Wow! Campbell is following Arnie's lead? The maybe he will be interested in this:
http://www.nytimes.com:80/2007/01/09/us/09calif.html?ex=1169010000&en=bc66ad7a2e859b1b&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it, Fraser Institute!

I hate to say it, but if Campbell was really serious in cutting greenhouse emmissions and car pollution, then he should immediately reject metro construction in favour of modern LRT. He should also mandate that not LRT project should exceed $25 million/km. except for bridge construction. Only then, will the GVRD get a 'rail' transit network that will attract the motorist from the car.

As it stands now, we have built $5 billion of metro but there has not been noticable modal shift from car to transit. Ridership increses have only come with population increases! Hence the density myth.

for the cost of RAV, we could have built LRT from downtown Vancouver to Steveston & the Airport; From BCIT to UBC, via Broadway and a basic LRT service from Downtown Vancouver to Chilliwack.

But no, the metro lobby (read auto & roads lobby) want elevated or underground 'rapid transit', even though it has not proven to attract the motorist from the car.

Nope, things will not change here, metro for ever is the mantra of the GVRD, TransLink; the NDP; and the Liberals and their friends. Sadly, Vancouver is unique with their metro only construction.

Oh by the way, did anyone here know that Calgary's LRT is powered from wind turbines! with the weather here, maybe we should consider wind turbines for every home!

"Oh by the way, did anyone here know that Calgary's LRT is powered from wind turbines! with the weather here, maybe we should consider wind turbines for every home!"

GREAT NEWS !!

On those calm days all the commuters can get some exercise by walking

BC could and should be leading the world in the generation and develolpment of tidal-current energy technology. Tidal current (NOT tidal dams) is renewable, emission-free, 100% firm (i.e. predictable) and abundant in several locations nearby to the grid. In fact, our Canadian marine and estuarine coastline provides hundreds and likely thousands of excellent sites to provide micro and macro, non-polluting tidal energy, for remote sites and major grid plug-ins.

Hydro and BC politicos (Liberals and NDippers) know all about tidal and have done next to zilch to seed it here. Four years ago Hydro released its own 'Green Energy report on Tidal Current Energy' in which p 1 of the Exec Sum asserted that tidal current energy, using present day technologies (incipient though they are) could be meeting "up to 40% of Hydro's annual generating capacity" at near-competitive pricing.

In the UK, government is very serious about seeding tidal to generate jobs and a billion dollar export industry and it is willing to stack subsidies for R&D, siting studies, demonstration costs and long-term price shaping. That's what happens when there's real political will and leadership to advance something. In BC, Hydro falls back on the utterly lame excuse that it is guided by the BCUC that it must provide the cheapest power to customers, at about 4-5 cents/kwh. And so we end up with coal-fired plants and when you check closely you'll see also that taxpayer funded subsidies have been stacked to help our coal, oil and gas industries complete R&D, build roads, offset exploration and develpment, ship to market and write-off pollution mitigation costs and/or habitat 'reclamation'.

Don't be fooled by more smoke (ahem) and mirrors coming from Gordo unless he's serious about seeding and subsidizing alternatives, to help them gain traction in a thoroughly unblanced playing field, 'er market.
You can also lobby your MLAs if you live in a coastal community to nest tidal energy. The most promising site by far is alongside Discovery Passage, nearby to the Island's transmission grid.

Tidal current energy is in its infancy but it has huge promise, worldwide, for emission-free energy, jobs, Kyoto credits, export opps, and an energy future we can all be proud we helped to create.

Legislation by opinion polls?
Interesting to see how a politicians standards change as the public opinion change!
I wonder how the rednecks who elected Campbell feel about this newest change og heart?
All it tells me is that the puppet has to do whatever it takes to ensure another election victory....like promise anything, we can always delay the implementation for a few years with more commissions etc.
It never occurs to these people that by changing strategies along the way, they show they can not be trusted?

playing politics

these two KLOWNS are political opportunists and the EARTH is nothing more than their plaything.

SENSIBLE ENVIROMENTAL ENERGY and anything that smells like a winning plan will be promised and EVENTUALLY delivered...just be ready to PAY BIGTIME.

as an aside,do you think these two KLOWNS could get the trains to run on time like UNCLE ADOLF,how about a new peoples wagon ??? or maybe a new AUTOBAHN ???

Ask ARNIE if he is reading MEIN KAMPF these days ???

Well at least something is getting done about the environment.

It's taken long enough. I'm grateful for Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" video for putting the facts in such sharp relief.

Wind Energy Storage.

Logjam 603 responded:
On those calm days all the commuters can get some exercise by walking.

On calm days, Calgary's LRT is powered by sources of electricity other than wind turbines.

Rain is even more intermittent than wind, but that doesn't stop B.C., Manitoba, Quebec or Newfoundland and Labrador from generating massive amounts of reliable hydro electricity. Intermittent energy sources become reliable energy sources when you feed the energy output into storage systems.

In B.C., we have lots of hydro dams. When wind turbines are producing power, we can reduce hydro power output and let water build up behind the dams. When there's no wind, hydro output can be increased again. In effect, our hydro dams can act as huge storage batteries for wind power. We already use our hydro dams in a similar way to make money by buying cheap grid power from the U.S. and reducing hydro output during off-peak times then running the dams' generators at full-tilt during peak-pricing times to sell extra power to the U.S. at premium prices. This amounts to Americans paying us lots of money to store their off-peak energy until it's needed during peak hours.

Wind turbine energy output can also be stored in the form of compressed air in underground caverns. Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) has been used in a 110 megawatt facility in Alabama since 1991. See http://www.caes.net/mcintosh.html Detailed plans have been developed for a 2,700 Megawatt CAES facility in Norton, Ohio. See http://www.caes.net/who.html

A 290 megawatt CAES facility has operated successfully in Huntdorf, Germany since the early 1980s.

CAES uses excess electricity to run giant air compressors. The compressed air is stored in depleted gas fields, abandoned mines, natural caverns etc. When extra electricity is required, the stored compressed air spins turbine generators that are pretty much the same as natural gas turbine generators.

Compressed air storage doesn't flood useful farmland or interfere with salmon runs as do hydro dams. There are many locations suitable for compressed air energy storage, but few locations suitable for hydro energy storage.

Older CAES systems run in Diabatic mode (diabAtic, not diabEtic), which means some efficiency is lost because compressed air heats up and some of that heat energy is lost through the cavern walls. More efficient Adiabatic CAES systems are being developed. These systems extract the heat from compressed air, store the heat separately in an insulated vessel, then add the heat back to the compressed air again before it's used to run turbine generators. This way, heat energy isn't lost through the cavern walls during the storage period. CAES has the storage capacity of pumped hydro, but with lower cost and fewer geographic restrictions. See details at

http://www.ewi.uni-koeln.de/ewi/content/e266/e283/e3047/EWECPaperFinal2004_ger.pdf

CAES facilities located near windpower generation sources smooth the electricity output, which reduces the investment required for power transmission lines by reducing peak demands on the distribution system. CAES facilities located near large consumers such as cities and industrial plants also reduce transmission costs for the same reasons. In addition, they provide a reliable local backup energy source when long-distance transmission lines are down due to high winds, ice, equipment failure, etc.

CAES

Doesn't Diabatic mode generation require a gas fired (or some other heat generating mode) turbine in the generating cylce?

Energy generation and private companies

It seems we citizens have an abundance of ways for generating electricity. What we now need is citizenry with the personal energy to develop these resources privately and offer them to homeowners on a sliding scale. BC citizens can thus circumvent the government's selling off of our resources to foreign investors. The heck with BC Hydro's monopoly on power. BC Hydro is no longer really ours and it no longer deserves to have a monopoly on power transmission and production. The BC government does not own the sun, nor do they own the wind nor the tides. These are natural phenomena and the energy found in these sources cannot be stopped by a government-declared monopoly, especially when that government seems to have sold its citizens out to private generation and transmission concerns. It is time the citizens take control of British Columbia and make it truly democratic.

I'll invest, if someone here wants to start a non-polluting power generating company that sells its product on a sliding scale based upon a person's income statement and balance sheet.

private companies

SharingIsGood

We have such cheap power precisely because BC Hydro is a monopoly.

It's not if we let it be taken.

Making these resources private will mean that the citizens of BC will have *less* control over the resources in their province.

So rather than BC citizens collectively owning these resources, you'd rather they be in private hands?

You appear to be concerned by this, but just above you say that wee should allow private interests to "develop these resources privately..." You are contradicting yourself.

Mr Campbell passed a law forbidding

BC Hydro was a non-polluting power generation company with a sliding scale of fees, SharingIsGood. Mr Campbell passed a law forbidding them to generate ANY new power.

Tidal run would be good, but expensive to build and maintain. Wind would be better. The biggest cost would be towers and transmission lines to the grid, except Hydro already has thousands of existing towers right on the grid; the ones that hold the grid up off the ground.

All the infrastructure already in place, spread out to nicely avoid lulls in service due to local lulls in wind. A windmill on every suitable transmission tower would be hugely profitible, cheap and abundant power.

However, Mr Campbell passed this law...

Believing Campbell ??

The question really is, who believes anything Mr.Campbell says, what are the escape clauses his corporate owners will insist on, and does he even understand his own words ?

Ed Deak.

very small scale transmission

Jimmy Laroux,
You are entirely right with everything you have said about what I wrote. However, I was dreaming about very small enterprises. I was dreaming more about neighbourhood enterprises, probably not what you would find in Vancouver (because I don't live there), but what you might on the Islands or in the Interior.

Bailey, This is the first time I ever heard about planting generators on existing transmission towers. What genius! Is it being done anywhere?

Fiat Lux, You have come to the point I was attempting to make without actually just saying it. With the privatisation of BC Hydro and the probable escape clauses that I have not seen, I am afraid that the only way to get things moving back to the people of the province is for us to take it back over. If we have to use privatisation to make that happen, then perhaps we can set up non-profit corporations that can provide electricity for those whose resources have been sold out from under them. Perhaps we can use the capitalist system to undo the capitalist goals of procuring/stealing unnecessary wealth from the labours of others.

Privatization won't work,

Privatization won't work, because sooner, or later, those non profit corporations will be picked up by the corporate mafia and turned into the usual exploiters.

There's nothing to stop them and under NAFTA etc, rules, if they are restricted to local ownership and cut prices, the governments can be sued for huge amounts, for lost profits in almost perpetuity, as "trade distortions".

This is what the oncoming GATS will be about and then it is goodbye to any local ownership and control.

Another point is the TILMA treaty Campbell signed with Alberta. If Alberta won't agree, Campbell can take his clean air energy plan and shove it, which he knows very well, but plays the environmentalist to pacify people

All these treaties are designed to remove any public control from anything and open them up for multinational takeovers and enslavement.

Remember what Gaglardi said: "Pollution is the sweet smell of money".

Ed Deak.

Think small.

SharingIsGood:
You can't fight corporate power with corporate power. But corporations like to thnk large, like to think centralization, like to think monopoly. So you have to think small, think generating your own electricity, think private water supply, think self-sufficiency. Wherever possible, however possible, whenever possible...just don't let yourself get tied to the man, 'cause the man is out to get ya.

I've been preaching and

I've been preaching and practicing self sufficiency from the personal to the national level since I can remember and can prove it.

I know it works, because we've been and are doing it. This is why we're the biggest enemies of the globalized market economy racket, who are out to ruin every facet of self sufficiency, depopulate the countryside and jam everybody into cities.

But this is not an easy way and this is how and why the collectivizers can pick up the crumbs at first, then mould them into weapons of colonization.

Ed Deak.

Quote: This is why we're the

sort of like,jamming slaves in the hold of a ship to utilize their energies to running the vessel and discarding the bodies as the vessel gathers speed and chews up the populace in the goal of satisfying the FEW.

OH YEAH !!!for the good of the many...you get to be part of THE MACHINE.

Whatever it takes

Gordo, like Arnie, will both straddle as many political positions as it takes... or ultimately use any ploy deemed necessary for their own narcissistic benefit.

This is all about Gordo's own personal dream of pole-vaulting himself onto the Olympic stage...and assuring his position there "front and center" in 2010.

If you think this is anything about environmental legislation that comes replete with the all-important details you just haven't been paying attention the last six years.

I'm not without hope. Should

I'm not without hope. Should GM's proposed Volt electric car reach fruition and be, at the same time, affordable to many, it will surely increase the demand for more cleanly-produced electrical power.

Although no doubt pressured by the alternatives being offered motorists by Asian manufacturers, I believe GM is serious about this one and, despite possible motivation, is less concerned with PR games.

The most exciting aspect of this "plug-in" vehicle, to me, is that for those with a 40-kilometre commute or less, the batterries alone will suffice. This, plus the gouging at thge gas pumps, should increase the demand for this EV.

EVs and neighbourhood generating stations

I agree with Skeptikool that GM wants to win with its electric car.

I also believe that we can beat the move toward globalisation if neighbours band together in clusters to build their own power generating systems. In this way costs and labour can be defrayed. I believe that economy of scale can be factored in for a cluster of homeowners willing to share resources. When battery systems for the "cluster" are fully charged by wind solar and/or tidal means, then the excess could go towards charging the electric vehicles. Certainly back-ups would be necessary in times of cloud with no wind, but this idea is very feasible with clusters of houses using DC power. If I were still in the building business, I would build a "green" subdivision that generates its own electricity. The technology is available for energy savings as well as energy generation.

SharingJsGood, There is so

SharingJsGood,

There is so much potential if the will is there. Caught an interesting interview yesterday on CBC radio-690am, airing out of Calgary, on Drake's Landing, a solar community.

I think you, and others, willl find it of great interest:

http://www.dlsc.ca/

Whatever it takes

Lynn is right when she says "Gordo, like Arnie, will both [sic] straddle as many political positions as it takes". What else? Straddling comes naturally to Gordo as he does it to the citizens of BC on a regular basis. Don't drop the soap.

Alternate power

Tidal power is awesome. I have used it to put massive logs on floats, correct "hogged" wooden boat hulls and get things to move this way or that in the local channels.

The main structural problem is: corrosion of moving parts over the long term. Another problem would also show up immediately: damage (to any generator) due to severe weather and driftwood.

However: This force is not just renewable and free of pollution, it is completely dependable and unstoppable. (as long as the earth rotates and the moon orbits).

I have some ideas regarding the minimization of the corrosion and placing generators in sheltered areas would cut down on storm damage.

Not up to speed on what the Brits or other interested parties are up to but I'm interested

Hydraulic lifters for maintenance

doggone; The system design I've seen proposed for fjordish flows involved two elements.

First, the turbines and blades are protected from debris and large animals are protected from them by movable barriers like submarine nets that don't slow the flow.

Second, all the generators are mounted on extendable hydraulic rams, so they can be raised and lowered to facilitate repairs and to position them to maximum advantage.

Tides

Bailey:
There is no need for turbines and such:
The water level rises and falls. Don't need Hydraulics cause the ocean is providing the floatation.

I'd tell you more but some Swedish engineers just took an interest

doggone

Looking back over comments the idea of compressed air storage might fit well with harnessing tidal power: Every pilingcould be a compressor as the tide rose and it does not seem impossible to use the weight of the floats around the piling to compress air on their way down on a falling tide.

That's the idea - hopefully someone with more time than I have can take it to the bank. The first one is always free

Lets see

I like the articles where I check and I'm the last post 21 hours ago: I think it allows me time to come up with something I enjoy (and possibly troll up a reaction).

Wouldn't it be nice if Cambell "Topped" Andy? I have my doubts!

Not only that, I'm sure that my 1987 F-150 would be taken off the road immediately and my leaky old house would be declared a biohazard (only partly due to the wood heat).

I'm not really worried that BC will challenge California with enforcement of Environmental laws - I simply don't see this happening.

Who knows? Gordon is a closet environmental enthusiast? Not the way I see him but I will be pleasantly surprised, saw the engine compartment out of the old ford and find an horse to harness.

Come to think of it: Island Highways are lacking a feature of most thoroughfares on the planet: animals (including humans) dragging rolling stock along the slow lane

ontario Weather Men

We have the Weatherman in Ontario dissing drivers and politicos just now: They should be better adjusted for a bit of winter.

I have to agree with the weatherman and I expect this is only the beginning

Dream On

The current BC government is now hopelessly strung out on oil and gas royalties as much as any junkie. This industry is now the largest producer of govt. revenue in the province, a cash cow that eclipses forestry and fisheries combined.

Cops usually think that going after the organized crime dealers is more important than the casual users. Does this theory apply here? If you consider every barrel or cubic meter pumped out of the ground as a major contributer to CO2 pollution somewhere on planet Earth, then there's little hope that anything Scramble Campbell could do short of passing a new law that seals it all underground forever would make him look better than the topheavy Action Hero down south.

Add to this the new coal-fired electrical plants, the olympian tarmac projects, and a truly horrific trackrecord of overcutting globally-significant old growth rainforests (massive carbon sinks) under a bogus policy of "sustained yield", and well...the Green Dream quickly fades to brown.

Clean energy

Instead of building huge power plants to generate energy, maybe one should think small on a large scale.
Why not put solar panels on each residence?
What would a few hundred thousand panels generate?