Killing BC Hydro from the inside

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Energy policy in BC appears devoid of sound economic or ecological underpinnings. The marginal cost of new energy is so high, that every new gigawatt hour purchased by BC Hydro is increasingly more difficult to sell into the export market. California, the only market large enough to take up much of BC's export, has a renewable portfolio standard that doesn't permit any of this new IPP electricity produced in BC. The recent lobbying by a team from MEMPR, BC Hydro, and IPPBC (now calling itself Clean Energy BC in another Orwellian linguistic trick) failed completely to win over state legislators. The export scheme of Campbell et al is doomed, yet it has now become the only argument they have to defend what they've been doing for the last ten years.

It appears that government energy policy has been aimed at doing whatever it can to please the IPPs, regardless the long-term cost to British Columbians, the ecological cost to so many streams in BC, and the economic integrity of BC Hydro - and now they are spinning the mess out as long as they can, hanging it all on the thread of "export" that has become stretched increasingly thin. Like Pinocchio's nose.

Though we already own BC Hydro, the government has hijacked it, very cleverly. At the beginning of the Liberal regime ten years ago, the plan was to break BC Hydro up - by cutting out all those employees and handing them over to Accenture, and carving off transmission to BC Transmission Corp., etc..

With the Clean Energy Act, they have switched the strategy. Now they've moved BCTC back into BC Hydro, and the Accenture contract looks like it's going south. All the big costly things for which government is going to make BC Hydro responsible - like Site C, energy purchases, transmission projects, etc. - these will not longer be vetted by the BC Utilities Commission, nor will BC Hydro be able to decide whether to do them or not. The decision now rests solely on Cabinet, by which read - in the Premier's office. Worst of all, is that BC Hydro is now responsible for the doomed export agenda.

The new BC Hydro is now saddled with a future of government-mandated debt, and this ungodly export scheme. BC Hydro cannot hope to survive it. In ten years, or maybe sooner, it will be an untenable debt-ridden economic cancer in the province, and the only way out will be ... an asset sale.

Kiss goodbye the heritage assets. GE wins.