Many readers of IN-SIGHTS examine public issues with great care and email private comments to me along with links to worthwhile material. What follows comes from a paper sent to me by a long-time follower North Van’s Grumps, fellow blogger at Blog Borg Collective. The complete paper shown below is
Continue readingTag: BC Hydro
IN-SIGHTS: Douglas, Lewis, Broadbent, and Layton spinning in their graves?
This item, contributed by a reader, comments upon BC Hydro now offering a ten to fifteen billion dollar commitment to private power producers. This continues Gordon Campbell’s aim of twenty years ago: PRIVATIZATION BY STEALTH.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Tell the dam truth
Tell The Dam Truth (TTDT) is a California based non-profit with initial funding from outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia. TTDT’s aim is to protect and restore free-flowing rivers by educating people about the impacts of river-destroying projects. The group promotes decommissioning of existing dams.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: BC Hydro sales flat, spending not
After forecasting 40 percent growth over 20 years, BC Hydro has been spending billions of dollars. But the utility’s sales to residential, commercial and industrial customers in calendar year 2023 were a mere one percent higher than in 2007.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Condensed history of BC Hydro
Repeated here is something I wrote about BC Hydro in early 2017 for The Common Sense Canadian, an online journal covering Canada’s economy and environment. The site was co-founded by Damien Gillis and the late Rafe Mair and ran for a decade. It remains a worthwhile archive of several thousand
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Socialism when necessary but not necessarily socialism
Years ago, Rafe Mair wrote that W.A.C. Bennett, if he were alive in 2009, would have been a member of the NDP, in those days a party firmly positioned on the left. Although he railed theatrically against socialists throughout his political career, Bennett knew that public ownership of near-monopolies was
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Less costly Site C alternatives were ignored
Many self-interested people told us that non-destructive alternatives to hydropower would not work in British Columbia. These, they said, were unreliable and could not always send power to the grid on demand. Dispatchability was key, according to pseudo experts. This despite BC Hydro having reservoirs that act like giant batteries.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: BC Hydro’s call for power is the wrong call
Energy-systems consultant Roger Bryenton wrote an open letter to Premier David Eby, BC Hydro CEO Chris O’Riley, and BCUC Chair Mark Jaccard. It is published here with permission.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: BC Hydro numbers
BC Hydro has often said that demand for electricity in this region is growing at a rate of 40 percent in 20 years. The company claims population increases result in greater consumption of electricity and vested interests tell us the utility must commit to major spending to serve the province.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Misdirected energy policies
In 2018, BC Hydro began discouraging the production of solar power in British Columbia. Customers with solar panels had been allowed a two-way connection to the grid. When they fed surplus electricity to the utility, credits were recorded. If credits were not used to buy electricity from BC Hydro within
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: You couldn’t stop solar if you wanted to stop solar
Worldwide solar energy capacity has been growing rapidly. In 2022, it was 150 times higher than in 2006 and more than double the level of 2018 when BC Hydro moved to discourage solar power systems. A tiny proportion pf the utility’s accounts were feeding solar power to the grid, but
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Strategic misrepresentation (AKA lying)
So, who has been responsible for strategic misrepresentation that has damaged BC Hydro? Responsible Ministers and MLAs are driven by love of megaprojects, but they may also have experienced the Dunning-Kruger effect. They were educated by deceptive executives and experts who expected to earn material sums as BC Hydro expanded.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Can we believe anything we are told about BC Hydro?
BC Hydro’s own numbers provide evidence that increased demand by domestic consumers over 20 years was less than one-third of that predicted and was double covered by the utility’s purchases from private power producers. But those facts did not stop the empire-builders from expanding their empire.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Super cheap electricity
Seattle based writer David Roberts reports on energy matters. Recently Roberts explored the variability of renewable energy. Opponents of wind and solar power rely on this subject to raise objections. Despite virtually all of the electricity generated by BC Hydro being dispatchable, the public utility has discouraged addition of variable
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Public utility money pit
Today, charts about BC Hydro showing information that ought to alarm citizens of British Columbia. It will not of course, because corporate media does not bother to report meaningful data about the province’s largest crown corporation. Despite their continuous claims that demand was growing by 40 percent over 20 years,
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: A foundation of political and corporate lies
In 2017, construction of Site C could have been halted without wasting more than $10 billion. But influential promoters of the megaproject — including Marc Jaccard, the newly appointed head of the “independent” regulator of BC Hydro — were misinforming citizens about the viability of alternatives…
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: BC’s money pit is no comedy
Economist Erik Andersen emails an informal newsletter offering opinions, sometimes about how organizations and individuals use political influence to extract wealth from the public. He gave an example that was bad by itself but set the stage for secret private power contracts worth more than $60 billion despite expansion of
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Comparing BC Hydro June 2023 to BC Hydro June 2007.
BC Hydro recently released its first quarter results for the fiscal year ending March 2024. The report covered three months in 2023: April, May and June. It is worth looking at the changes at British Columbia’s public utility since June 2007.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: BC Hydro’s credibility gap
When BC Hydro said that growing demand required asset additions worth billions of dollars and contractual commitments of $50+ billion owed to independent power producers, should we have believed what they said? The record clearly states the answer was NO.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Oversight? No! Undersight? Yes!
Lew Edwardson wrote the following as a comment on the post Lack of transparency at BC Hydro may conceal massive fraud. It deserves to be repeated in this separate post. WARNING: this will not build confidence in elected officials and senior public servants.
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