B.C. Hydro plan alarms air-quality officials

Bid to boost electricity output at aging thermal plant in Port Moody would greatly increase greenhouse-gas emissions, regulators say

JUSTINE HUNTER
Globe and Mail
June 16, 2008

VICTORIA -- Metro Vancouver's air-quality officials are prepared to rewrite B.C. Hydro's pollution licence if it goes ahead with a plan to dramatically increase operations at its Burrard thermal generating plant in Port Moody.

A plan filed last week with Hydro's regulators seeks approval to boost the aging gas-fired power plant's annual output of electricity - along with the cocktail of pollutants it spews into Metro Vancouver's air - to six times the current level.

Company officials immediately played down their own 2008 long-term acquisition plan. Hydro wants the plan approved only to keep its options open in case the power is needed at any time over the next 11 years, the officials said.

However Ray Robb, air-quality district director for Metro Vancouver, is concerned because the plan suggests the Burrard Generating Station, which now operates only in periods of peak demand, would once again become a base source of Hydro's electricity production.
Print Edition - Section Front

Section S Front Enlarge Image
The Globe and Mail

At full capacity, the thermal plant is the largest single source of greenhouse-gas emissions in British Columbia, with a measurable impact on Metro Vancouver's air quality.

"Nothing in B.C. Hydro's permit now would prevent them from doing this. We'll have to consider whether something should prevent them," Mr. Robb said in an interview. As the official who hands out air-pollution permits for Metro Vancouver, he will be asking for a meeting with the authors of the plan to find out what they really mean.

Any increase from current levels would flow against Metro Vancouver's - and British Columbia's - greenhouse-gas emission targets.

Hydro's director of energy planning, Cam Matheson, said his report - which has been filed with the B.C. Utilities Commission for approval - does not spell any change in the Burrard plant's current operations.

Hydro is asking the commission to approve a plan to rely on the plant, for planning purposes, for 3,000 gigawatt hours a year of firm energy.

"B.C. Hydro's current plan is that Burrard must be capable of reliably providing its capacity and energy capability at least through 2019," it says.

Although the document describes changing the station's status from a "swing plant" for occasional peak use to a "base load plant" that would churn out a steady supply of energy, Mr. Matheson said that's not the intention.

"There's no intention of making Burrard thermal a base load plant," he said. "Burrard is essentially an insurance policy."

Mr. Matheson said Hydro is adopting one scenario of the four that were drafted by consultants. It's the "compromise" option that would run the facility at half of its full capacity, which can produce 6,000 gigawatt hours of energy per year. It's still enough that the Crown corporation anticipates it will have to buy carbon offsets starting in 2010 when the province's greenhouse-gas reduction targets come into force.

The Burrard plant has attracted many opponents over the years, including Premier Gordon Campbell, who vowed, during the 2001 election campaign, to mothball it. Instead Hydro has lowered its dependence on the facility since 2001, using it only as a "swing plant" for peak demand that has produced an average of 500 gigawatt hours of power annually.

The public might accept increased production to 3,000 gigawatt hours per year - a measure Hydro calls its social licence - because it has operated at that level as recently as 2001, the plan states.

In 2001, just months before he became Premier, Mr. Campbell said the health risks posed by the plant's operations were unacceptable.

"Burrard Thermal plant is one of the largest single-point producers of pollution in the Lower Mainland's air shed that exists. It creates health problems for people in the province. ... One of our objectives should be to have Burrard Thermal shut down."