Energy

The issue of pipeline safety is clouded enough with a slew of "captive regulators, from Alberta to the United States, but the situation gets even more sticky because the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, and others from the tar sands, will be transporting "dilbit" which carries its own problems with it.

By Joyce Nelson

This article is a preview of the story to be published in the March-April Watershed Sentinel.

A Decade of Enbridge Oil Pipeline Spills

by Joyce Nelson, part of a feature Pipeline Safety, Dilbit, Captive Regulators and Smart Pigs coming in the March-April Watershed Sentinel

2000: 7,513 barrels. Enbridge reported 48 pipeline spills and leaks, including a spill of 1,500 barrels at Innes, Sask.

2001: 25,980 barrels. Enbridge pipelines reported 34 spills and leaks, totalling 25,980

Howard T. Odum redifined economics using the fundatmentals of energy transformation. Odum's daughter, Mary Odum Logan, Ph.D., adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, helped Watershed Sentinel excerpt her father's key concepts, such as why consumption has limits and why "success" in Nature can be a liability.

In the 1960s," recalls Mary Odum Logan, "I heard dinner table lectures regarding the energy and ecology problems we witness today. My father appeared more optimistic in the classroom and saved his gloomier fears for intimate conversation."

by Rob Wiltzen

A combination of federal government subsidies, changes in the pulp and paper market and questionable energy policies threaten British Columbia forests as they come to be viewed as bioenergy.

by Ben West

Last week, I sat in my office in the Gastown district of Vancouver and learned that the most powerful government in the world is putting my community on notice.

From my window, I watched a large crude oil tanker cruise through Burrard Inlet, as an email arrived quoting the US State Department about these very oil exports in our city. The email came from an ally in the historic civil disobedience action outside the US White House in Washington, DC. Over 1,200 people were arrested for opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would link Alberta tar sands to heavy oil refineries and tanker ports along the Texas Gulf coast. In their report on the pipeline expansion, the US State Department claims that if the Keystone XL pipeline isn't built:

by Erik Andersen

The Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark energy policies have pillaged BC Hydro of the equity that employees contributed and created. I feel sorry for the employees, who do not understand that their contributions have been squandered for the benefit of others. When the predator class gets sight of a sound balance sheet - as BC Hydro once had - it is slaughtered like an innocent lamb. The gamers and parasites only see an opportunity to exploit.

by Arthur Caldicott

Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals' energy legacy is a boondoggle of policies, subsidies, and fantastical claims. The 2010 Clean Energy Act brought together a decade of energy initiatives in a single legislative dog's breakfast - delivering blows to the environment, the economy, and the credibility of government.

BC's Bioenergy Strategy is a complex part of the energy strategy. Its dimensions include the types and supply of biofuels, how they can be used, and the economic and ecological impacts. It will reduce BC's greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen competitiveness, achieve electricity self-sufficiency, open new export opportunities, and turn mountain pine beetle (MPB) devastation into an opportunity. World peace may be in there too. Paid for by citizens, profiting private companies.

BC's Biofuels
The government's pie chart shows 87% of BC's biomass coming from the forest - the focus of this article; 53% is from forestry activities; another 34% are the trees killed by MPB.

Sacrificing BC's Energy and Environment for Profit

by David Hughes

Download a pdf of this article or download a Word version of this article

Natural gas has been hyped of late as a way to reduce carbon emissions and reliance on oil and coal in business-as-usual growth scenarios. Much of this speculation rests on new technology to produce gas from previously inaccessible shale reservoirs.

by Joyce Nelson

 The plans have been spun over the decades, but now large corporate players, controlling strategic committees in Washington and Ottawa, are ready to transform the continent and drain Canada of energy - oil, gas, hydro - all without any public involvement except that taxpayers are expected to foot the bill

 The people of B.C. have been told repeatedly that the province is a "net importer" of electricity and needs to become "self-sufficient" - claims that are used to justify everything from "run of river" independent power producers (IPPs), to energy mega-projects such as Bute Inlet and the $8 billion Site C dam proposal.  But a U.S. electricity expert told me that California has been "buying a tremendous amount of power from B.C. over the past decade."

An Energy Special Feature

by Joyce Nelson

The people of BC have been told repeatedly that the province is a "net importer" of electricity and needs to become "self-sufficient" - claims that are used to justify everything from "run of river" independent power producers (IPPs), to energy mega-projects such as Bute Inlet and the Site C dam. But a US electricity expert told me that California has been "buying a tremendous amount of power from BC over the past decade."