° Not observed 
Bill 17, the Clean Energy Act was rammed through the legislature without the debate it deserved and got final approval on June 4. The new Act gives Blair Lekstrom, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and the cabinet sweeping powers, places every river and stream of any significance in the province under siege, and will turn British Columbia into a major power producer for the Pacific Northwest.
The provincial government has always argued that the objective of the plan is to make the province self-sufficient in electric energy by 2016. That message is a seductive one and a misrepresentation of the real situation. BC Hydro has bought and sold power for many years. The province is already self-sufficient in electric energy. During seven of the past 11 years, power has been exported.
Under the Act, B.C. Hydro will be required to buy electricity for export by issuing contracts to so-called small independent power companies that produce most of their power during the spring when it is not needed. Doing so will ensure that it is available for export.
The Act also requires that the corporation buy the power whether it is economic or not and it will have to constantly seek out new export opportunities. It will also have to develop and maintain the transmission lines that serve the private producers and continue to provide other back up services. It's a high-risk venture, but BC Hydro has no other option.
To ensure that things go according to the government’s plan, the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC), the public body created several years ago to oversee power production, has had its responsibilities severely curtailed. The minister and the Cabinet will now make most of the significant decisions on proposals.
During the last Clean Power Call, BC Hydro awarded electricity purchase agreements to 25 companies. Sixteen of the proposals are run-of-river technology while six are wind technology. In total, the projects will produce 3,200 gigawatt hours of electricity.
At a conference held in November 2009, Premier Gordon Campbell told the Independent Power Producers that the enormous resources in British Columbia should be developed to provide green and clean, low-carbon power for everyone including neighbours in the United States and Alberta. He also made it clear that he was depending on independent power producers to pull the plan off.
The fear expressed by critics of the plan is that it will lead to the privatization of BC's watersheds and complete government control of BC Hydro, our public utility. Run of river power plants are industrial transformations of rivers and watersheds. Forests are destroyed to accommodate roads; transmission corridors are permanent clear cuts; rivers are diverted through massive penstocks; fish and wildlife habitats are altered and destroyed; and huge quantities of fossil fuels are consumed to power the machines that do the work: helicopters, trucks and excavators.
Lekstrom insists that small companies can actually enter the power production market in B.C. and have. That is not the case. In reality, larger corporations back most of the companies involved. Plutonic is a subsidiary of General Electric, the world’s fourth largest corporation. Atco Power of Calgary owns the McMahon Cogeneration Plant at Taylor. Quebec companies also play a major role in B.C. Independent power production. A company based in Australia is also involved.
There is a lot more to the Clean Energy Act than meets the public eye but ratepayers can be assured that its implementation will be the end of cheap power in B.C.
Perhaps the time has come to buy shares in one of the companies that has a secure 25-40 year contract with BC Hydro.
