LTAP: Burrard Thermal won’t be cranked up, BC Hydro says

By Fiona Anderson
Vancouver Sun
July 30, 2009

BC Hydro will not be boosting production at the Burrard Thermal Plant (pictured), its natural-gas-fired generating station. Photograph by: Peter Battistoni, Vancouver Sun

BC Hydro will not be boosting production at the Burrard Thermal Plant, its natural-gas-fired generating station, despite a decision by the BC Utilities Commission that pointed to the station as the potential source of more power.

In its decision released earlier this week, the BCUC said BC Hydro could rely on 6,000 gigawatt hours (GwH) of power from Burrard Thermal annually, a decision that caught environmentalists, independent power producers, BC Hydro and the provincial government by surprise.

When running near capacity, Burrard Thermal — which was to be phased out as a non-emergency source of power by 2014 — is the single-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the province.

But BC Hydro CEO Bob Elton said the utility had no intention of increasing its use of Burrard Thermal, which last year produced just 300 GwH of electricity.

“We have no intention of running Burrard more than we did before,” Elton said in an interview. “So we won’t be running Burrard seven days a week, 24 hours a day, which is what we’d have to do to achieve the kind of 6,000 GwH hours the commission is talking about.

“We won’t be doing that, and we don’t believe we have a social licence to do that.”

But by crediting Burrard Thermal with a possible 6,000 GwH of power — compared to the 3,000 GwH BC Hydro suggested — the BCUC limits the amount of power BC Hydro can acquire from elsewhere.

And earlier this year, BC Hydro sought proposals from clean energy producers, like run-of-river projects and wind energy, for 3,000 GwH of power — the exact difference between what BC Hydro said Burrard Thermal should be good for, and the BCUC’s view.

Steve Davis, president of the Independent Power Producers Association of B.C., said the critical question was what would happen to the most recent proposals before BC Hydro.

BC Hydro is the independent producers’ only buyer, Davis said.

“So, how they interpret the BCUC decision is a critical filter to how we interpret the decision.”

Contracts already in place between BC Hydro and IPPs from previous calls for clean energy will remain in force, he said.

Davis speculates the BCUC may have preferred Burrard Thermal over independent producers because of the low price of natural gas included in the projections in BC Hydro’s proposed plan.

“But it overlooks half a dozen other negatives on Burrard [Thermal],” Davis said. “It’s very inefficient, it’s old, it needs to be completely refurbished, [and] it’s one of the highest point sources of GHG in the province.”

Tzeporah Berman, executive director of PowerUP Canada, a non-profit group focusing on climate change and green energy, said the BCUC’s decision “flies in the face of B.C.’s climate action plan” by increasing “dependence on dirty energy and rising greenhouse gas emissions.”

Under its climate action plan, the government aims to reduce greenhouse gases from 2007 levels by six per cent by 2012 and 18 per cent by 2016.

B.C.’s energy minister Blair Lekstrom told The Vancouver Sun on Tuesday that firing up Burrard Thermal “was not in the cards.”

fionaanderson@vancouversun.com