Power and passion

Andrew A. Duffy
Times Colonist (Victoria)
13-Feb-2005

The fate of a large natural-gas fired plant for Nanaimo's Duke Point could be decided this week. For friends and foes of the project, it has been a long and trying road to judgment.

Five years ago Tom Hackney walked into the offices of the Sierra Club and asked how could he get involved in the campaign on climate change.

They handed him B.C. Hydro.

"I was told then that there was a pipeline Hydro wanted to build to the Island to bring natural gas to be burned to produce electricity," he recalls.

Hackney quickly joined the battle against the $340-million Georgia Strait Crossing natural gas pipeline, which B.C. Hydro turfed in December 2004 in favour of a less costly proposal by Terasen Gas that's being considered by the B.C. Utilities Commission.

Now, as president of the Georgia Strait Crossing Concerned Citizens Coalition, Hackney and his group wage war against Hydro's plans to build a 252-megawatt natural-gas fired plant at Duke Point in Nanaimo. The $250-million plant would start up in May 2007.

The umbrella organization is made up of environmental groups, concerned citizens and Cowichan Valley farmers who at one point were told their land may be affected by the pipeline's path. They sat through years of regulatory hearings, town hall meetings and information sessions.

A critical point comes Thursday when the utilities commission decides whether to approve an electricity purchase agreement between Hydro and Pristine Power of Calgary, the plant's builders.

It's been a long road for all parties. For Hackney's colleague Arthur Caldicott, whose Arbutus Ridge neighbourhood was going to be altered to accommodate the pipeline, it's been an intense education.

"When Hydro posted a note in March 2000 saying they were holding an information session about (the pipeline) ... I went down," Caldicott says.

"I just got swept up in it, asking questions why it was needed and what it would do to the environment."

Those questions were echoed by neighbours and covered the entire spectrum, including costs, greenhouse gas emissions and overall natural gas strategy for electricity generation on the Island.

The answers from Hydro didn't sit well with opponents. But this is nothing new. The Duke Point project is not the first foray into on-Island electricity generation.

In 1994, the provincial government directed Hydro to seek proposals for new resources to meet electricity demand on the Island. Hydro's own plan highlighted the need for Island supply driven by the expected retirement of the aging high-voltage direct current and 138-kilovolt transmission systems as well as future load growth.

Hydro says the Island consumes about 2,100 megawatts of power at any one time, with the capacity to produce just 690 megawatts (enough to power 690,000 homes), leaving it heavily reliant on a cable system connected to the mainland. So with some of the cables deemed unreliable as of 2007, the utility is adamant it needs on-Island generation.

After wood-waste options fizzled out, a pair of gas-fired solutions were found, -- the Island Cogeneration Plant now running in Campbell River, and a similar proposal for Port Alberni.

In November 2000, Hydro signed an interim agreement with Calgary-based Calpine Corp. to jointly develop the Port Alberni project. But there was plenty of public opposition, and in October 2001, Port Alberni council voted not to rezone the site for the proposed project.

Hydro and Calpine then shifted to Duke Point as the preferred site for the Vancouver Island Generation Project. But Hydro's relationship with Calpine soured and in May 2002 the partnership was ended. Hydro took control of the project.

In November 2002, the provincial government unveiled its Energy Plan, which required the Island project be reviewed by the utilities commission to determine if it was still the most cost-effective means to reliably meet power needs. The result was to go back to the drawing board.

After Hydro issued a call for tenders, Duke Point Power Ltd. Partnership (Pristine Power) was awarded the electricity purchase agreement being considered by the utilities commission. The hearings into the deal heard many of the same concerns raised over the pipeline.

The Georgia Strait Crossing coalition and other groups believe Hydro has overstated the Island's future power needs and undervalued the current supply, conservation initiatives and alternative generation. Hydro declines to comment, but has said in the past that it needs to be sure it has the capacity to keep the lights burning.

Hackney rejects the idea of a conspiracy but believes Hydro is driven by a stern bottom line. "Hydro is a big corporation with a tremendous amount of bureaucratic inertia with a lowest-common denominator agenda to make sure the lights don't come off," he says. "From their own self-protective interest, they want to overbuild the system."

Duke Point proponents don't see things in the same light.

Harvie Campbell, vice president of Pristine Power, says natural-gas fired generation is the future, and building on-Island generation makes economic sense.

"This is the clean energy solution," he says.

"Right now what's happening is natural gas produced in northeastern B.C. is piped down to the U.S. to be turned into electricity and shipped back to B.C. -- all we're doing is exporting taxes and jobs."

Pristine president Jeff Myers says he can understand some of the backlash Hydro is getting from community groups simply because of the history of the project, false starts and empty promises.

"There's been a lot of disappointing history in terms of Hydro and some other parties," Myers says, though he believes much of the posturing, particularly from industrial customers, is based on them trying to establish a working relationship with new management at Hydro. "As far as we're concerned this has been a very positive and efficient process."