Despite flat electricity demand since 2005, BC Hydro increased dollar value of IPP purchases by 185%, added 17% to its own generating capacity and bumped total assets from 12 to 38 billion dollars and is spending 15+ billion more on capital expenditures…
Electricity ratepayers, mostly residents and small to medium sized businesses, suffer because of failures by politicians and major media. The public was badly informed and that has enabled losses that will ultimately measure in the tens of billions of dollars. This should be British Columbia’s largest ever political scandal but the people responsible for it will never be held to account. On the contrary, the scoundrels have departed or will one day retire in unsullied comfort…
The $12 billion utility delivered more power to its BC residential and business consumers in calendar year 2005 than the now $38 billion utility delivered in 2019…
You will find evidence at In-Sights proving government policies and subsidies have cut public revenue from petroleum and natural gas producers to a tiny fraction of what it once was. This despite substantial increases in natural gas production. But, gas producers have hands in our pockets in less obvious ways…
Right now they’re destroying two amazing landmarks on the river, tall rock pillars called “The Gates” in an attempt to cut a channel of the river off and use the rock for their mad earthworks. We hear that even locals who support the dam are becoming restive when they see the profligate throwing around of money and environmental destruction…
Unless major changes occur at BC’s public utility—something the Horgan Government seems determined to avoid—the 60-year-old company’s death spiral will advance.
Serious storm clouds lie ahead. The only customers that create positive cash flow for BC Hydro are the residential, light industrial and commercial consumers. Political commitments have been made to sell power to heavy industry, including oil and gas operators, at a fraction of the average price BC Hydro is paying to buy electricity. That means individuals and small business operators will be paying ever increasing electricity prices because someone has to pay for corporate incompetence and it won’t be managers or customers with political influence…
Today, Premier Horgan gave Energy Minister Michelle Mungall a new job, replacing her with Bruce Ralston. I am encouraged, anticipating (perhaps naively) that leadership of the department responsible for BC Hydro and […]
Most business managers are drawn to new low-price means of production, particularly when costs of innovations are trending steadily downward and costs of conventional methods are rising. Not at BC Hydro.
In the preceding article, I suggested BC Hydro was a sinking ship, ineptly managed. Numbers taken from 25 years of annual reports provide the evidence…
The 40% demand growth over 20 years is a fantasy spun for so long that it is baked into BC Hydro’s DNA. No surprise. Not spending billions of dollars to expand a system with stable demand would leave more than a handful of affluent folks looking for work.
For decades, BC Hydro’s leadership has been predicting demand for electricity in BC will grow about 40% in 20 years. The utility continues to misinform citizens of the province even though sales records reveal something far different…
Every young person is taught that willingness to fail is empowering and roads to success are built atop failures. Such precepts are generally true but it is also accurate to say death-dealing disasters are usually reckless failures from which nothing good comes. Italian engineers were incautious when they chose to build a dam where the slopes of Monte Toc were unstable. Two thousand people died in the disaster that followed…
Billions of dollars in the accounts of vested interests instead of the pockets of residents and SMEs. That’s will be the outcome after Clark Liberals and Horgan’s NDP greenlighted Site C, a $12 billion dam, which BC residential and SME consumers do not and will not need.
Political and power industry insiders dictated terms for the original IPP schemes but corporate inertia keeps them alive. BC NDP enjoyed the short-lasting attention paid Ken Davidson’s ZAPPED report since it highlighted BC Liberal incompetence or malfeasance. But, the expose was quickly put into storage. Business continues largely as before. It’s only the public’s money…
BC Hydro’s 2019 Annual Service Plan Report shows the quantity of electricity sold to residential, commercial and industrial customers in BC is still flat. The value of 2019 sales is increased by BC Hydro’s $1.2 billion purchase of Teck’s majority interest in the Waneta dam, a generating site on the Columbia River southeast of Trail. Power produced at Waneta still goes to Teck but, since the dam is now 100% publicly owned, all electricity produced there becomes a BC Hydro sale…
In BC Hydro’s most recent annual report, the company promised “one of the largest expansions of electrical infrastructure in British Columbia’s history.” To gain approval for massive spending, BC Hydro doctored load forecasts, issuing a steady stream of pronouncements about demand increases…
I’ve argued on this website that BC Hydro’s ratepayers are victims of corporate inertia. The company continues to do what it properly did for its first 45 years. Unfortunately, now 58 years old, the company’s failure to adapt puts it on a path of destruction.
Years ago, SFU Professor and private power promoter Mark Jaccard assured us “independent power producers who will lose their shirts — not ours – – if they get it wrong.” In his 2018 retrospective report, government finance expert Ken Davidson concluded that somebody got it wrong but definitely not the independent power producers.
Throughout that time, I couldn’t understand why the obvious insanity of costly private power programs didn’t raise the ire of many citizens. For that, I lay a large part of the blame on radio and Press Gallery pundits. Some had personal interests affecting their points of view and some believed that health of the business coalition party ranked above the public interest.
The thought occurs to me that irrationality begins with the entry into politics, when every tenet and scruple bends toward…
[…] Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter. He is a professor emeritus of…
The band continues to play and drinks continue to be served while the Titanic sinks.
I think the answer to your question Pat is that it evidently has to get really bad before our political…
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[…] Gas production in BC increased by 264% between 2025 and 2000. We might expect that government revenues would rise…