Climate Change

Power PlantShrinking glaciers, mountain pine beetle epidemics, droughts, floods and even changing salmon routes all have something in common: climate change. The combination of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses (GHG) being pumped into the atmosphere has resulted in the earth’s climate changing—rapidly.

At times, the sheer magnitude of the problem can seem overwhelming.

How do we successfully address climate change?

In North America, almost 85 percent of our energy consumption comes from dirty fossil fuels including petroleum and coal. If we are to reverse the effects of climate change, we must break our dependency on fossil fuels and move towards the production and consumption of clean, renewable energy sources.

Fortunately, in British Columbia we have a significant geographic advantage in manufacturing green energy because of our diverse and abundant natural resources. The province’s mountainous terrain and numerous bodies of water create ideal conditions to produce hydroelectricity, while the weather systems along BC’s coast are ideal for the generation of wind energy.

Unfortunately, however, there’s trouble in paradise. In 2002, the provincial government stopped BC Hydro, our Crown Corporation, from developing any new sources of clean green energy. The government arbitrarily decreed that any new production of wind energy, biofuel, or hydroelectricity must come exclusively from the private sector. This policy is fraught with problems.

In this era of climate change and the damage associated with fossil fuels, clean renewable energy is literally worth its weight in gold. By handing over control of this valuable resource to the private sector we are severely constraining the ability of our provincial government, through BC Hydro, to achieve policy objectives—particularly conservation—to address climate change.

Private power producers have little incentive to promote conservation since doing so erodes their bottom line. BC Hydro, on the other hand, can actively encourage conservation because it is mandated to act in the interest of the public good, rather than from a narrow profit-oriented perspective. Similarly, with the value associated with clean, green energy, private power producers will have the right to set their own prices once their contract period with BC Hydro expires; in a competitive market, the price of energy would likely soar, and the impact would be most deeply felt by residential customers. Only through maintaining BC Hydro as a Crown Corporation can we ensure the development of clean, renewable sources of energy—for the environment rather than for profit—and ensure the provision of secure and affordable power to British Columbians.

Our ability to successfully tackle climate change will be severely constrained if we give away the competitive and social policy advantage we have with BC Hydro. For more than four decades, BC Hydro has been responsive to the public’s needs: providing us with energy security, public accountability, and billions of dollars in revenue for investment in the province’s other social programs and services. It has the capacity to address climate change through the promotion of conservation and through the production of clean, green energy.

In an era of environmental uncertainty and resource depletion, it is both precarious and short-sighted to turn renewable energy development over to the private sector. The durable marriage between the public good and the production of renewable energy has served the province well in the past, and now—more than ever—we need it to serve us well in the future.

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