Great Expectations: Back to the Future

Quiz

Here's an extract from a Vancouver Sun editorial published under the heading, "Great Expectations":

You have to hand it to the chaps in B.C. Hydro's public affairs division. When they decide to frighten the daylights out of an unsuspecting public, they do it so beautifully.

Hydro's Energy Blueprint, published yesterday, is a lithographic masterpiece. From the bolt of lightning on the cover through to the hour glass running out of sand at the back, pictures and graphs leap from the page in stunning full color.

Twining around them, the written message is driven home with the unexpected and chilling force of an icicle in the back. We're running out of power! Quick, let's build the Site C dam

Questions

1. When was that written?

2. How much additional generation was built in BC since this editorial was written?

3. How confident are you in BC Hydro's forecasting?

4. How badly do we really need Site C?

Great Expectations

Editorial
Vancouver Sun
16-Jun-1981

You have to hand it to the chaps in B.C. Hydro's public affairs division. When they decide to frighten the daylights out of an unsuspecting public, they do it so beautifully.

Hydro's Energy Blueprint 1981, published yesterday, is a lithographic masterpiece. From the bolt of lightning on the cover through to the hour glass running out of sand at the back, pictures and graphs leap from the page in stunning full color.

Twining around them, the written message is driven home with the unexpected and chilling force of an icicle in the back. We're running out of power! Quick, let's build the Site C dam and the Hat Creek coal plant!

No, that's not even close to an exact quote. Actually, Hydro is quite deadpan about the whole thing. But the blueprint — Hydro's annual survey of power needs and supplies over the coming decade — is nevertheless an open invitation for everyone to hit the panic button.

What it says is that (a) in a critical water situation, Hydro's present generating system would be unable to meet the forecast demand for electricity beyond 1986; (b) Site C and Hat Creek are the only feasible projects to meet growing power needs in the middle to late Eighties; (c) there might be shortages until both projects are in service.

There are some things, however, that the reader won't find in Energy Blueprint 1981. One is that Hydro's forecast of the growth in demand for electricity over the next 10 years — 6.1 per cent — is considerably higher than the ministry of energy's 3.4 per cent. Hydro, of course, says it must prepare for the worst — the worst being whatever Hydro says it's likely to be.

All the pretty pictures in the world, however, can't hide Hydro's steadfast refusal to face its responsibility to manage energy demands instead of blindly meeting "the lifestyle expectations of the people of British Columbia." With a rate system that encourages waste rather than conservation, Hydro now exerts upward rather than downward pressure on future demand.

If Hydro had seriously started reforming its rate structure to reflect the high cost of additional projects when it began planning Hat Creek and Site C, the demand would not be where it is today. There would be no need for Hydro's stepped-up campaign to stampede the government and public into accepting the huge cost — financial and environmental — of the two projects.

Look for Energy Blueprint 1982 to be even glossier. It will tell British Columbians how badly Hydro needs to flood the Stikine, Iskut, and Liard Rivers and build another coal-fired generating plant in the East Kootenay in order to meet their "lifestyle expectations."