B.C. must stop taking electricity for granted

This province's salad days of energy production are ending, unless some significant new energy-producing projects are built. That's part of the message contained in BC Hydro's new Integrated Energy Plan, a report that sketches a 20-year plan to solve this province's increasing reliance on imported energy.

Our wonderful network of hydro dams has given us clean and cheap energy for years. Even though some grumble when our hydro rates increase slightly, the fact is we enjoy much lower electricity costs than most other jurisdictions.

We have also been spared the brownouts that hit California so hard in the late 1990s and knocked out power to the northeast several summers ago. While other states and provinces have aging, inefficient power plants, we have benefited from those massive dams on the Peace and Columbia rivers.

But the clock is now ticking.

Those precious dams are now almost 50 years old, and simply don't generate enough power to meet our energy needs. This is not a sudden development - in fact, BC Hydro has been a net importer of energy for the past five years.

And unless significant developments occur, British Columbia could be relying on imported electricity for almost half of all our energy needs 20 years from now. Such a situation would leave us vulnerable to inflated market prices for electricity, and at the mercy of energy shortages that occur well outside our boundaries.

So what is to be done?

Well, the first thing BC Hydro is trying to foster is a debate out there in communities, asking what choices people want to make to protect and improve our energy supply. This is not an easy problem to solve. Who wants to build another massive hydro dam? Can such a project even occur, given the tremendous hurdles - sticky environmental approval processes at both the provincial and federal levels, and the unresolved issue of native land claims - that now exist and weren't in place when W.A.C. Bennett built our network of dams?

What about nuclear power? It was fashionable to condemn such power as dangerous back in the 1970s, but have attitudes changed on that front? Or what of alternative power sources, such as wind generation?

It's safe to say that no matter what the energy source is, people won't want it in their own community. Energy production facilities tend to overwhelm the landscape and local protests are a given no matter where they are located.

BC Hydro will also increase its emphasis on conservation measures. It's conceivable that electricity might start costing more, depending on what you use it for or what time of day you use it. And Hydro will also start relying more on independent power producers (who also have to start building facilities).

It's fair to say that BC Hydro let things slide for more than a decade. It's only now giving a wakeup call that should have been made at least five years ago. There is no disputing the problems on the horizon and the challenges the province faces on the energy front.

But the questions are these: will people actually listen out there? Or will they continue to take our energy supply and cheap prices for granted? I'm betting the public just isn't engaged on this issue yet, and we are sliding ever so closer to a potential disaster.

The next time you leave your computer on, the lights on and watch television all day, you might want to ponder that.

*****

by Keith Baldrey
Contributing Writer
North Shore News - April 7, 2006
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.