B.C. green power may not qualify for top rates given to renewable energy projects

British Columbia should not look to California to support its ambitions to develop a lucrative renewable electricity export industry, a U.S. power market expert said this week.

Jan Hamrin, secretary-general of the Environmental Tracking Network of North America, said California is unlikely to change a policy that disqualifies many B.C. small-hydro projects from access to the state as premium-rate renewable electricity sources.

The Tracking Network is a non-profit agency funded by the U.S. government to track renewable energy trades across North American grids.

California is expected to maintain rules that do not recognize hydro projects with a production capacity larger than 30 megawatts as renewable power.

Many high-profile independent power projects in B.C. are significantly larger, and thus do not qualify for the premium rates California is prepared to offer for electricity generated from wind, solar or small-scale run-of-river hydro. California's own large-scale hydro projects are considered to be unfortunate historical artifacts in an arid state.

"There are technologies that are highly charged emotionally in certain places. Hydro is one of them," Hamrin told a conference organized in Vancouver by the joint public advisory committee of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation.

"Californians get very emotional about hydro, partly because of some negative experiences we've had within our own state with hydroelectric facilities.

"States and provinces are not generally going to enact policies to encourage development in another state or province or region.

"So if California has most or all of its hydro resources already fully developed from an electricity development standpoint, it is going to be very difficult to encourage California legislators to change the rules in a way that would encourage hydro development in Canada, in British Columbia."

Paul Wieringa, executive director of the B.C. energy ministry's electricity and alternative energy division, told the conference that California is not the only potential market for premium-priced green power that would be developed under B.C.'s forthcoming energy export policy. "That export [policy] doesn't necessarily mean south of the border," Wieringa said. "It could certainly mean [selling] to Alberta, which has 80-plus per cent coal-fired power as I understand it. So I think there will continue to be a lot more development of these kinds of resources within British Columbia whether the California situation comes to fruition or not."

Lawrence Pitt, associate director for the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, which represents all four of B.C.'s major public universities, said climate change trends appear to favour relatively drier weather in the western Pacific states, and a higher volume of precipitation in this province. That trend, he said, could elevate British Columbia's role on the western grid, provided environmental regulations don't complicate the situation.

Gwen Barlee, policy director for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, challenged the notion that small hydro projects meet environmental standards that her group and its members would consider adequate.

"There is over 150 creeks and rivers that are staked in the Sea to Sky corridor, there is over 200 on the Sunshine Coast, and the government doesn't look at the cumulative impacts of these projects on the land base. That is why there is such an extremely high degree of concern in B.C. about this gold rush to stake our rivers and creeks," Barlee said.