British Columbians in dark about 'Enronization' of energy

By Geoff Olson
Vancouver Courier
Friday, October 20, 2006

Once upon a time the rodeo capitalism of Enron could do no wrong-until 2000, when well-coifed clowns from the Houston-based energy trading company rode a bull market into the stands and scattered the rubes.

Enron may have collapsed in a heap of cooked books, but Squamish area rancher Tom Rankin insists that its business template for energy markets lingers, and that we're being softened up for the "Enronization" of B.C.'s greatest public asset, our waterways. With the North American electricity industry being restructured to serve the U.S. market, he predicts things will end badly for British Columbian taxpayers, unless we put a stop to private purchase agreements for hydroelectric developments on hundreds of our waterways.

After dealing with a public power agreement at his own back door, Rankin spent two and half years investigating transactions between private industry and the B.C. Liberal government, becoming increasingly alarmed in the process.

He cites the B.C. Energy Plan from 2002, which effectively barred Hydro from producing more power. This smoothed the way for the Independent Power Producers Association of B.C., which represents private power developers who have a virtual monopoly on the creation of new electricity in B.C.

Rankin pointed me toward the work of SFU adjunct professor John Calvert, who is concerned that private investors will flip ownership of the most lucrative sites, selling them to energy multinationals. In a paper online at www.hydrofacts.bc.ca, Calvert notes that the B.C. Energy Plan "transforms B.C. Hydro from a generator of publicly owned electricity to a purchaser of energy from private power developers."

"The Energy Plan signaled a fundamental shift from the earlier-and highly successful-policy of relying on the Crown Corporation to build and deliver B.C.'s electrical energy at prices based on the cost of production and controlled through public ownership of B.C.'s generation assets. This earlier policy resulted in B.C. prices being among the lowest in North America and enabled customers to enjoy a period of eight years with no rate increases whatsoever during the 1990s."

At a talk last week in Vancouver, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians remarked on the gold rush for water and water-driven power in B.C. "This process to hand water rights over to the private sector is just beginning in this province," she said, adding that the B.C. Liberal government is acting to stifle civic involvement and debate. Victoria's introduction of Bill 30 "basically removes from local municipalities the right to maintain local zoning control."

This new paradigm is in stark opposition to the original intent of B.C. Hydro. "The best asset there is in the world is a water-powered energy system," Rankin explains over coffee. He notes how, under W.A.C. Bennett, an initial investment resulted in extraordinary cheap energy and real world assets in the form of hydroelectric facilities that remained ours.

Yet B.C. Hydro is hardly the same entity it was prior to Campbell's reign. Right now the company is engaged in something of an advertising blitz, Rankin observes. "It's running ads with tag lines like 'power for generations' and 'the power is you.' It makes you think this all about you and looking after you, and not getting you to relax and stay out of the way while power purchase agreements are inked."

In 2003, Bill 39 split off Hydro's transmission functions into a separate company, the B.C. Transmission Corp. SFU political science professor and former Hydro board member Marjorie Griffin Cohen notes that a separate transmission company was the path Enron used in the U.S. to make markets. "Electricity will not be in the public sector. Each year a larger and larger proportion of our electricity is to go to private hands, who will sell power at higher prices to local consumers who will compete with U.S. consumers. Today in New York and Los Angeles they pay five to seven times our utility rates."

In other words, we are sitting on a vast public piggy bank eyed by guys with hammers. Critics insist that if we continue to pursue the path into a continental energy market, our utility bills will go skyward, as our public assets are given away at fire-sale prices. This isn't a fringe issue for anti-corporate Cassandras, given the fallout will affect every business and home in the province.

"Once it's gone it's gone, you won't get it back," says Rankin of public power. He hopes for a last-ditch effort from British Columbians to write, phone and otherwise scream blue murder at the B.C. Liberals before Oct. 23, when one of the first major deals goes down. "If you care about anything," he says, "you need to care about this."

mwiseguise@yahoo.com

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