VANCOUVER - An association of states and provinces in western North America released this week an extensive map of areas with potential for renewable energy development. The results will be used to locate new transmission lines in the electric grid that connects this half of the continent.
However, a group of environmental organizations in British Columbia that has been monitoring the process claim that although they support the stated goals and mandate of the initiative, British Columbia’s contribution is not credible.
They want the analysis redone before it is used to guide new provincial policy.
In February, The Tyee reported on British Columbia’s plans to scope out areas with potential for large-scale solar, wind or hydro projects to support transmission infrastructure planning for Western North America.
The Western Renewable Energy Zones (WREZ) initiative was launched last March by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Western Governors' Association.
On Monday, they released a joint report which, based on participant input and feedback, identifies those areas with large-scale renewable development potential.
“We set and achieved an aggressive goal of bringing together in less than one year a large number of stakeholders to identify areas that have the most promising renewable energy resources,” stated WGA chair Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. in a press release.
“Their efforts are an important first step in developing cost-attractive renewable energy resources across the West and the high voltage transmission that will ensure this electricity can be delivered to demand centers.”
But in a submission to the task group, representatives of the David Suzuki Foundation, B.C. Spaces for Nature, Forest Ethics, West Coast Environmental Law and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative criticized B.C.'s analysis of its own renewable resources that created the map of potential resource sites.
“The way that B.C. went about doing this study, they didn't do it in accord with the methodology that was set out,” said Nicholas Heap, Climate and Energy Policy Analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation.
Four of those groups are now calling on the B.C. government to redo the assessment. According to Heap, it is especially important that an improved assessment is done before submissions have to be made this fall to a B.C. Utilities Commission's inquiry. That inquiry will determine a 30-year plan for electricity transmission in the province.
Heap explained that the groups have two problems with the British Columbia submission. First, they think it may miss areas of potential power generation because the government relied on previous studies of wind and hydro-power potential which exclude areas that had been assessed as not cost effective or were not of interest to developers.
This is a concern since past assessments of cost effectiveness may have been based on distance to existing transmission lines, and the WREZ process is supposed to identify new transmission corridors.
In addition, they believe it did not fully account for all types of environmentally-sensitive areas because it did not include land use plans which identify areas that should or should not be open to commercial use.
“What you're left with is a bunch of sites [for potential electricity generation],” he said, “but you don't know if they are the highest energy sites, and you don't know if they're the lowest [environmental] impact areas.”
British Columbia was represented on the task group that participated in the mapping project by Ed Higginbottom, senior strategy advisor for the B.C. Transmission Corporation, and Monique Stevenson, formerly of Sea Breeze Power Corp.
Higginbottom is currently on vacation and could not be reached for comment and Stevenson, now at BC Hydro, did not return phone messages from The Tyee.
A representative from the B.C. Transmission Corporation agreed to look into the environmental groups' concerns, but was not able to provide a reply by press time.
Regardless of the reasons the province chose to limit the types of lands excluded for environmental reasons, Heap warns that the province's approach may have set up problems in the future.
“If you develop a low-impact system for the development of renewable energy, you can develop more renewable energy, you can do it faster, because you're going to have more public support,” he said. “You're reducing the risks to public finances, you're reducing the risks to developers.”
Even if the government agrees to reconsider the analysis, however, the schedule proposed by the environmental groups is tight.
BC Hydro and the B.C. Transmission Corporation have to file information on electricity generation potential and protected areas -- and proposed scenarios for new transmission line locations -- with the B.C. Utilities Commission by September 18.
Colleen Kimmett and Amelia Bellamy-Royds report for The Tyee.
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freebear
2 years ago
And First Nations?
Monique Stevenson-from wind farm prospector to BC Hydro!
Is she a card carrying Liberal?
Gotta power all those new electronic gadgets to come in the coming decades!
So much for conservation!
Conserve so others can consume more!
frenchy mcswede
2 years ago
now if only suzuki had been
critical during the provincial election. Will suzuki's epitaph be, "here LIES a man who enabled gordon campbell to kill the last wild salmon?" Oh, sorry, greens, I must have forgot about that press conference in the last provincial election where he condemned campbell's environmental record, so as to be fair and balanced, you know, the press that NEVER happened because suzuki's in the thrall of corporate donors...
Rod Smelser
2 years ago
Right McSwede
You're right about the donor base. It's the controlling factor. As T C Douglas used to say, refering to the Grit and Tory parties, "He who pays the piper calls the tune".
Like many upper-middle class, educated professionals, Suzuki feels he's above that.
seth
2 years ago
Desk chairs on Titanic
Energy Alberta and Saskatchewan Power have concluded that that nuclear power is the only really practical solution to the green house gas emissions.
BC still persists with the rather silly idea that we can end our GHG emission in time to stop a global climate collapse at a reasonable cost with so called "renewables". Wind power has been shown to actually create more GHG's than it saves because very inefficient fast spooling gas plants are needed to balance the extremely variable power output of these units. Wind generally has a 20% load factor so the grid has to be 5 times its normal size in wind generation areas to handle peak loads.
Solar water and space heating seems to be economical but mass solar electricity generation is half the cost in the US Southwest desert so we may as well buy it from there.
Hydro so far in its run of the river calls has cost us 31 billion dollars for 6500 gigawatt hours of firm power for delivery starting in the 2013 time frame.
By comparison, Hydro could have replaced Burrard Thermal with the four one gigawatt reactors Westinghouse sold to China for service in 2013 at a cost of $5.5 billion giving 40000 gigawatt hours of power - 6 times the power for one sixth the price. That would have been enough to power to eliminate BC's own GHG emissions ending all our contribution to global warming.
Given the extent of the global warming crisis fooling with so called renewables is really just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Rod Smelser
2 years ago
seth: A source on this one?
By comparison, Hydro could have replaced Burrard Thermal with the four one gigawatt reactors Westinghouse sold to China for service in 2013 at a cost of $5.5 billion giving 40000 gigawatt hours of power - 6 times the power for one sixth the price.
An intriguing estimate. Is there a source on this one?
Ian Hanington
2 years ago
Please refrain from libel
We would ask Rod Smelser to please refrain from libelling the David Suzuki Foundation, as he has done on more than one occasion and in more than one published forum.
The David Suzuki Foundation's donor base is a matter of public record and is available on the Foundation's website.
Ian Hanington
The David Suzuki Foundation
Rod Smelser
2 years ago
I do not believe it's libel
Mr Hannington
I do not believe it's libel to say that your foundation is supported by wealthy donors, anymore than it's libel to say the NDP is supported by working class or union donors. I think you're being unduly hypersensitive to put it mildly. Why do I say wealthy donors? Because donors who make contributions in the thousand dollar and up range are clearly well-off.
Let me just point out that it's one thing to publish names of donors in an annual report or on an elections website. It's another thing altogether to understand the sources from which those donors draw their own incomes and wealth. For the public, that kind of in-depth analysis usually results from a detailed study by an academic, whether the issue is funding for a political party or for an advocacy group.
But no doubt parties and non-profits who do professional fundraising have received detailed analyses that they have commissioned from fundraising consultants on their donor sources, and could release some of that analysis if they chose to do so.
I wonder it the Suzuki Foundation and other ENGOs would be happy with a legislated reporting requirement on both political parties and non-profits that provided demographic and socio-economic data on donation sources, including the education and income levels of individuals donors, and information on the industries and occupations of both individual and corporate donors? I know I would like to see that, since I think it would aid considerably in the public understanding of both elections and issues.
Frank
2 years ago
Suzuki Foundation
Isn't Suzuki pleased that the Liberals won the election? Isn't that why they campaigned for the carbon tax?
Now that we have the carbon tax I thought there was no need for environmental organizations because everything is going to be peachy keen now.
We don't need rivers, we have the carbon tax.
seth
2 years ago
China nukes
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0
1.1 gigawatts each from 4 reactors 24/7 for a year gives 38500 gigawatt hours.
For 2006 and 2008 calls for power check the 2008 BCHydro annual report and saveourrivers.ca
Rod Smelser
2 years ago
Thanks, seth
However, that is a Dec 2006 announcement, so I wonder if the costs have risen, or risen then fallen back again since then. Also, would many aspects of construction not be significantly cheaper in China than in Canada?