There is a small group of people — BC Liberals and friends — who viewed BC Hydro as a giant faucet for disbursement of cash. It is a costly reality for consumers of electricity in British Columbia…
Continue readingTag: BC Hydro
In-Sights: Canadians spit into the wind
Slowing of growth in carbon emissions falls well short of the sharp drop in carbon emissions thought necessary to achieve Paris climate goals. We need a far more decisive break from the past…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Solar power unstoppable, even on the wet coast
Dave Melrose, a reader who is in the solar installation business, commented on my previous article Death knell for net metering. He worries that people could be misinformed because I didn’t make clear that self-generation of electricity remains viable for homeowners. People tell me a 15-year payback on solar installations
Continue readingIn-Sights: Vested interests dictate energy policy
The coming shifts in power distribution is referred to as the democratization of energy. It is resisted at BC Hydro and other utilities but it is inevitable…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Liberal amounts of fake accounting
Residents of British Columbia understand financial pain that follows when officeholders subvert public utilities to gain political advantage and reward special interests. BC Liberals aimed to privatize public assets and services. When it could not be achieved overtly, it was done by stealth. After inevitable failures and disasters, legislators concealed them
Continue readingIn-Sights: Death knell for net metering
BC Hydro fears the amount of power fed to the grid by participants in net metering will expand substantially. As a result, this week the utility announced they intend to change the program so that it is not available to customers generating power beyond their own energy needs…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Liberal energy policy, blunder or costly malfeasance?
Considering the near endless ink and airtime dedicated to what Liberals called “Glen Clark’s folly,” people should compare the attention paid to a Campbell/Clark program that may have cost the province 15 or 20 times as much.
Continue readingIn-Sights: Dear John letter
A letter republished with permission of the BC Hydro Ratepayers Association. Dear Premier Horgan…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Plug pulled on PowerBC
Before John Horgan was sworn in as Premier, BC NDP promoted a wise alternative to construction of Site C, a dam that would cost many billions of dollars and had no certain customers for electricity generated. “Clean energy and energy conservation technology will increasingly power our economy and drive the
Continue readingIn-Sights: Private power – BC’s unmitigated financial disaster
The Horgan Government indicated it will conduct a review of private power purchases but lifting contract secrecy is the one thing that could be done immediately. It is inconceivable that IPPs could prove damages from publication of contracts since the business terms are widely known throughout the industry. Secrecy only
Continue readingIn-Sights: Real news reshaped, redefined and side tracked
Independent Voter Network declares: A free press is the watchdog of the people. The media holds the sacred responsibility of alerting the citizenry of actions by governments, elected politicians, corporations and even private citizens. It is the fourth estate… But now the fourth estate is in crisis. The news media
Continue readingIn-Sights: Shilling for dollars
Updated from June 2016. In an earlier article, I made reference to BC Legislative Press Gallery members producing commissioned articles. These are public relations pieces intended to serve particular needs of government or entities doing business with government. It is the kind of output that will ultimately be replaced by
Continue readingIn-Sights: What Hydro, Government and corporate media hates reporting
BC Hydro’s sales of electricity to residents and businesses have been flat since 2005, despite population growth of 15% in BC and minimal effort by the provincial utility to reduce consumption. BC Hydro hides the fact by including sales outside the province in the once insignificant “Other” category and counting
Continue readingIn-Sights: Misappropriation of public wealth
This article was first published in April 2016 and is repeated because is explains how BC Hydro got into the private power mess that continues to cost ratepayers hundreds of million of dollars each year. Readers may tire of reports on BC Hydro but the more I examine this public
Continue readingIn-Sights: The fix was in
In a November 2017 post at his blog, York University Professor Mark Winfield, notes the failures of politicians when tasked with making energy decisions: The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has just announced a public inquiry into how the economically disastrous Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project was approved. In reality there
Continue readingIn-Sights: Site C, a Kodak moment
For many years, I worked in the motion picture film laboratory business. One of our profit centres was processing TV News film footage. We had machines in or near TV stations in Vancouver and Victoria. If a story was breaking, news departments would dispatch a reporter and cameraman to the
Continue readingIn-Sights: Someone is telling us lies
When BC Liberals said the Site C completion budget was $7.9 billion, the cost of power from the project was stated to be $87 – $95 per megawatt-hour (MWh). Now, with the Site C budget up 26% to $10.7 billion, John Horgan’s NDP government claims the cost per MWh has
Continue readingIn-Sights: More Energy Ministry duplicity
Four months ago, concerned that BC Hydro had failed to make public its second quarter report as required by law, I wrote this message to Minister Michelle Mungall: From: Norman Farrell [mailto:normanfarrell.ca@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 12:33 PM To: Minister, EMPR EMPR:EX Subject: BC Hydro – Overdue Quarterly Report
Continue readingIn-Sights: Deceit is still a BC Government tool
A BC Government “technical presentation” regarding its decision to continue construction of Site C is filled with misinformation, deceit and false justifications. If this is the quality of the advice taken by John Horgan’s cabinet on one rather important issue, we should be concerned about every other policy being considered.
Continue readingIn-Sights: BC Hydro, the next steps
I’m disappointed in the provincial government’s decision to continue Site C. It is not the choice I would have made, were I in a position of influence. However, I understand it. Financial issues interconnect. Finance ministry people influenced the Site C decision, emphasizing that what is done today affects what can
Continue reading