Power Play: B.C.'s Electricity Dilemma

Image by: Grant Harder

The screaming, the booing, the loud cheers from the 850-plus crowd at every insult: that wasn’t the worst of it for Jako Krushnisky, president and CEO of Run of River Power Inc. “What was particularly repugnant was to have some guy’s six-year-old daughter coaxed to come up to the table and provide some work of art,” he said.

“That’s not fair.” It was late March and Krushnisky and his staff were at a public meeting in Pitt Meadows to explain why the crowd should support Run of River’s proposal to build seven power projects along tributaries of the Upper Pitt River. Specifically, Krushnisky was trying to justify the request to erect a power line across the northern end of Pinecone Burke Provincial Park. The raucous meeting, given extended media coverage, was attended by prominent broadcaster Rafe Mair, a who’s who of environmentalists, B.C. NDP leader Carole James, First Nations representatives and local citizens. All of them were determined to stop this project (or any similar venture) dead in its tracks before the provincial government could move it forward. Their wish was at least partially granted the next day when Minister of Environment Barry Penner pulled the plug on the application to run the power line through the park. Not the project itself, mind you, just the power line. Although technically still alive (at least at press time), the project has had its economic feasibility severely damaged. The rejected power line was by far the cheapest way to connect this privately owned venture to the provincially owned BC Hydro power grid, the alternative being an expensive line under Pitt Lake.

B.C.'s nuclear future

Not mentioned in any media coverage, nor apparently brought up at the meeting, was the fact that Pinecone Burke Provincial Park already has a very large – the largest in the BC Hydro transmission network – 500-kilovolt steel-towered transmission line running in plain view across the southern end of the park. Also not mentioned was the fact that the B.C. Transmission Corp. (the BCTC was created in 2003 after the provincial government split BC Hydro into a generation company and a transmission company) currently has an application before the B.C. Utilities Commission involving the same area. BCTC proposed twinning the 500-kilovolt line along a parallel right-of-way granted when the original line was constructed and before the park was created. It’s part of BCTC’s 10-year, $5.1-billion system expansion and upgrade, and the 240-kilometre twinning of the existing line outside Merritt to a substation in Coquitlam’s Westwood Plateau is one of the first pieces. Krushnisky’s plan included placing 22 wood poles through a high-elevation pass at or near the tree line, which he claims would have minimal impact on the environment, apart from the installation by helicopter. The 500-kilovolt line proposed by BCTC involves much bigger steel towers rather than wood poles. “Not only that, it goes over a golf course and private homes. We have none of that,” Krushnisky points out. He explains that his company had a camera in the park last year on the proposed right-of-way, and it recorded one hiker. He believes Penner’s decision was pure politics. “There was a lot of noise. Someone said make it stop.” He resents the fact that none of the environmental work done over a two-year period was reviewed, and he’s upset that a decision was made before the process had run its course. Welcome to the emotion-packed world of power generation and transmission in B.C. For decades it was BC Hydro alone that bore the brunt of widespread opposition to power dams and transmission lines. And for much of that time, the forecasts used to justify new power projects turned out to be somewhat exaggerated. Project after project was shelved – until now. With a significant increase in the province’s population and little in the way of new generating capacity constructed, a crunch is coming. California faced a similar crisis in 2001, handled it badly and suffered a combination of serious brownouts and outrageous price increases, largely because the state had to buy emergency power on the spot market at a time when everyone else also needed it. With the government’s new energy policy, the battle lines have shifted as Victoria combines a push toward “green” energy (for power generation, Victoria defines “clean and renewable” as no greenhouse gas emissions; flooding a valley isn’t off limits) with a determination to let the private sector play a bigger role in developing the power BC Hydro needs. BC Hydro has neither the capacity to meet projected demand, nor the political backing to build it on its own. Over the next two decades, the Crown corporation expects electricity demand will increase between 25 and 45 per cent, which is equivalent to the amount of power needed for between 1.4 million and 2.5 million new homes. The gap between what BC Hydro can generate with existing facilities and expected demand will be 30,000 gigawatt hours (this doesn’t include output from the Burrard thermal plant, as BC Hydro has yet to decide if it will be shut down in the near future).

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