Category: BC Hydro

What’s good for the BC Liberals may not be good for BC Hydro

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Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett announced a five-year, $300 million hydro bill deferment plan for 13 mines owned by six companies.Never mind that B.C. Hydro is already grappling with its own deferral problems to the tune of $5 billion. Make no mistake, there’s a price to pay when B.C. Hydro becomes a political arm of government. The intertwining of self-interests gets complicated, while the interests of ratepayers can take a backseat to political interests. Three of the six companies in Bennett’s deal were highlighted in a December Financial Post article, “Debt risks mount as Canada’s base metal miners sink deep in the hole.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

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What’s really wrong is that BC Hydro has been spending billions on new capacity but producing less power. Demand has not grown since 2005 but purchases from IPPs, between FY 2005 and FY 2015, rose 108% from 6,444 GWh to 13,377. The purchasing is up again in 2016, by about 11%. The cost of IPP power was almost $500 million more in FY 2015 than in 2013.

When you’re determined to reward IPP friends but have too much power and no profitable export markets, you shut down your own low-cost operations…

Time for action

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A reader comment in a preceding article: We all have to be ‘shovel ready’ for the upcoming election and ‘Turf the Liberals’.There will be massive 1%er sponsored support and corporate funded advertorials […]

Pants on fire

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Before the last election, Premier Clark justified BC Hydro rate increases as a “common sense decision” that would enable the private/public utility to pay off the billions in its deferred accounts. “People […]

Forces of Know

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Site C Is a Climate-Change Disaster, Says Suzuki, Mychaylo Prystupa, The Tyee, February 23, 2016: Flooding valuable farmland to build the Site C dam undermines Canada’s commitment to meet international climate-change targets, […]