Mark Jaccard, recently appointed Chair and CEO of the BC Utilities Commission, argued in 2017 for Site C, when BC could have stopped the project and saved about $15 billion. Jaccard said that supporters of other renewables did not account for dispatchability, which he claimed was a key obstacle to using alternatives.
Dispatchable generation refers to sources of electricity that can be programmed on demand, according to market needs.
People expecting pockets to bulge from the Site C megaproject asserted that less destructive energy sources were unworkable in British Columbia.
The world has proven them wrong.
According to non-profit Rocky Mountain Institute, fast growth will lead to a tripling in solar and wind generation by 2030, with annual production of more than 14,000 terawatt hours (TWh). That is about three hundred times the hydropower produced by BC Hydro in fiscal year 2023.
Wind and solar are variable renewable energy (VRE) sources made dependable when integrated with storage systems such as batteries or hydro reservoirs. At the time BC Liberals began construction of Site C, 91 percent of BC Hydro’s internal capacity was hydropower. BC NDP continued dam building in 2017 and the utility’s hydropower capacity was then 98 percent. It is 99 percent in 2023.
As a result, British Columbia is and has been well positioned to use wind and solar energy. When available, variable power sources can add electricity to the grid and save potential hydropower for when VRE production is less than optimal.
BC Hydro’s goal should be to provide low cost, environmentally friendly, and reliable electricity to the province’s consumers. Site C fails to deliver all three qualities.
- The new Peace River dam will create electricity at three times to five times the per KWh price of alternatives.
- No megaproject is environmentally friendly when it will release methane, flood the province’s best northern farmland, inundate the Peace River with toxic metals, and submerge culturally important lands.
- Reliability is at risk because the sixty-metres tall earthfill dam is constructed on unstable ground and reliant on water flows that seem to have been reducing gradually over past 25 years.
On the day this is written, almost 100,000 BC Hydro customers suffered power outages. This led to closure of businesses and schools and disrupted lives. The province could be spending money on making distribution of electricity more resilient, but the corporation’s leadership prefers less mundane activities.
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Categories: Power Generation, Site C
in-sights.ca 
Jaccard was the author and executioner of BC Carbon Tax, which was nothing to do with Climate Change and global warming, rather it was all about replacing lost revenues from reduced taxes to the wealthy by then Premier Gordan Campbell.
Jaccard has much veracity as Vladimir Putin.
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I followed RMI / Amory along with the last great President the USA had which
was Jimmy Cater back in the early eighties. Carter was the first President to
put solar panels on the White house. Regan later took them down.
Yes we need to greatly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and move as quickly
as possible to renewals. One of the big players is wind. I have enclosed a
somewhat dated 2011 link on a study suggesting the outside limit of generated
wind power that can be achieved and the potential unintended climate consequences we may experience as we ramp up. Their is a power limit to what can be captured. This finite characteristic limit may also be in play in some of our other renewable power generating investigations.
Click to access esd-2-1-2011.pdf
The article is highly technical but the possible conclusion is worth considering
in our demand for increasing renewable power generation.
It was the statement ” According to non-profit Rocky Mountain Institute, fast growth will lead to a tripling in solar and wind generation by 2030″ that really
got my attention as it suggests how we may avoid these potential finite road blocks.
Yes..fast growth
needs to be curtailed. Infinite growth is not sustainable with finite
potential to generate power from various renewable resources. Unintended
climate consequences may certainly add to what we are already experiencing.
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I had a discussion with a friend of mine who knows Jaccard fairly well…I had made a point with my friend (a lawyer) that Jim Mattison and Harry Swain were, at the very start of the joint review panel hearings, somewhat unconvinced that Site C was needed at that time…My friend went on to describe Jaccard’s point of view which was largely supportive of the development of another dam on the Peace for curious reasons and largely based on demand side management and pricing. (There’s a letter from Swain on file at https://aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p63919/96013E.pdf that deals with the panels thoughts at the very start of the hearing process)
Would Jaccard have been so supportive (at that time) had he anticipated the cost increases, delays and problems which have since accumulated around the dam?
In fact, I think the Joint Review Panel’s somewhat tepid ‘approval’ of Hydro’s plan was highly conditional AND couched in language that depended upon the project being ‘cost effective’ even though they were not convinced of the actual ‘demand’ for the energy production of the completed dam.
Given the current situation and the increasing effects of climate change on stream flows it may well be that even that ‘conditional’ approval – were it required now – would not have been forthcoming.
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It was definitely a tepid approval. The Commission panel recommended a submission to the BC Utilities Commission from Hydro and a determination through that panel concerning Hydro’s justification for the dam. The ability of the BCUC to conduct that hearing wasn’t tested until the NDP asked them to review a very limited portion of relevant material. The Commission tried to do that with insufficient resources and still came out saying that there was better options.
The BCUC needs a renewal, to go back to its original mandate and capability.
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Isn’t this a ‘return’ to his old job? I believe Jaccard served as Chairman and CEO of the BCUC from 1992 until 1997.
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Correct
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