A one-day return trip from the lower mainland to Victoria had us leaving North Vancouver about 5:30 am. That put us in the Tsawwassen terminal early enough to confirm our reservation for […]
Day tripping
Unprepared, ill-equipped
Despite massive disruption to the entire province, John Horgan’s government has made no change to its policies of promoting fossil fuels with lax regulation and multi-billion dollar industry supports. It continues to employ climate change deniers in senior positions. British Columbia remains North America’s leading coal exporter. The BC NDP has admitted no failures in its current strategies. Instead of substantive policy changes to protect the ecosystem. It seems to believe the only actions needed are saturation advertising campaigns that play fast and loose with the truth.
Hippocratic oath for policing
Sgt. Jeremiah P. Johnson of the Darien Connecticut Police Department responded to a discussion about the policing industry having its own Hippocratic Oath. Given the extent of misconduct now revealed in North America, this is worthy of wider attention…
IPP losses about $800 million in 2016
Despite the flat demand for power, BC Hydro is not only buying more private power, its capital spending program is out of control. As a result, despite a reduction in sales to BC customers since 2005, the utility’s assets in 2016 are 256% of the total eleven years ago. With Site C and other major capital projects, we can expect assets to grow by another 15-20 billion dollars in the near future. BC Hydro’s politicized management, under directions from Victoria, are hiding bad news with accounting trickery and, while they’ve increased the average price to residential and business consumers by 74% since 2005, the rates must rise significantly or the province must reverse the flow of cash from the public treasury to the accounts of BC Hydro.
2005→2016 IPP purchases ↑↑ $835m ↑↑
BC Hydro has three particularly important types of customers. These consumers, all inside British Columbia, are categorized as: Residential, Commercial and light industry, Heavy industry. There are others outside the province but BC […]
$4.9 billion extra generated by IPPs, updated
BC Hydro has been managed to deliver billions of dollars in benefits to independent power producers. Had IPPs been left to sell their product to the same free market that BC Hydro trades into, they would have gained 4.9 billion fewer revenue dollars since 2003.
BC Liberals delivered $9 billion to IPPs
In the last five years, the delivery of cash to IPPs totaled $4.6 billion. If the established trend continues, the amount will be $8.3 billion in the next five years. Amounts flowing to IPPs and the necessary write-off of more than $6 billion in deferred costs means in the next five years, consumers will pay rates 60% higher than they’ve paid in the last five years. In addition, more than $10 billion dollars is committed to Site C and BC Hydro has been spending over $2 billion a year on capital expenditures. Without profitable new markets – none are anticipated – the 60% price rise for electricity could be 100% in the foreseeable future.
How did we get into this IPP mess?
Politicians assumed that power demand would grow and prices rise so they readily agreed to BC Hydro purchase contracts that were decades long with annual price escalation tied to inflation. They carelessly assumed the arrangements would be beneficial to all. However, what private industry achieved was guaranteed sales with guaranteed profits. All of the financial risks were carried by the public.
IPPs received $672 million above market price in 2015
I’ve been reviewing more than 20 years of BC Hydro records and they show gradual growth in electrical demand until 2005. Subsequently, there has been no demand growth; in 2015, domestic power sales were lower than ten years before. What did grow were Hydro’s purchases of electricity from independent power producers. In calendar year 2006, 5,636 GWh supplied by IPPs cost $368 million (6.5¢/KWh); in 2015, 14,418 GWh cost Hydro $1,217 million (8.4¢/KWh).
A 155% increase in the volume of IPP purchases is alarming by itself given the lack of need for it but the average unit price has been rising steadily. In the 4th quarter of 2015, IPP unit prices were 9.2% higher than the preceding quarter. To accommodate power coming into the system, BC Hydro had to choose between shutting down their own capacity or dumping power in markets outside BC at well below cost…
Yes Bill, you are ill equipped
Answering for Liberal policy is for Liberal politicians. It is not the role of a news reporter or commentator.
Bill Good, you are supposed to give politicians a forum to discuss and explain public policy while you hold their feet to the fire, asking questions about issues they want to skate around. You should be an informed and non-partisan interrogator, a seeker of information about all sides of a story. You should not be an advocate trying to advance the causes or policies that fit your worldview or the people for whom you hold sympathy…
Tax avoidance, crippled services, monster deficits
“The Republicans have got the facts backward. A rising tide definitely raises all boats. They somehow believe that rising boats raise all tides.” William O. Beeman, commenting on Bill, Barack and Us […]
Taxpayers carry financial risks for IPPs
Through idiocy or corruption, the public utility has been forced to buy electricity it did not and does not need, some of it at prices five times market.,,
Would-be skippers on the Ship of Fools
The day before making her official presidential campaign announcement, in Waterloo, Iowa, Michele Bachmann, who was born and grew up in Waterloo before moving to Minnesota, told Fox News, “John Wayne was […]
David Hahn skippered the M.V. Deficiencies
More worthwhile reading today at The Tyee, from investigative reporter Andrew MacLeod, a fine journalist who does not work in an echo chamber rewriting background papers issued by flacks working for government […]
Drain the alpine lake IPPs – Replay
An item first published in August 2011, repeated because it demonstrates that small hydro power projects are not benign. A regular reader informs me (and people in the msm) about issues surrounding […]
"Not a single word" about the IPP billions to BC Liberal pals
‘Canadian Canary’, an always intelligent contributor in the blogosphere, left this comment on my CBC story. It deserves prominence so I am reposting the comment on its own: Canadian Canary said… “Stephen […]
Douglas, Lewis, Broadbent, and Layton spinning in their graves?
This item, contributed by a reader, comments upon BC Hydro now offering a ten to fifteen billion dollar commitment to private power producers. This continues Gordon Campbell’s aim of twenty years ago: PRIVATIZATION BY STEALTH.
Eye in the sky
MethaneSAT is equipped with advanced sensing technology that allows it to precisely identify methane emissions at oil and gas sites across the globe. The satellite was launched on March 4 and its data will be available to the public free of charge later in 2024…
Bendelormøkonomi, the tapeworm economy
Star columnist Armine Yalnizyan wrote about the tapeworm economy that emerges when governments finance private corporations to deliver services to the public. She says it “like introducing a parasite that slowly robs the body of nutrients and destroys its organs.”
Responding to a super-rich plutocrat
Regular IN-SIGHTS reader Ken Holowanky wrote a letter to the Times Colonist in response to a diatribe by Gwyn Morgan, a man called “Shale Gas Baron” in The Tyee’s headline for a 2011 article by Andrew Nikiforuk. With the letter writer’s permission, I will repeat the it. But first, a little about Gwyn Morgan…
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