who take forest and mineral wealth from lands in which you hold
rights being exploited with scant regard for your welfare; sometimes a
penny or two is dropped to claim “accommodation,” but there is no plan
and no commitment to actually address and improve native conditions by
either government.

This is not to deny that
some progress has been made by the Campbell government, because it has
shown a change of attitude and a willingness to at least begin. But for
lack of clear, strong direction from the top to the whole government
that this was a priority, and a regular rotation of ministers, little
real progress was made.

The province’s native communities are very
likely not going to be able to restrain those who would be much more
militant in the near future and it will be up to the new premier to face
this reality.

Through the regulatory processes we have seen
native obstruction doom the . Kemess For all large format and
applications Prosperity mining proj-(newspaper boxes, tents, etc.) ects
over the past six years. We see the . Enbridge Crop off tag line
pipeline if it is too small facing to the same sort be read, or too
small to print of opposition. Any number of governproperly. ment and
private-sector projects over the past few years much less newsworthy
have been ground to a halt as well.

As Chief Deneault has said,
it’s going to get worse, much worse, because r Height”between 20 the
years logo and of other almost graphic elements. no prog-ensure ress
it’s on placement most is land appropriate claims to its relative is
becoming importance. an issue around which to rally for a more militant
next generation that will look to recent events in Cairo and Benghazi
for examples of how to make change.

For premier-designate Christy
Clark, this should indeed be a top of the “in-basket” issue. It simply
has to be. That it was not addressed by any leadership candidate is a
shame. But maybe Clark will recognize this and make addressing it a lead
item in a first Throne Speech, and very clear new marching orders will
be given to officials in the aboriginal affairs, education,
attorney-general and finance ministries. Or maybe the expectations of
the coming political change that now abound in the native community will
be dashed. And if Clark is smart, she will re-assign George Abbott to
the portfolio because he has shown evidence of understanding the issues
and wanting them resolved. Sorry, George. And Premier Clark will have to
tell Ottawa that it, too, had better get serious.

But if real progress on the native file is not a Clark priority, the result could well be what Chief Deneault predicts.

And
what Deneault foresees is more than a few days of inconvenience. It
could well be provincewide. It could be a signal to all sorts of
putative investment in B.C. that maybe somewhere else is better. This is
particularly true of the mining industry, which has not been as engaged
in the issues as it should have been. If B.C. and Canada do not take
seriously the warnings of Chief Deneault and others, the damage done to
our recovering economy could be serious, and our reputation as a fair
and progressive society very much harmed.

The ball is now in the
hands of soonto-be-premier Clark. Every person in B.C. that would like
to see generations of wrongs done to B.C.’s first nations will be
watching. It will be a real test of “change.”

Tex Enemark is a
public policy consultant, a former president of the Mining Association
of BC and an adviser to the Gitxsan Treaty Society.

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Private Power: Postmedia Sees the Light

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THE VANCOUVER PROVINCE SAYS THAT PRIVATE POWER DECISION “A FOLLY!”

Can the Province’s stablemate, the Sun be far behind?

As I settled into this past Friday’s breakfast, I glanced at the title of the Vancouver Province editorial and saw “Hydro needs to get back to its roots”. To my utter astonishment I read the following words in the editorial itself: “a large part of the problems at Hydro is the government insistence that it pursue costly private run of the river projects and other so called ‘green’ initiatives. A look at Hydro’s annual report shows the folly of this approach“.  (emphasis mine)

Where the hell have they been as this ghastly program moved inexorably down the path to one environmental disaster after another, bankrupting BC Hydro along the way?

The Province goes on to state that in 2010 private power used by Hydro cost them 9X what they could make it for themselves. In fact it’s worse – because Hydro must “take or pay” for IPP power which is predominantly available during the spring “run off”, and so comes when Hydro doesn’t need it. Thus Hydro must either take the power at 9-12 times what they can make it for or export it at a 50%+ loss.

Some business deal from the “business” government!

I’m all but speechless at this editorial – and as you may have noticed it takes a lot for that to happen. What the Province and presumably Postmedia (successors to Canwest) – which owns both the Sun and the Province – are saying is exactly what many environmentalists have for several years and been vilified for it!

Surely they didn’t come to this decision over a evening beer last Thursday so one must ask The Province,  “when did you reach this conclusion?”  Nothing has changed for seven or eight years – what made you see the light? And why weren’t you frank with your readers the moment you concluded that this plan was “folly”?

Both the Sun and Province have excellent writers if they are left alone to write – why weren’t they let loose to examine this issue with the same energy and talent they pursued when they (quite properly) took on then Premier Clark about a friendly neighbour wanting a gambling license and the “fast ferries” scandal?

The contrast between the Vancouver dailies during the NDP years and the Liberal decade can only be explained by assuming that they believe that it’s their responsibility to keep the NDP out of office. The old fashioned tradition of holding government’s feet to the fire clearly ended with the election of Campbell & Co.

The truth of the matter is that this issue didn’t drift down the river on a piece of bark. These papers have been stifling news and comment, either by non-reporting or terrible reporting, for half a decade. The IPP issue has been raised over and over not only by Damien Gillis and me, and the Wilderness Committee, but many others, yet if all you knew about the matter was through the media, you would know virtually nothing about it.

Isn’t it the media’s duty to fairly inform customers when it comes to news? And to present thought-provoking hard talk from their columnists?

The gut instinct of journalists is to question in depth all decisions of government. This simply hasn’t happened and their very best writers have been struck dumb. One can only conclude that Canwest cum Postmedia censors its news and editorial staff and, by its policy, forces columnists to self-censor. Absent any credible denial, one must conclude that the publisher hires editors who know what they want, and won’t print that which is contrary to the official line. You cannot blame columnists for putting their families before fighting for their traditional role. I know the feeling – I once was forced to grovel and it’s a very unpleasant thing to have to do.

I cannot and do not state that this is what happens – only that in the absence of a full explanation to the contrary, reasonable people are likely to reach this conclusion

British Columbians have a right to see these sweetheart IPP contracts and find out why the Campbell government concluded that damaging our environment, bankrupting BC Hydro, and driving our power bills through the roof was a sound policy. They are also entitled to expect decent media to ferret out matters of this sort and report upon them fully and fairly. This, I need hardly say, hasn’t happened.

I agree with the Province saying that Campbell & Co’s policy was “folly”, but what took them so long? The evidence was all there for them to see – what possible legitimate reason was there to, by their silence, tacitly support the government and its greedy corporate friends?
If the Province and the Sun wishes to do some penance they must do three things :

  1. Explain why it took so long for them to criticize their own policy towards the Campbell government’s energy policy.
  2. State why they haven’t dealt at all with the savaging of our rivers and their ecologies, pursuant to this policy, while approving, by their silence, the bankrupting of BC Hydro.
  3. Assure the public that they will start investigating with the thoroughness they once did of all major government initiatives, reporting back honestly, and that they will permit, no insist, that their columnists investigate all the establishment and let us have it as they see it.

One can only hope… 

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Shocking Province editorial condemning Campbell & Hydro for private power folly

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Well, it took a while, but Canwest is finally seeing the light, so to speak…

From The Province – Feb 25, 2011

B.C. Hydro’s application to the B.C. Utilities Commission to hike
electricity bills by more than 50 per cent over the next five years is
more evidence that something is terribly wrong with the way the company
and the B.C. Liberals are managing power generation in this province.

Hydro
says it needs $6 billion to upgrade aging infrastructure, which is
probably beyond debate. But casually jacking up the electricity bills of
B.C. residents and businesses at rates well in excess of inflation is
wrong, particularly when our economy has not fully recovered from the
recession.

A large part of the problem at Hydro is the government
insistence that it pursue costly private, run-of-river projects and
other so-called “green” initiatives. A look in Hydro’s 2010 annual
report shows the folly of this approach.

It cost Hydro $7.19 to
produce a megawatt hour of electricity with its large dams last year
when power from independent power producers cost $63.85 -nine times as
much.

While its conservation initiatives are reasonable, Hydro and
its political meddlers in Victoria should quit pursuing expensive
alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and further run-of-river,
and expand production of the green energy we’ve used for decades -cheap
power from large dams.

Hydro should revert to its traditional
role, the reason it’s always been the jewel of B.C. Crown corporations,
by providing the lowest-cost power that will drive prosperity in B.C.

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BC Hydro bills to jump 50% with new plan

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[Editor’s note: Of course this is far from the whole story, but worth checking out anyway]

From the Vancouver Sun – Feb 23, 2011

by Derrick Penner

VANCOUVER – BC Hydro calls its new $6-billion capital plan a
“regeneration” of its system, one that the Crown corporation anticipates
will cost the average consumer 32 per cent more in rate increases over
the next three years, and 50 per cent over the next five years.

On
Tuesday, BC Hydro unveiled the latest capital project ahead of filing
its three-year application for power rates with the B.C. Utilities
Commission -an $860-million upgrade of the Ruskin Dam and generating
station near Mission.

That rate application will seek
9.73-per-cent rate increases in each of the next three years, which
would raise the average homeowner bill of $71 per month by 32 per cent
to $93.81 between 2012 and 2014.

BC Hydro CEO Dave Cobb said that
future increases are speculative, but in background information on the
utility’s website, Hydro anticipates rate increases of seven per cent in
the subsequent two years, meaning a 50-per-cent hike over five years.

Cobb
argued the increase is a necessary hit on consumers’ utility bills,
given the lack of reinvestment in its system since the mid-1990s.

“Unfortunately
to some degree, I would say, these tough decisions were put off and
pushed back and pushed back,” Cobb said during a conference call.

“And
we’re now at the point where we believe the responsible thing to do on
behalf of our customers is to regenerate our system and invest in it
responsibly, but only to the extent that we have to.”

BC Hydro is
forecasting that on top of the need to upgrade its existing power plants
and transmission lines, it will need to meet a 40-per-cent increase in
demand for electricity over the next 20 years.

And Cobb added the
Crown corporation will put a big focus on conservation in its plan. Its
goal is to meet 66 per cent of new power needs by getting consumers to
use less electricity.

“If we don’t conserve as much as we’re planning to, we’ll have to invest more, build more,” he said.

The
government opposition’s new energy critic, however, said BC Hydro needs
more public oversight of its capital plan to prove that all elements of
it are in the public interest.

“There’s no doubt BC Hydro needs
to do some reinvesting in its existing power generation projects,” Doug
Donaldson, the NDP MLA for Stikine, said in an interview. “But I would
say if the B.C. Liberals’ idea of an energy plan is a 50-per-cent rate
hike over five years, that’s something most people would find
unacceptable. That’s not an energy plan at all.”

While BC Hydro’s
application for the rate increase is subject to a hearing by the B.C.
Utilities Commission, Donaldson noted that the Clean Energy Act passed
by government in 2010 exempts elements of BC Hydro’s capital plan from
B.C. Utilities Commission oversight, such as its $930-million project to
replace 1.8 million manual electricity meters with electronic smart
meters.

“The alternative is to open up the books so we actually
know how the money is being spent, especially in regard to private-power
projects,” Donaldson added.

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Liberal Candidates Clueless on IPPs; NDP Counterparts Getting It

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada,
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I cannot believe it! Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong talks about the Toba Inlet Independent Power Project (IPP) as not a truly private project because Plutonic (General Electric in drag) has partnered with the local First Nation! This, says Mike, makes it a “community” project. This is an interesting point of view considering that Don McInnes, head of Plutonic, told a legislative committee in 2004 that private power companies shouldn’t have to share any profits – not even 1%! – with First Nations. I won’t dwell on this point because it’s irrelevant to the main question – namely, are IPPs a good idea? Mr. de Jong would be a premier who would encourage more and more IPPs even though he obviously doesn’t have the faintest idea as to what they’re all about.

For example, de Jong, to Bill Good, made the nonsensical claim that these projects don’t divert much water, compared to a conventional dam – which is  backwards. These IPPs are diversion projects; whereas dams hold back water, but don’t usually divert it. The Toba projects divert, in fact, something on the order of 90% of the mean annual flow of the rivers for miles.

It’s hard for me, a former cabinet minister, to understand the utter ignorance of the present Liberal bunch have towards IPPs. That a possible premier of BC doesn’t understand that these environmental disasters are making the energy when BC Hydro doesn’t need it yet must buy it anyway; that when they do they must export it at a huge loss or use it themselves, paying 12x what they can make it for themselves, takes the breath away.

This is, however, not an uncommon syndrome affecting politicians called (forgive the technical term) believing your own bullshit. If those seeking the premiership don’t understand the pickle they’ve got us into, God help us.

In fact there’s no evidence that any of them have the faintest idea of what’s involved here.

This is a dramatic turnaround for it was always the NDP whose policy was wrapped up in a one-liner: now the Liberals have no idea of what IPPs arel about and use idiotic statements like “BC needs IPP power to become self sufficient”, whereas the opposite is the case.

BC Hydro’s recent statement of its needs takes the breath away.

Here’s what economist Erik Andersen comments – in summary:

  • Hydro’s financial statements show that its total liabilities have increased by more than 40% at least in the last 3 years
  • As things look from their statements, BC Hydro may be bankrupt by this summer. Of course, it won’t officially go into bankruptcy, as a company in the private sector would under these circumstances, but it does mean that what little independence they have will be gone.
  • Mr. Andersen observes that BC Hydro was forced to buy 8,300 GWH under the Hobson’s choice they face of either exporting the unwanted IPP power at a huge loss or using it instead of their own power at 12x what they can make it for themselves.
  • BC Hydro has always overestimated its needs – Mr Andersen says, “I’m expecting the annual per capita demand by BC only customers to drop from about 11,000 KWh to about 9,000 by 2015. One should note that Mr Andersen’s experience in such matters was learned by preparing demand outlooks for Government of Canada Treasury Board applications in support of new capital projects.
  • Mr Andersen concludes that a recent announcement by BC Hydro that it will seek to raise consumers’ power bills by 50% over the next 5 years “is about deflecting uncomfortable observations and providing a cover for more aggressive borrowing now in the works”. 

Speaking of uncomfortable observations, nowhere in this announcement did Hydro tell us how it’s going to pay the ungodly sums (now estimated at $50+ Billion) to be paid out to IPPs for power it doesn’t need. This scarcely chump change! This is huge – a million dollars times 50 thousand! It will increase as new cozy deals are made by the Liberal government’s favourite campaign donors.

Where the hell is this money to come from?

How can Hydro go to the BC Utilities Commission for enormous rate increases without telling anyone how they’re going to raise this unimaginable money going to the likes of General Electric – no wonder it’s the biggest corporation in the world!

These matters have not occurred, evidently, to those who want to be premier. It has, one might note, occurred to two NDP wannabe premiers John Horgan and Mike Farnworth who, casting aside traditional NDP slogans, have presented platforms that indicate their understanding and solutions to the problems.

This government has got the taxpayers in very deep doo doo indeed and finding the way out will be a challenge for all our citizens.

The sad part is that the Liberal leaders don’t even acknowledge that there’s a problem, much less offer solutions.

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Northwest Transmission Corridor: Alaska Power and the Bleeding of the Northwest

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From TheTyee.ca – Feb 18, 2011

by Christopher Pollon

There’s a sucking sound coming from B.C.’s northwest
corner, barely audible now, but sure to crescendo as the electrical grid
is extended beyond the city of Terrace into a vast copper and gold rich
hinterland after 2013.

The source is the Alaska-B.C. intertie — a scheme planned and feverishly promoted yesterday
in Juneau, Alaska — that would connect the Alaska Panhandle to the
North American power grid through northern British Columbia. (See a map here and the sidebar to this story).

Positioned by Canadian and U.S. federal
governments as a green infrastructure project to combat climate change,
this Alaska-driven plan is paving the way for a new resource haul road
through the Iskut River valley to Alaska tidewater.

Activists and at least four northern B.C.
mayors have warned that Bradfield Road will one day provide a closer and
more economical route to funnel B.C. minerals and timber through U.S.
ports, shifting the axis of trade away from Stewart, Kitimat and Prince Rupert.

Nathan Cullen heard all about the Bradfield Road during his first year as the federal MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley
in 2004. “Some Alaskans approached me and said, ‘Here’s the project,
and we’ll put this road in for free, and we’ll ship all your goods as a
nice courtesy,'” he says. “If anybody offers you anything for free,
especially from Alaska, you should be worried. The idea of cutting off
Canadian ports from being involved in the resource sector is not on, and
we’ll resist it.”

But the Northwest Transmission Line (NTL), (see map here)
when fully built out, will extend the North American grid to within 35
miles of the Alaska-B.C. border. Once the grid connection to Alaska is
established, says Chris Zimmer, a Juneau Alaska-based campaign director
for Rivers Without Borders, a resource haul road to Alaska is next.

“The grid intertie is going to need a
right-of-way and access roads, so the next step is formalizing that road
into a resource haul road,” says Zimmer. “The Bradfield Road is an
Alaskan road designed to drain future resources out of B.C. at a frantic
and unsustainable rate.”

Alaska-BC grid connection moving forward

The B.C. right-of-way for the future Alaska
grid connection is already being explored. In Nov. 2010, the BC
provincial government issued an “investigative use permit”
to North Coast Power Corporation to explore about 25,000 hectares of
Crown land — a long narrow strip of land extending from the future B.C.
grid terminus to the Alaska border (see map. The expressed purpose of the permit was “investigating the feasibility of a utility line intertie between B.C. and Alaska.”

The goal of this intertie, says the Alaska Energy Authority
is to “provide the energy needed for economic development in southeast
Alaska resulting in jobs for Alaskans and providing reliable, less
costly alternatives to diesel generated electricity for Alaskan
communities.”

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EPA Wants to Look at Full Life-Cycle of Fracking in New Study

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Republished from ProPublica.com – Feb 11, 2011

by Nicholad Kusnetz

The EPA has proposed examining every aspect of hydraulic fracturing,
from water withdrawals to waste disposal, according to a draft plan the
agency released Tuesday. If the study goes forward as planned, it would
be the most comprehensive investigation of whether the drilling
technique risks polluting drinking water near oil and gas wells across
the nation.

The agency wants to look at the potential impacts on
drinking water of each stage involved in hydraulic fracturing, where
drillers mix water with chemicals and sand and inject the fluid into
wells to release oil or natural gas. In addition to examining the actual
injection, the study would look at withdrawals, the mixing of the
chemicals, and wastewater management and disposal. The agency, under a
mandate from Congress, will only look at the impact of these practices
on drinking water.

The agency’s scientific advisory board
will review the draft plan on March 7-8 and will allow for public
comments then. The EPA will consider any recommendations from the board
and then begin the study promptly, it said in a news release . A preliminary report should be ready by the end of next year, the release said, with a full report expected in 2014.

A statement from the oil and gas industry group Energy in Depth gave a lukewarm assessment of the draft.

“Our
guys are and will continue to be supportive of a study approach that’s
based on the science, true to its original intent and scope,” the
statement read. “But at first blush, this document doesn’t appear to
definitively say whether it’s an approach EPA will ultimately take.”

The study, announced in March , comes amid rising public concern about the safety of fracking, as ProPublica has been reporting for years. While it remains unclear whether the actual fracturing process has contaminated drinking water, there have been more than 1,000 reports around the country of contamination related to drilling, as we reported in 2008. In September 2010, the EPA warned residents of a Wyoming town
not to drink their well water and to use fans while showering to avoid
the risk of explosion. Investigators found methane and other chemicals
associated with drilling in the water, but they had not determined the
cause of the contamination.

Drillers have been fracking wells for
decades, but with the rise of horizontal drilling into unconventional
formations like shale, they are injecting far more water and chemicals
underground than ever before. The EPA proposal notes that 603 rigs were
drilling horizontal wells in June 2010, more than twice as many as were
operating a year earlier. Horizontal wells can require millions of
gallons of water per well, a much greater volume than in conventional
wells.

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Innergex Announces the Acquisition of Cloudworks Energy and $150 Million Public Equity Offering

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From Marketwire – Feb 14, 2011

Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. (TSX:INE) (“Innergex” or
the “Corporation”) announces that it has entered into a definitive
agreement (the “Agreement”) with the shareholders of Cloudworks Energy
Inc. (“Cloudworks”) to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares
of Cloudworks (the “Acquisition”). Pursuant to the Agreement, and
subject to certain adjustments, Cloudworks will be purchased for an
aggregate consideration of $185 million (the “Purchase Price”),
approximately $ 145.7 million of which will be payable in cash (the
“Cash Consideration”) and approximately $39.3 million of which will be
payable by the issuance, by way of private placement, of common shares
of the Corporation. In addition to the Purchase Price, the vendors will
be entitled to receive conditional deferred payments. The conditional
deferred payments provide for a potential sharing of the value created
if the Cloudworks assets perform better than expected and would result
in incremental accretion to Innergex, net of these payments.

Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia and founded in
2000, Cloudworks currently employs 30 people. Cloudworks’ portfolio of
assets consists of an interest of 50.01% in six run-of-river
hydroelectric facilities having a combined gross installed capacity of
150 MW (the “Harrison Operating Facilities”); full ownership of 76 MW of
run-of-river hydroelectric projects under development with 40-year
power purchase agreements (“PPAs”) (the “Cloudworks Development
Projects”); and full ownership of run-of-river hydroelectric projects in
various stages of development having a potential aggregate installed
capacity of over 800 MW (the “Cloudworks Prospective Projects”).

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The Numbers Don’t Lie: We Don’t Need More Private Power

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Sooner or later the truth must come out. Clearly it must be from outside the government and BC Hydro – and it sure as hell isn’t going to come from the mainstream media.

Let me lay this out clearly – either what The Common Sense Canadian says is true or it isn’t. We’ve laid out the facts and taken our message around the province and are about to start another tour. The numbers tell us that thousands of you are seeing what we do and your response has been fantastic.

We don’t just tell you what comes into our heads – we rely upon the best experts in the business. We are a-political in the sense that we don’t support any political party but we sure as hell will support any party with a chance to form a government that wants to save our province from those who steal our resources and take them and the profits away to faraway places.

Yes, I’m speaking of the foreign fish farmers and the foreign or at best huge Canadian companies who are ruining our rivers to make power for California and pocketing all the profits at no cost to themselves. Indeed the harshest fact is that in both cases we help fund these predators.

There were two news items recently that in days gone by would have had newspapers and TV stations raising supreme hell. In fact they are, at best, printed in a small corner of the business pages.

BC Hydro’s financing of Independent Power Producers took another two astonishing turns.

Until now, if an IPP wanted to dam our rivers – yes they are dams – and the project size was under 10 Megawatts, they could do so free of any public process or environmental assessment. Just pay the peppercorn license fee and away you went with the equivalent of a never-ending winning lottery ticket in your hand.

Now BC Hydro (for which read the Campbell government) intends to raise the limit to 15 Megawatts – by no means a “small”, “run-of-river” project!

That’s a 50% hike in size for thieves trashing our rivers, forcing BC Hydro to go further in the hole for power that is exported to the undiminished profit of the likes of General Electric and without any environmental concerns and without the slightest input from the public!

This power isn’t for us – when Pinocchio Campbell tells us this is for our energy needs he’s laughing he’s bullshitting us. This government mocks us at The Common Sense Canadian and laughs – but whether we win this fight or lose, CSC and all who support us can carry their heads high for doing our best to save what’s left of our province.

But there’s more. Hydro also intends to offer these offshore leeches a raise of between 14-29% for this already astronomical power!

This is like the bailed-out banks paying million dollar bonuses to the people who got them in trouble in the first place! BC Hydro is forced to pay even more ransom to these bastards who send power to Hydro when it doesn’t need it. Most of these projects provide the bulk of their power during the Spring
run-off, when our reservoirs are full and our power needs at their
lowest. So Hydro must either export it at a huge loss or use it instead of power they make themselves at as little as a 1/12th the cost!

Good God, folks, when is enough enough?

You want a little more sleight-of-hand?

The government, through BC Hydro, is telling us we need a lot more power. Now remember, whatever their power needs, they are not going to get it from IPPs. It’s easy to think that if we need more power, that IPPs are the answer but that’s palpably false.

I told you we have top-notch advisors. Erik Andersen, is one of them. He’s an economist who follows these issues closely and he has a report on this edition of the website which I urge you to read.

Put simply, BC Hydro has, as is their history, grossly inflated the power needs of this province. They did this 30 years ago when I was in government and they always have. It’s sort of a shield against falling short of the needs but now they have outdone themselves, as Mr. Andersen’s figures demonstrate.

Moreover, anyone with half a brain can see that the demands will be far less than Hydro says for at least two reasons:

1.   Industrial demand will continue to diminish, in real terms, because we are in a long-term downturn in the economy worldwide and the likelihood is that it will get worse.

2.   Conservation is no longer some pie in the sky word only used in “feel good” speeches but is, and more and more, becoming an important reality. Hydro’s own 2007 Energy Conservation Potential Review report found that we could save enough electricity through serious conservation by 2026 to power 1.4 million homes (close to a third of our total current electricity demands)

Here, then, is where the Campbell government has got us:

1.   Private power destroying our rivers and the ecologies that depend upon them.

2.   The power they create is not needed by BC Hydro

3.   BC Hydro must take that power or pay for it – now at rates 14-29% more for this new purchase program. The bank has called the robber back to tell him he missed a safe and here’s the money he forgot.

4.   This means Hydro must export the power at a huge loss or use it when it can make its own power at 1/12th the cost on its heritage dams

5.   The environmental assessment, when it’s mandated, is a bad joke and more and more IPPs will dam rivers without any environmental assessment

6.   When the government says it’s doing all this for BC energy self sufficiency, for the reasons above, they’re lying through their teeth.

7.   BC Hydro has consistently made a profit sending a very substantial dividend to the government for hospital, schools and social services. Going bankrupt, it can no longer do that.

8.   Never mind, folks, you’ll get your dividend after all as Hydro will substantially raise its rates to you so they can pay that dividend!

The Liberal leadership hopefuls will not whisper a word about this and one can only hope that the NDP candidates make an issue out of it. Or maybe a third party will emerge.

Either what we’re saying is right or wrong – if we’re wrong, we should be challenged by the Campbell government with hard facts but that’s an unknown policy in their book; Moreover, their long silence tells us we’re spot on; if right, the government must abandon the policy, make the IPP contracts public and do its best to restore and protect our environment.

If the government persists we, and I mean all of us, must consider taking direct action.

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