The psychology underlying people's behaviour is as fascinating as the things they do. “Change blindness” is a case in point. Psychologists describe it as the inability of people to notice anomalies, differences and the unusual in their surroundings. The obvious, it seems, is not always obvious...For example, we seem to have an inherent inclination to overlook or rationalize as normal the weather abnormalities that arise from global warming. If this strategy doesn't serve to diminish the significance of an extreme weather event in our minds, we excuse it by extending the range of normality — a once-in-a-century event occurring once every ten years is deemed normal.
What has been taking place is the rearrangement of control of bulk electricity production in North America by a private US entity. NERC has the power to enforce its will on producers and looks to have the legal authority to by-pass local utility commissions. It is this development that might be the key to the understanding of why BC Hydro has indulged in its aggressive contracting with Independent Power Producers in BC when domestic demand increases are non-existant.
This is neither a complicated nor a long story – but it’s a tragic vindication for a hell of a lot of people who have been telling the story, ignored at best, more often vilified. Look at page 1 of the story in the Vancouver Sun, May 11 under the heading "HYDRO AWASH IN PRIVATE POWER", where you’ll see that BC Hydro is spilling water over its dams and missing a chance to make a huge profit and is, instead, sustaining a crippling loss all by reason of corrupt bargains it’s been forced to make with private companies.
Read this story from Scott Simpson in the Vancouver Sun, reporting on the glut of cheap hydroelectric power in BC and Washington State due to overflowing reservoirs from a big Spring runoff; despite this, BC Hydro is forced to pay top dollar for private power, unable to avail itself of more affordable alternatives. (May 12, 2012)
After a bumper year for precipitation in the Pacific Northwest, BC Hydro stations around British Columbia are sitting idle while independent power producers run flat out.
There’s so much water available for hydroelectric power that a Washington-Oregon utility, which runs full-time to protect salmon and trout, is paying other utilities to take electricity off its hands.
That means bargain-priced import electricity is available to BC Hydro from the Bonneville Power Authority, but it’s a bittersweet opportunity.
It’s difficult for BC Hydro to tap into the cheap power because of contractual obligations to purchase power from about 75 independent power producers (IPPs). Hydro is forced to buy from IPP operators, including big industrial ones such as Rio Tinto Alcan and Teck Resources, even as its own generation stations wait on standby. For example, at Peace Canyon generating station downstream of W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River, the primary source of hydroelectricity for all of B.C., the turbines are sitting idle for the first time in a decade.
Prices paid to IPPs vary by season, from an average winter high of $100 to a springtime low of about $60. By contrast, the Bonneville price in recent weeks has averaged less than $20 US.
Overall, according to Hydro’s 2011-12 annual report, IPPs earned $676 million from Hydro in the 12-month period ending March 31 — at a price per megawatt of power that was more than twice the cost of imported electricity during the same period of time
The water is pouring in just as warmer spring temperatures push down electricity demand. Data this week from the U.S. Energy Information Agency shows Oregon with 172 per cent of its long-term average precipitation supply, and B.C. with 131 per cent.
Meanwhile, a continuing U.S. economic recession is curtailing industrial power requirements south of the border.
That means there’s no market for B.C. electricity exports to the U.S. Nor do B.C. residents need Hydro to crank up domestic production.
B.C.’s IPP community includes wind, large industrial hydro and gas-fired generation — but most operations are small-scale run of river hydroelectric installations.
The textbook case is the watershed of the Squamish River system.
Hydro is taking a pass on all the water running into its Daisy Lake reservoir near Whistler. Instead of diverting the water from Daisy via pipeline to a BC Hydro generating station on the Squamish, the Crown corporation is allowing the water to flow directly downstream into the Cheakamus River.
Meanwhile, on two other Squamish River tributaries, the Ashlu and the Mamquam, Hydro is paying IPPs to generate power for the British Columbia electricity grid.
Written by Administrator
- Tuesday, 01 November 2011
Read this story from the Victoria Times-Colonist on more revelations from the BC Auditor General on Hydro's shady accounting practices - this time involving hundreds of thousands in executive bonuses paid on non-existent profits.
"B.C. Hydro executives have taken home hundreds of thousands of
dollars in bonuses based on profits the province's auditor general says
didn't really exist. Senior Hydro officials have their performance bonuses determined in part by the corporation's ability to turn a profit. But
auditor general John Doyle's scathing report on the Crown corporation's
finances, released Friday, showed Hydro actually lost money recently,
and managed to show a profit only by deferring hundreds of millions of
dollars in expenses to the future using debatable accounting methods. Nonetheless, the corporation paid out sizable incentive-plan bonuses to its CEO, vice-presidents and chief financial officer." (Nov. 1, 2011)
This month (October 2011) The Auditor General of British Columbia presented his report to Government titled “BC Hydro: The Effects of Rate-Regulated Accounting”. For most folks this is not be a gripping story they will want to master. That of course is exactly what your Government is counting on. To get everyone’s attention here are in his words the financial dimensions of the issue. "As of March 31, 2011, a net total of $2.2 billion in expenses had been deferred and, by government’s own estimate, the balance is predicted to grow to nearly $5 billion by 2017".
Written by Administrator
- Thursday, 27 October 2011
Read this story from theVancouver Sun on Auditor General John Doyle's new report, which slams BC Hydro's bad accounting practices - which will add enormous upward pressure to Hydro's already skyrocketing power rates.
"Questionable bookkeeping methods by BC Hydro have put ratepayers on
the hook for $2.2 billion in public debt — with no apparent plan in
place to recover the money, Auditor General John Doyle warned in an
audit report on Wednesday. Doyle said that if BC Hydro
stays with the practice of deferring large debts rather than paying them
back and balancing their books each year, the total debt will swell to
$5 billion by 2017.
At $2.2 billion, BC Hydro would need a
one-year rate increase of 60 per cent to pay off the debt. At $5
billion, the increase would be 150 per cent." (October 27, 2011)
Read this essential op-ed from SFU's Marvin Shaffer in the Vancouver Sun, exposing the real cost to British Columbians of a heavily subsidized liquid natural gas boom on BC North Coast.
"A striking feature of the government's jobs strategy is the number of
very electric-intensive projects it entails. The strategy calls for the
development of new mines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities,
all of which will require very large amounts of electricity.
The
first phase of the proposed LNG plant at Kitimat in itself will
reportedly consume some 1.5 million megawatt hours of electricity per
year, or roughly one-third of the entire output of the proposed Site C
dam project.
Media commentators have questioned whether BC Hydro
will be able to supply these large new requirements for electricity.
Some worry that it will not be able to do so because of the capital
spending and other constraints that were recommended in the government's
recent review of BC Hydro's rapidly rising costs and rates.
However,
the real issue here is not whether BC Hydro can supply the electricity
these projects will need. It no doubt could by acquiring or developing
new sources of electricity supply. The issue is whether, or at least
under what circumstances, it should.
One thing is certain. It will
be very bad for BC Hydro and consequently all of its existing customers
if it does supply electricity to the new mines and LNG facilities at
its standard industrial rate. Under that rate, which averages less than
$40 per megawatt hour, the amount BC Hydro would receive would be less
than half the costs it would incur for the new sources of supply it
would have to acquire." (October 205, 2011)
How about a bit of totally nonsensical speculation of the order of “Hitler is alive and well living in Argentina”. Something utterly absurd...Jimmy Pattison has bought the services of BC Hydro CEO Dave Cobb, for whom he must be paying a pretty penny – I mean this guy’s in the million a year range. What reason is there for this? (NDP leader Adrian Dix got off a good one saying that perhaps Cobb has found a Premier Clark he can work with!) What if Pattison has an eye on BC Hydro? Yes, that’s what I asked – what if Jimmy Pattison, an acquisitor par excellence, buys out the jewel of the BC Crown!
Written by Administrator
- Thursday, 20 October 2011
Read this story from the Province on the unexpected resignation of BC Hydro CEO Dave Cobb to work for Pattison Group.
"B.C. Hydro president Dave Cobb is stepping down after just over a
year in the job, in the latest example of the troubled relationship
between the government and the Crown corporation. In an interview
Wednesday, Cobb said it was a difficult choice to leave after just 17
months, but he has a 'oncein-a-lifetime' opportunity to work directly
with Jim Pattison in senior management of the Jim Pattison Group. Cobb said he will stay at B.C. Hydro until Nov. 30 to help with the organization's transition to an interim CEO." (Oct. 20, 2011)
Bids from IPP’s to supply electricity to BC Hydro recently came in at an average of $100 per megawatt hour for non-firm and $124 for firm. Recent spot market prices ranged from a low of $4.34 for non-firm to a high of $52.43 for firm. Firm power with delivery in 2012 was recently listed at $27-35 on the Pacific Northwest wholesale market...Buying high and selling low doesn’t work for long. So who will pick up the shortfall between what Hydro is paying and what it can sell the electricity for? Well, that would be you, BC Hydro customers.
30 year-old William Housty's powerhouse presentation to the National Energy Board's Enbridge hearings in his community of Bella Bella. William describes the history, language and culture of his people in fascinating detail - and how the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline and Tar Sands supertankers transiting the waters of his people's territory would destroy their traditional way of life.
Highlights from this week's National Energy Board hearings in Bella Bella on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and supertankers on BC's coast. Powerful testimony from three members of the Heiltsuk First Nation, sharing their experiences with the sea.rn
The Heiltsuk First Nation learned late Monday that scheduled National Energy Board hearings on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline will resume Tuesday in Bella Bella, following their cancellation Monday in the wake of a peaceful demonstration to which the Joint Review Panel overreacted.
Close to 2,000 people turned out on a rainy Monday afternoon in Vancouver last week to speak out against Tar Sands oil tankers on BC's coast. The occasion marked the 23rd anniversary of the disastrous Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. The crowd gathered at the Art Gallery to hear from guest speakers like 350.org's Bill McKibben and members of the Heiltsuk First Nation of Bella Bella, who coorganized the rally, along with ForestEthics and Greenpeace.
Rueben George of the Tsleil-Waututh (Burrard) First Nation and Ben West of the Wilderness Committee discuss Kinder Morgan's quiet plan to twin its existing Trans Mountain Pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Vancouver - which would result in up to 300 supertankers a year plying the waters of the Burrard Inlet and South Coast.
Eleven year-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon First Nation sings her hit song "Shallow Waters" to some 2,000 people outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. She tells the audience one year ago on this day she was chased from Enbridge's Vancouver office when she tried to present her song to company officials.
World renowned climate activist Bill McKibben of 350.org lent his voice to the "Our Coast, Our Decision" rally in Vancouver Monday. McKibben told the crowd of close to 2,000 outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, "This is one of these great moments in human history and you guys are absolutely at the white, hot centre of it."
Rafe Mair pulls no punches in this, the second of a two-part interview with BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix - grilling the potential future premier of BC on Liquid Natural Gas, fracking, the proposed Enbridge pipeline and salmon farms.
Marven Robinson, a spirit bear guide from the Gitga'at Nation of Hartley Bay, speaks to Damien Gillis in Prince Rupert the day after the big rally he helped organize against Enbridge on Feb. 4, 2012.
In the first of a two-part interview, Rafe Mair grills BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix on private power, Site C Dam and BC's flawed environmental assessment process. What will the NDP do with existing and future private river power projects (a.k.a. IPPs) if they form the next government - and where do they stand on Site C Dam?
The beating of drums echoed throughout the seaside community of Prince Rupert, BC, on February 4 as thousands of First Nations and BC citizens banded together to express their opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway twin pipelines from the Alberta Tar Sands to nearby Kitimat on BC's central coast.
The various spokespeople for supposed "grassroots" pro-Tar Sands and pipeline organization EthicalOil.org have steadfastly maintained their campaign has no connection to the oil and gas industry or the Harper Government. But as the links between these groups continue to pile up, that contention becomes harder and harder to swallow.
In the wake of the bogus deal Enbridge attempted to foist on the Gitxsan people of Northwest BC last month to help pave the way for its controversial proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the community has banded together in inspiring fashion - with camcorders and the Web as their weapons of choice.
Watch this series of clips by independent filmmaker Craig Delahunt from the Cohen Commission, including a key hour of testimony from the final day of ISAv hearings and interviews with experts outside the Commission.
See how the Gitxsan are banding together in a moment of crisis, following the unauthorized deal with Enbridge signed by rogue treaty negotiator Elmer Derrick.
