We have to stop dithering about looming power shortage

COMMENT:The editorial writers at the Sun are frustrated that as the years go by, Hydro regularly forecasts outrageous electricity demand growth, but somehow never gets around to building any new capacity to meet that growth.

The editors put the blame squarely at the feet of the dithering Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, Richard Neufeld.

Our fear, however, is that Minister Neufeld's only dithering now is how to pass a big coal-fired generation plant into the energy mix. He stomped on BC Hydro last December, on its first attempt to release the 2006 IEP. That report was widely expected to recommend Site C as the centrepiece, on a table set with mostly green smaller projects.

The revised, government-approved IEP, released this week, is non-committal, and is as open to a big coal future as it is to Site C. Hydro says, we'll do whatever Cabinet decides. The Sun says, whatever, just get on with it.

It will be government's day soon, to issue the marching orders. Steel yourself, Minister Neufeld. Coal is not the right answer, no matter how strong the industrial lobby is for cheap power, nor how much money and influence Teck Cominco et al can bring to bear.

Editorial
Vancouver Sun
01-Apr-2006

So we're running out of electricity. What else is new?

The much-delayed release of BC Hydro's 2006 Integrated Electricity Plan tells an old story: There's a crunch coming in British Columbia over the next few years due to the fact that we added no significant new generating capacity in a generation.

In 10 years, the B.C. advantage of cheap and stable electricity will be a distant memory if we don't act now to ensure it continues.

In the report, Hydro sagely tells us that what is at stake now is not just the risk of falling short, of brownouts during supper time on cold winter nights, and secure supplies for industry. What's at stake is the ability to ensure that future generations can enjoy our standard of living.

It's a message worth heeding. What we're not sure of, however, is whether either BC Hydro or the provincial government is really listening.

In 1995, Hydro produced a forecast that predicted a doubling in demand over 20 years. Two years ago, under the new structure set up by the Liberal government, the utility produced an Integrated Electricity Plan that had much the same message.

The result two years later is that the projected gap between supply and demand is getting wider and it's not clear that we are any closer to building significant new capacity.

It would not be fair to suggest that nothing is being done, only that nothing useful is being accomplished.

In the past two years we have seen the shameful and expensive collapse of the Duke Point generating project on Vancouver Island at a cost of $120 million up front and untold millions more in future contracts as potential private sector partners build in larger cushions to protect themselves from similar mismanagement when they are bidding on BC Hydro projects.

Hydro managers have not been helped by the lack of determination on the part of Victoria to deal with this very real pending shortfall.

Energy Minister Richard Neufeld seems concerned that the public does not understand that we are already net importers of electricity in some years, the fact that lends urgency to the need to invest in new generating facilities.

But it not clear that he has been able to persuade his cabinet colleagues of the need to get started now on projects that because of their size will take years to develop.

Yes, the public has to understand that the legacy of secure, cheap power left by W.A.C. Bennett has all but been used up in terms of its ability to serve our growing province.

But unless BC Hydro can persuade potential private sector partners that it is really interested and able to do business, unless the government, which controls BC Hydro, is prepared to provide the leadership needed to get controversial projects such as Site C on the Peace River on track, no real progress is going to be made.

Sure, the demand forecasts are just that: Forecasts. We may not need as much power in future years. We may need more.

Either way, we are at capacity now and the one thing we know for sure is that every year we dither our prospects of maintaining the B.C. electricity advantage get that much dimmer.