Guest Post by Mark Jaccard, professor of sustainable energy at SFU and lead author for energy policy with the Global Energy Assessment. He chaired the BC utilities commission in the 1990s. A shortened version of this article appeared in the Vancouver Sun.

BC’s proposed clean energy act has triggered extreme statements pro and con. “Great, because our elected representatives are taking responsibility for electricity policy.” “Disastrous, because it reduces utilities commission control over BC Hydro.”

While the new act covers many issues, the key controversy is its proposed replacement of the utilities commission with the provincial cabinet for approving major BC Hydro projects and programs. These include turbines at existing dams, electricity from independent power producers, mass replacement of home meters, extensions of the transmission grid and, most importantly, the Site C dam on the Peace River. With the Site C dam as the heavyweight, the cabinet-approved bill to BC Hydro customers approaches $10 billion.

Supporting the act is the argument that our elected representatives should make these big financial commitments, not the unelected technocrats at the utilities commission. If BC is to meet its energy security and environmental challenges, it needs policy consistency throughout government. The counter argument is that only the utilities commission has the expertise, the opportunities for public input, and the distance from short-term political pressures to make sound decisions having such long-term implications.

Today, the governing Liberals argue in favour of cabinet control while the opposition NDP argue in favour of the commission. But both parties have been on both sides of this issue over the past two decades.

Indeed, both perspectives competed within the NDP government of the 1990s. Premier Mike Harcourt and his energy minister, Ann Edwards, believed the utilities commission offered the best means of providing a check on BC Hydro. They appointed me in 1992 to chair the commission, which I did for five years, introducing intervener funding, an integrated resource planning process with obligatory public involvement, and a negotiated settlement process involving key interests including environmentalists and consumer groups. These reforms are still integral to the commission’s operation, whether applied to Hydro or other utilities.

Within the NDP government, however, Glen Clark questioned why unelected commissioners, who never face the electorate to defend their decisions, should determine major investments by BC’s largest crown corporation. When Clark became premier in 1996, he effectively removed Hydro from commission oversight and the corporation ceased its open planning process. To everyone’s surprise it unveiled a new strategy to build a natural gas pipeline to Vancouver Island and several natural gas-fired plants, which would dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions. Political control over Hydro had clearly become paramount.

When Gordon Campbell campaigned for premier, he promised to re-instate commission control over Hydro, which he did in 2003. Subsequent open reviews and commission decisions finally convinced Hydro to abandon natural gas and return to its earlier pursuit of renewable electricity for Vancouver Island and the rest of the province. This approach meshed with Campbell’s climate policy initiatives of 2007, which included a requirement that Hydro acquire zero-emission sources of electricity, be these from independent power producers or a future BC Hydro project like the Site C dam.

Recent frustrations, however, have convinced Campbell to once again liberate Hydro from commission control, at least for the projects and programs listed in his new act. The commission’s processes are slow and its decisions can act against government policy goals, an example being its decision (since overruled) that Hydro should continue using its greenhouse gas-emitting Burrard Thermal plant.

Thus, Campbell and the NDP have now been on both sides of this debate. So which approach is better?

There is no easy answer and, indeed, one should mistrust anyone who argues vociferously for either extreme. It is important that the commission, which is after all unelected, not thwart legitimate government policy objectives. At the same time, the commission has demonstrated through the years the value of an arms-length agency that provides a check on major electricity investment decisions, restricting the influence of short-term political considerations. In fact, I have been invited over the years to explain the commission’s regulation of Hydro to other jurisdictions that ended up emulating the BC model, including Hungary (1993), Brazil (1997) and Quebec (1999).

In the case of Site C, the decision is too monumental, in my view, to be delegated to unelected officials. That decision must be made by cabinet. But I am not yet convinced these other projects and programs should be exempt from commission oversight. I think government can achieve its policy objectives with language it has in the new act directing the commission to be “guided by” government climate and energy security policies. And it can require the commission to accelerate its procedures. When I chaired the commission, for example, we limited every hearing to two weeks and allowed ourselves only one month to issue a decision.

While quick actions are needed to transition BC toward a cleaner, more electricity-intensive economy, we must be careful not to jettison oversight mechanisms that have served us quite well.

“The fact that oil sands by themselves—were they a country—are set to become the largest single source of U.S. crude oil imports this year, emphasizes the importance they have attained as a supply source for the United States. This ranking demonstrates the impact of investment and innovation over the last decade. It also shows how integrated Canada and the United States are in terms of energy, as in their overall economies.”

– Daniel Yergin, CERA’s chairman and Pulitzer winner for The Prize – The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power

There’s something vaguely familiar about this chart….

Oil sands production, combined with exports of Canadian conventional crude oil, has already put Canada in the position of number one foreign supplier of oil to the United States. Over the past decade, production from oil sands more than doubled from 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2000 to 1.35 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2009, more than offsetting declines in conventional Canadian production. But the potential is much larger and oil sands growth could be three or four times greater than today to a range of 3.1 mbd to 5.7 mbd by 2030, according to the report.

While oil demand in the United States is not likely to return to its 2005 peak, the U.S. will maintain its position as the world’s largest oil market over the next two decades….

The CERA report is available for free and is intended to be the first of four.

New York Times’ Despite Risks, US Relying More on Canada Oil Sands

Canwest story here

Check out all his videos here.

We used the ‘investment gap’, the difference between Canadian and U.S. spending on renewable energy, to estimate the number of new jobs that could have been created if we had actually matched our southern neighbour. So far, it has cost Canadians an estimated 66,000 jobs in renewable energy alone. We did not estimate the lost energy efficiency and transportation jobs, so the actual number of lost jobs is much higher.

The report was published in conjunction with the United Steelworkers. Get it here

Nearly 90% of Nova Scotia’s electricity now comes from fossil fuels (mostly coal) and the new plan aims to cut coal in half and increase the percentage of renewables to 40% by 2020. In announcing the goal, Premier Darrell Dexter pledged that “Nova Scotia will be one of the most aggressive jurisdictions in the world in converting from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

Pembina’s Tim Weis likes it:

“Nova Scotia has taken a national leadership role today in cleaning up its electricity supply; setting the bar for Canada’s other provinces that still rely heavily on coal power.” [I think he's looking at you AB. You too SK]

Most of the new renewable energy will come from industrial-scale projects — equal parts from independent power producers and from Nova Scotia Power. The rationale for the hybrid model is “because Nova Scotia’s lack of a robust connection to the North American grid limits competition. Without that element, competitive bids may not be the best model…. This plan allows the two models to operate in parallel. The results will allow government to determine the best way to balance the development projects in the future.”

The government is going to rely on industrial scale projects explicitly to keep down costs. They figure the plan will result in a 1-2% increase annually on electricity bills. By 2015, that works out to $10-$20 annually to the average single family home electricity bill (closer to $20-$40 if electricity is used for heating). Is electricity cheap in Canada, or what…

Another key element of the plan is a community based feed in tariff for projects typically under 2 MW. The feed-in-tariff will apply to electricity produced from wind, biomass, tidal, wave, in-stream hydro as well as combined heat and power projects. The rates are yet to be set but notably do not include solar due to its “high cost.”

In addition, the plan sets out:

• enhanced net metering — crediting consumers for energy they produce with wind, solar and other renewables – though not paid any premium.

• a “cautious approach to biomass,” with harvesting standards and caps on generation in new and existing plants

• feed-in tariffs for small-scale tidal projects and tidal arrays, “if further development proves safe.”

• encouraging further natural gas use to help balance intermittent sources like wind.

The goal of 25% renewables by 2015 will be set in law while the 40% goal will be aspirational (ugh) for now.

There’s very little on energy conservation in the plan but we’re told that’s because there will be a “larger strategy on clean energy production and use to be released in the coming year.”  (Which will also address “other sources of renewable energy (for electricity, space and water heating, and transportation)”

Of course, the big, exciting technology for Nova Scotia is tidal power. The Bay of Fundy tidal surge is said to exceed all the water flowing down all the rivers in the world. The province calls tidal “the sleeping giant” but cautions that “these are still early days. Many technical and economic challenges lie along the path…”

Here’s what the new plan offers on tidal:

A Tidal Feed-In Tariff: Tidal devices are still in the demonstration phase. The electricity they produce costs more than electricity from mature renewable sources. To support tidal development, the province will set a community-based feed-in tariff (COMFIT) for distribution connected tidal projects. In addition—given that research currently underway proves tidal to be both safe and feasible—the province will authorize a special FIT for developmental tidal arrays connected at the transmission level that reflects the cost of the turbines and their deployment.

It seems a bit churlish to be too critical of a coal-fired jurisdiction that’s ready to start “weaning” but the Nova Scotia government makes some of the classic Canadian errors in communicating the big energy picture to the public. This kind of thing is just crazy-making:

uh…no.

Electricity is a small subset of “energy” — as even environmentalists seem to have a hard time remembering. What we need to keep reminding the public is that fossil fuels are the overwhelming majority of our energy use — gasoline, heating oil, diesel, etc, etc. That 40% renewable electricity is much better than coal, but not nearly 40% of Nova Scotia’s “Energy Mix.”

We need to eliminate fossil emissions entirely and not just from electricity. It’s a big project that has to happen very quickly. Moments like this are moments to fill in that picture for the public.

At least they got it right in the title of the plan. Click to read Nova Scotia’s Renewable Electricity Plan in full.

]]> http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/2010/04/23/nova-scotia-we-must-begin-the-process-of-weaning-ourselves-off-coal%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/2010/04/14/chris-turner-euroecophile/ http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/2010/04/14/chris-turner-euroecophile/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:09:01 +0000 Chris Hatch http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/?p=1953 Chris Turner reinvents the Grand Tour in this month's Walrus. Follow along as he encounters a new experience: "naked envy" "A great chain of innovation stretching from Scandinavia to the south of Spain, ultimately encompassing all the essential infrastructure of…]]> Chris Turner reinvents the Grand Tour in this month’s Walrus. Follow along as he encounters a new experience: “naked envy”

“A great chain of innovation stretching from Scandinavia to the south of Spain, ultimately encompassing all the essential infrastructure of our brightest possible future…. After a century as Western Civilization’s primary battleground and museum of antiquities, Europe has again become its pace-setting think tank and laboratory.”

Concentrated Solar Thermal Plant, Spain

“Canada’s record to-date suggests this target will present policymakers across the country with an immense test. It remains unclear how national targets are to be coordinated, divided and enforced among provinces and territories.”

“Remains unclear” is lovely diplomatese don’t you think? As for the federal committment to supply 90% of the country’s electricity with emissions-free sources within 10 years, the IEA figures that would require “long-term, effective and predictable support mechanisms for renewable energy” [diplomatically not mentioning that the federal renewable energy support program was not refunded in the March budget].

Running the numbers for global warming pollution and energy consumption, the IEA calculates that

Canada is one of the highest per-capita CO2 emitters in the OECD and has higher energy intensity than any IEA member country.

You have to keep in mind that the IEA is an intergovernmental organization of the OECD nations — long the rich world’s fossil energy boosters. (They have become a bit less hidebound recently and belatedly joined the worldwide efforts for a “low carbon industrial revolution.”) Point is, they’re no radicals but nonetheless they make their point:

“Canada must continue to develop and implement a comprehensive national energy efficiency strategy, coupled with a coordinated climate change policy targeted at the key emitting sectors, if long-term energy goals are to be realised”

Summary here, full report you gotta pay for. Lots on tar sands, natural gas, coal, nuclear. Key recommendations include:

The government of Canada should:

◗ Develop a co-ordinated climate change policy targeted on the key emitting sectors, including specific cap-and-trade proposals, and actively participate in any forthcoming international agreement.
◗ Implement a comprehensive national energy efficiency strategy, focused on reducing energy intensity, with an explicit emphasis on policies in the road transport sector and buildings sector.

[Building efficiency program was canceled in late March -- also diplomatically not mentioned]

Congratulations to a brave and tireless scientist (his famous testimony to the US Congress was in 1988!).

FYI: also this week, Hansen wrote a piece describing climate change as:

The predominant moral issue of the 21st century… Our fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet.

Here’s the Sophie Prize jury:

Dr. James E. Hansen (born 1941) has played a key role in the development of our understanding of human impact on the climate for more than 30 years. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, where he has been researching planetary atmospheres. He is frequently called to testify before Congress on climate issues. His main focus has been on climatology, and primarily how greenhouse gases affect the global climate. As early as 1988 he presented results for the American congress testifying to the probability that human-induced climate change was a threat to the planet.

Dr. James E. Hansen is an outstanding scientist with numerous scientific articles published in high-ranking journals. His conscience, and later his role as a “concerned grandfather”, has committed him to combine his research with political activism based on personal conviction. He has managed to translate his research into concrete and understandable warnings about what will happen if we do not act to reduce the human CO2 emissions. Based on his research Hansen has predicted that 350 ppm should serve the upper limit of atmospheric CO2 concentrations if we are to avoid dramatic effects of climate change. This has inspired the formation of the worldwide activist movement 350.org.

Hansen’s clear message and warnings have been met with a lot of resistance. As a scientist he has experienced censorship. He has endured criticism for his activist engagement, seen by some as unscientific. Hansen has stood firm and countered these arguments by exposing the economic interest of the actors that spread doubt about human impact on climate change. Whilst these voices often have economic interests backing them, it is the youth of today and the ecosystems with their biodiversity that will pay the price in the future.

According to Hansen, humanity is at a tipping point. We have to act now, or we can trigger feedback mechanisms that may cause damage beyond repair. Hansen states that the international community is not responding to this rising crisis fast enough. The measures taken today are not sufficient to reach the necessary level of reduction in CO2 emissions. This is why he is advocating an end to coal mining and a substantial tax on CO2 to ensure a fast transfer to alternative forms of energy. Hansen emphasises that this might also contribute to new opportunities: New high-tech workplaces, new energy sources and cleaner air for everybody.

Dr. James E. Hansen is the person that has made it impossible for us to tell our grandchildren that we did not know what we were doing. He is awarded the Sophie Prize 2010 for his vital research, for his abilities to communicate his findings, and for his genuine and inspiring involvement for future generations.

More:

Reuters: Climate scientist Hansen wins $100,000 prize

Canada’s Supreme Court has refused leave to appeal in Friends of the Earth’s lawsuit over the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. That means that Canadian courts will do nothing about the Harper government’s deliberate defiance of a valid federal law, which required them to take action to comply with Canada’s (allegedly) legally binding international commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Harper gambled that he could break both domestic and international law on climate change and get away with it, and he was right.

– Dianne Saxe, Envirolaw.com

I trust that to many an “optional” climate policy smells fishy, like setting voluntary targets that companies or jurisdictions will then volunteer to ignore. There are three critical distinctions.

Donner’s original case at The Mark. Follow-up at his blog.