Let's commend BC Hydro for asking a big question
COMMENT:Stephen Hume may be trying to make a good thing out of BC Hydro's 2006 Integrated Electricity Plan, recently released. But he's wrong that Hydro is trying to foster debate about coal.
Last December, BC Hydro was about to release an IEP that would likely have put forward the Site C dam as the province's next big generation project, surrounded by smaller energy projects, tending toward green. The government quashed the plan, told Hydro to rewrite it, and what emerged at the end of March was a plan without a plan.
Well, that's not strictly correct. To its credit, demand side management - conservation, efficiencies - are to be a significant capacity boost in the next twenty years. Beyond DSM, though, there's no recommendation, not for Site C, not for coal. The plan is neutral - just as the government wanted it to be.
Because the BC government wants the door wide open for coal. By constructing an energy plan that constrains BC Hydro and the BC Utilities Commission to choose the least expensive among competing energy options, it is in effect telling the coal lobby, which enjoys a very cheap fuel, and is keen to start building generation plants, to beat the competition on price alone - there will be no other impediments in the form of regulations or clean energy filters, in your way. (Possibly thwarting coal's dive for the lowest cost bottom, however, is a $10 per tonne GHG "adder" which BCUC decided was appropriate for coal projects.)
What Stephen Hume sees as inviting discourse on a bad energy idea, is more likely just Hydro opening the door to that same bad energy idea.
Geza Vamos of the BC Sustainable Energy Association adds: Sadly, there is a loophole with GHG adders. Companies have the option of taking responsibility for GHG liability themselves, OR allowing BC Hydro to add the GHG adder for them - and that is not an adder on all tonnes CO2 emitted, rather an adder on emissions above Canada's proposed cap threshhold, which is 85% of a CCGT (gas turbine).
Our fear is that companies can make their own optimistic assessment of future liabilities and bid low.
By Stephen Hume
Vancouver Sun
05-Apr-2006
A Vancouver-based company unveils a plan to exploit North America's gluttonous energy appetite by strip mining and gasifying 30 million tonnes of coal in the Mackenzie Valley -- enough that if it were loaded into pickup trucks one tonne at a time the lineup would reach around the earth's equator three-and-a-half times.
Some MLAs from constituencies already being denuded by mountain pine beetles permitted to run amok following abnormally mild winters nevertheless salivate over the prospects of producing oil and gas from B.C.'s continental shelf. They dream of B.C. as a little Alberta.
Meanwhile, BC Hydro invites public discussion of whether coal-fired thermal generating plants are an option for meeting future energy shortfalls.
I note enthusiasm for drill rigs and production platforms always assumes a location that's remote and out of sight, never Kitsilano, Spanish Banks or the middle of Richmond.
Perhaps it's rude of me to point this out, but potential petroleum-yielding structures also underlie the Lower Mainland and Strait of Georgia and development costs there would be considerably less than drilling in storm-tossed seas off the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Meanwhile, as a backdrop to the dance of denial that so energizes our fossil fuel enthusiasts, more troubling news about global warming. The latest dispatch on atmospheric carbon dioxide loading leaves all this optimism sounding a bit like beautiful people obsessing about what to wear to dinner on the Titanic while the scruffy lookout is yelling "Iceberg, dead ahead!"
Late last week, says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 35 scientists from a dozen university programs and government labs docked the research vessel which has just completed a Pacific Ocean survey stretching from Antarctica to Alaska. They reported changes that the newspaper's Lisa Stiffler described as "frightening."
Research in Pacific shows ocean trouble
It seems the ocean has absorbed about half the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels over the last 200 years. As a result, the Pacific is becoming more acidic while its oxygen content declines.
Anybody who's kept an aquarium knows what that means. If sustained, this trend has the potential to upset the entire oceanic food chain, affecting everything from plankton to great whales. For example, scientists told Stiffler that because of the growing acidity, the protective shells of smaller organisms are dissolving, among them a snail upon which sea-going salmon rely for feed.
Recently Canadian scientists discovered that immature salmon off the west coast of Vancouver Island are growing far more slowly than they should. Scarce feed means stunted growth. Fewer salmon returning means starving grizzlies and killer whales and beached fishboats.
The same day the P-I cited growing ocean acidity, the U.S. National Parks Service reported the biggest single-season death of coral reefs ever witnessed in the Caribbean. Coral reefs provide critical aquatic habitat -- not to mention generating huge tourist revenues. Since last year, one-third of the corals at official monitoring sites have died.
Caribbean coral suffers record death
The cause? Record hot water followed by opportunistic disease. Time magazine reports that of the 20 hottest years recorded, 19 have now occurred since 1980. Last fall the U.S National Snow and Data Centre in Colorado warned that global warming in the Arctic might be tipping into a runaway effect. Greenland's icecap is melting twice as fast as predicted. Last year sea ice cover dwindled to the least on record. Spring melt now arrives 17 days early. At the other end of the world, the BBC reports that the British Antarctic Survey, among the most pedigreed of research organizations, is recording unprecedented warm temperatures.
As the glaciers and ice caps melt, sea levels must inevitably rise. Is that so bad?
Next time you're strolling English Bay, stop at the water's edge. Imagine somebody standing on your shoulders. Put two more people up there. That's where sea level will be when the Greenland icecap has melted. Now think of 35 more people standing on each other's shoulders -- that's where sea level will be if the Antarctic icecap melts.
Frankly, I think BC Hydro is to be commended for openly inviting discourse on whether we want coal-fired generating stations. We need to get past greed and denial and begin some serious discussion about climate change, its consequences and what we plan to do.
Posted by Arthur Caldicott on 05 Apr 2006