PEOPLE POWER is a six-chaper 50 minute DVD designed to help activists launch grassroots community-based campaigns to protect public power and the environment.
OpEd: BC Utilities Commission pulls the plug on private power
Posted August 3rd, 2009
After examining the evidence from almost a full year of hearings, the government’s own independent regulatory body determined that the LTAP was “not in the public interest.”
Without a doubt, the BCUC ruling represents a fundamental challenge to the government’s Energy Plan, which called for the province to achieve energy “self-sufficiency” and “insurance” of supply through the purchase of large quantities of electricity. To realize these objectives, the Plan prohibited BC Hydro from generating any new sources of energy (excluding Site C, presently part of a five year review process) and, instead, directed its Crown utility to negotiate long-term Energy Purchase Agreements with private power producers.
To date, BC Hydro has negotiated more than $30 billion in contracts—the specific terms and conditions guarded in secrecy—to purchase electricity for the province at rates that dramatically exceed market prices ($80 - $125 per megawatt hour).
The result has been a manufactured competitive energy market and soaring electricity costs for residential consumers. Over and above the three percent increase implemented last April, followed by a two-tiered rate structure applied in October, the provincial budget proposes an additional 21 percent increase over the next three years.
Not surprisingly, following the May provincial election, the Liberal government interpreted their third consecutive leadership win as a license proceed in their plans to privatize BC’s electricity sector—in spite of widespread opposition by community and environmental groups, First Nations, and tens of thousands of citizens.
Yet now there is a very real possibility that the BCUC ruling could seriously hinder the provincial government’s privatization agenda.
John Calvert, Simon Fraser University professor and author of Liquid Gold: Energy Privatization in British Columbia, remarked that the BCUC decision raises legitimate concerns about the government’s unrealistically high projections of future electricity requirements and its direction to BC Hydro to meet these projections by purchasing more and more electricity from private power developers. It also calls into question the underlying economics of the BC Energy Plan.
“The government should not be forcing ratepayers to subsidize the construction of private power projects by requiring BC Hydro to sign outrageously expensive long-term Energy Purchase Agreements,” Calvert said. “We don’t need this energy and will end up selling it at a fraction of its cost on the international energy market—with ratepayers covering the loss.”
In spite of the BCUC ruling, it’s unlikely that private power sector will give up without a fight. Mounting a collective response to the decision, the private power lobby—some even masquerading as environmentalists—have trivialized the findings of the Commission based on a facile analysis of climate change and continue to disregard the severe cumulative environmental impacts associated with the construction of river diversion projects.
Instead, they portray themselves as the great green hopes—stewards of BC’s precious natural resources and innovators of climate change solutions—even while their profit-driven motives are entirely transparent. Perhaps they misunderstand that the colour of money does not qualify as “green.”
Ultimately, the provincial government will need to seriously examine the content of the BCUC ruling with respect to their energy policy. Essentially, they are left with two options: either accept the decision of the Commission and concentrate their efforts on conservation and public renewable energy projects that are actually needed, or disregard their own independent regulatory body altogether in order to further advance their privatization agenda. As a government elected by the people of this province, one can only hope that that they will act—as the BCUC has—in the public’s interest.
Melissa Davis is the Executive Director of BC Citizens for Public Power.
www.citizensforpublicpower.ca
in
Georgia Straight
August 3, 2009
www.straight.com