Media Advisory: National Energy Plan, Global Smart Grid

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What do the National Energy Plan, smart meters, Site C, IPPs, nuclear energy in the tar sands,  and BC's high voltage Northwest Transmission Line have in common? The plans for renewable energy high voltage transmission 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. The only public involvement is that taxpayers are expected to foot the bill. It's all wrapped up in the "Clean Energy Dialogue" about renewable energy, and nary a word about the sacrifice of wilderness. But what the National Energy Plan and the global smart grid really mean in Canada is the draining of the hinterland, and the Canadian hydro consumer, for electricity export and profit.

Now in an extensive feature in the upcoming September issue of the Watershed Sentinel, author and researcher Joyce Nelson meticulously connects the dots. What follows is a sneak peek at some of the sections. Journalists may contact the Watershed Sentinel for a full version of the story, embargoed until September 1.

High Voltage: Spin and Lies

 Across the country, Canadians are being told constantly that we must make major investments in our electricity systems and take on massive hydro-generating projects, or (it is implied) see the lights go out.

There is no real domestic need for the excessive electricity generation and "upgrades" being called for in Canada, but, under the radar, something much bigger is going on. It has to do with what's called "energy convergence." We tend to think of the electricity sector as separate from the oil and gas sector, but increasingly, the same corporate players are involved in both.

What they are planning is literally continent-transforming and would drain Canada of oil, gas, and hydro - all without any public involvement except that taxpayers are expected to foot the bill.

The most obvious of these boondoggles is the smart meter.

The Smart Meter

"The truth is that smart meters aren't exactly necessary for a smart grid," stated Forbes (Feb. 1, 2011), "but for technical and economic reasons, they're here to stay."   

If smart meters "aren't exactly necessary" for a smart grid, and the business rationale for them is "thin" (unless reams of private data are sold), then what is the reason for smart meters?

The key reason is huge profits for the ICT (information and communications technologies) sector - IBM, Cisco, General Electric, Oracle, Itron, etc. In other words, the reason for smart meters is to sell smart meters, and then smart appliances.

BC Hydro has awarded the first smart meter contract to Corix Utilities. One of the two owners of Corix is CAI Capital Management, whose senior advisor is David Emerson - Executive Chair of the BC Transmission Corp, Chair of the BC Premier's Economic Advisory Council, Chair of the Alberta Premier's Council for Economic Strategy, director of Timberwest Forest Corp., former CEO of Canfor, and (as we shall see) current chair of something called EPIC.

The other owner of Corix is the British Columbia Investment Management Corp (BCIMC).

High Voltage Direct Current Transmission Lines

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a private sector body, regulates and oversees the entire electric power system of the contiguous US, Canada and a portion of the Baja in Mexico, with the Canadian provinces as members, along with US states. 

In October 2009, NERC recommended building 32,000 miles of new HVDC transmission lines in the US to access renewable energy. In its press release, NERC urged that "state and provincial siting and permitting processes must be expedited to allow for the development of needed resources and ensure reliability."

Just as energy-efficient appliances don't need a smart-grid to function and save energy,  renewables have no need for HVDC transmission lines in order to function locally. The only reason for HVDC is very long-distance transmission. But that is rarely explained to the Canadian public, who are instead led to believe that expensive HVDC "upgrades" are necessary to handle renewables.

The Clean Energy Dialogue

Another boost for the vision of a vast super-grid was provided by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, during Obama's February 2009 visit to Ottawa. The two leaders launched the "US-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue," or CED. 

The CED Action Plan, released in Washington on September 16, 2009 by Environment Canada and the US Department of Energy,  recommended: "Greening electricity supply by increasing cleaner generation and transmission technologies; expanding and modernizing the grid by developing new grid capacity and deploying smart grid technologies; matching supply and demand by improving system flexibility," investing in "workforce development," and "engaging in public outreach in order to allow consumers to be part of the solution." 

On the same day, Harper announced at the CED meeting that he was providing $130 million for "a green infrastructure project in northern British Columbia involving the construction of a 335-kilometre transmission line that will support the development and use of green energy in the area ... [and facilitate] the development of an estimated 2,000 megawatts of renewable electricity generation." 

The $400 million, 287 kilovolt Northwest Transmission Line (NTL) had long been advocated by a coalition including engineering giant SNC Lavalin, the Mining Association of BC, and the Northern Development Initiative Trust - whose founding CEO, Janine North, is a director of BC Hydro. SNC Lavalin director Gwyn Morgan (former CEO of EnCana) is now a top advisor to BC Premier Christy Clark.

The first purpose of the NTL is actually to power mining development in the Dease Lake area, which Harper didn't mention. Those mining companies will pay less than one-half the cost of the new supply BC Hydro will need to acquire. 

A Government of Canada CED "backgrounder" further explained: "The project is also a key step in a potential interconnection between southeast Alaska and the North American transmission grid via British Columbia."

North to Alaska

According to the Vancouver Sun (Jan. 13, 2010), "The northwest line would give Alaska access, for purposes of electricity sales, to the entire western North America electricity market." 

For Peter Meisen at the San Diego-based Global Energy Network Institute (GENI), such regional links are all part of his vision of a vast global grid, where ultimately power from western North America could be transmitted by undersea cable across the Bering Strait and into Russia. He has written on the GENI website that Russian and Alaskan power system planners have been meeting since 1992 "to discuss an east/west intertie between Alaska and Siberia," with the possibility of "making an interconnection between Russia and its Asian neighbours: Japan, North Korea, South Korea and China."

Apparently, if all goes as planned, BC could ultimately be powering not only air-conditioners in California, but computers in Japan. When asked if BC was important to his GENI vision of a global grid, Meisen told me, "Absolutely! The cheapest, cleanest power comes from BC, and in fact, from across Canada."

On the East Coast, GENI envisions major HVDC lines connecting power throughout all Atlantic provinces and states. A project called the Northeast Energy Link is currently being developed to transport 1100MW of eastern Canada power - from New Brunswick, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island - into Massachusetts and Connecticut markets, saving US consumers $1 billion annually.

The US-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue envisions that Canada's "cheap, clean" power not only continues to flow across the border, but ramps up production.

Writing the National Energy Plan: GENI Meets EPIC

A new corporate initiative called the Energy Policy Institute of Canada (EPIC), chaired by David Emerson, is engaged in writing a national energy plan.  The members of EPIC (see www.canadasenergy.ca/who-we-are/members/) include not only IPP companies such as General Electric, Plutonic, Fortis BC, Emera Inc., Atco Power and AltaGas, but also major natural gas producers such as Apache and EnCana; all the major tars sands bitumen producers; forest companies such as Domtar and Canfor; and pipeline companies such as Enbridge and TransCanada Corp.

Although the very words "national energy policy" have long elicited rage, fear and loathing in Canada's oil patch, EPIC's national energy plan is being designed by the corporations for the corporations.

As outlined by EPIC Chair David Emerson in Policy Options (Feb. 2011), EPIC's most astonishing recommendation is this: "Energy-related infrastructure should be strategically planned and optimized to minimize transportation costs and environmental disruption in North America, while ensuring energy security for Canada, the US and Mexico.  This should include transmission lines with ‘smart grid' capability as well as pipeline capacity [my emphasis]...Pipelines, transmission lines and major projects could benefit from joint development arrangements among western provinces, for example."

So the new HVDC transmission-line corridors would also contain pipelines for shale gas, bitumen, and (potentially) water. 

Since 2006, Ontario electricity customers have paid at least $1 billion to subsidize power exports, with private-sector energy traders (remember Enron?) profiting handsomely from these exports. Nevertheless, the Ontario government intends to spend $87 billion on electricity "upgrades" over the next 20 years to increase exports; Alberta - at least $14 billion; Manitoba is considering spending $20 billion. In Quebec, one single hydroelectric mega-project - the Romaine River project - will cost taxpayers $8 billion, with all the electricity intended for export to the U.S.

Our "cheap, clean" energy is increasingly very costly - not only to our environment, but also to taxpayers right across the country.  But for the IPP companies (like GE, Fortis BC, AltaGas), the ICT sector (GE, IBM, Itron, Corix), GENI participants (GE, Mitsubishij), EPIC members (GE etc.), and the American Energy Innovation Council (again GE), the future is bright indeed.  "I love the energy field," AEIC member Bill Gates said in 2010.  "There is a big market.  If you can make a real breakthrough, a few somebodies will get very rich."

Excerpted from "High Voltage:  Spin and Lies of a Global Energy Grid," forthcoming in the September 2011 Watershed Sentinel.