Syntaris Power

Google Inc. Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl poses stands among a group of solar panels at the company’s campus in Mountain View, Calif. this past June. People around the world are working on innovative ways to reduce pollution, combat climate change, increase energy security, and strengthen economies with clean energy technologies.

People around the world are working on innovative ways to reduce pollution, combat climate change, increase energy security, and strengthen economies with clean energy technologies. At the same time, people in the most profitable and heavily subsidized industry in the history of the world, the fossil fuel industry, are stepping up efforts to slam the brakes on this progress. Some of them hope recent events in Canada will help fuel their obstructive plans.

Fortunately, many people are starting to see through the oily film. In California, voters didn’t buy immoral efforts by out-of-state oil companies to kill progressive legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sparking the clean energy economy. Despite massive amounts of money the oil companies sank into Proposition 23, which would have suspended the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, Californians overwhelmingly rejected it on Nov. 2.

Unfortunately, the industry is far from running out of gas when it comes to promoting its short-term interests. During the November U.S. election, thanks in part to generous campaign contributions from oil interests, voters elected many Republicans who don’t believe in the incontrovertible scientific evidence for human-caused climate change.

Meanwhile, oil companies continue their massive campaign to spread disinformation through the media. Recent letters and opinion articles in The Vancouver Sun and numerous other publications by oil industry front groups masquerading as scientific organizations and weathermen and oil company executives pretending to be objective observers have proffered disingenuous arguments that veer back and forth — often among the same writers — between denying that climate change even exists and accepting that it is real but claiming that there’s little we can, or should, do about it.

One of those letters claimed that the recent resignation of federal environment minister Jim Prentice gives the Stephen Harper government an opportunity to “make a fresh start” on climate change. But by fresh start, the writer didn’t mean the government should move beyond its current obstruction of international efforts to address climate change and refusal to forge a coherent response to this issue on the domestic front. Instead, he meant that the Conservatives ought to do even less than they are already doing — if that is even possible.

Prentice’s resignation and that of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell do present opportunities for B.C. and Canada — but real opportunities rather than the false and morally reprehensible choices the oil industry and its shills are promoting. Neither Prentice nor Campbell could be considered a true “green” leader, but both at least showed some foresight in controversial decisions on a few environmental issues.

Prentice, for example, made some progress with parks and marine protected areas and he put a halt to plans for an environmentally destructive mine in British Columbia, the Prosperity Mine.
Campbell, though a disappointment on many environmental fronts (species protection, fish farming and freeway expansion plans under the Gateway project), deserves credit for bold leadership in establishing B.C. as the first jurisdiction in North America to put a price on carbon emissions that increases over time, for banning coal-fired power plants and for toughening vehicle-emissions standards.
We need leaders who can build on these initiatives and put the interests of Canadians first.

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Province to pay higher rates for green power from ‘emerging technologies’

Not content to watch Ontario’s attractive rates for green energy draw billions of dollars in investment, the B.C. government is flirting with new rules to accommodate more clean electricity projects.

The proposed changes fall far short of Ontario’s controversial feed-in tariff (FIT) program, which offers premium rates in long-term purchasing contracts for renewable energy projects.

The B.C. government is looking at adopting its own FIT regulations this fall, but it will pay higher rates for green power only from “emerging technologies.” In B.C., solar power and wind power – a significant share of Ontario’s clean energy campaign – won’t qualify.

“We’re going to be more selective, not just throw as much as we can at the wall and see what sticks,” B.C. Energy Minister Bill Bennett said in an interview on Monday. “In B.C., we are going to be more attuned to what is good for the ratepayer.”

In addition to the B.C. version of FIT, investors are expecting larger projects to qualify for long-term contracts – at higher rates – under B.C.’s standing-offer program. Under that program, BC Hydro agrees to purchase energy from small energy projects at long-term, fixed rates.

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B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell gave California legislators a vote of encouragement Thursday in a rare appearance before the state’s assembly…The premier’s remarks, not surprisingly, are diplomatic — but the subtext here is that the premier is voicing support for the assembly’s efforts to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions. Assembly Bill 32, which would commit California to participating with B.C. and several other states and provinces in the Western Climate Initiative, is potentially threatened by a forthcoming state-wide referendum known as Proposition 23

…The premier’s remarks also signalled B.C.’s interest in selling premium-priced renewable energy to California. At present, Assembly Bill 32 disqualifies hydroelectricity from facilities with a electricity generating capacity in excess of 30 megawatts per hour.

That condition puts a substantial limit on B.C.’s ability to expand green power production for export and the premier is hoping to convince the assembly to qualify electricity from larger facilities.

It’s worth noting that in a recent meeting with The Sun’s editorial board, Energy Minister Bill Bennett, BC Hydro president and CEO Dave Cobb said that the 30-megawatt limit was more or less pulled out of the air by California legislators and didn’t take into consideration the green power opportunities that other jurisdictions could present to the state.

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The B.C. Citizens for Green Energy (BCCGE) has claimed that lumping the U.S.-generated electricity the province is entitled to under the Columbia River Treaty and calling it an export is “misleading and even somewhat disingenuous.”

BCCGE spokesperson David Field said in a release Thursday morning, “You can’t really consider electricity generated in the U.S.A. under the Columbia River Treaty to be an electricity export from B.C.”

The BCCGE, which advocates for more independent power production in B.C. and less energy importation, said that revenue generated by BC Hydro subsidiary Powerex from B.C.’s Columbia River entitlement is one reason electricity rates in B.C. are lower than many other jurisdictions in North America.

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