Some feel government isn't green enough

VICTORIA  (NEWS1130) - The B.C. government unveiled a new Clean Energy Act Wednesday at the legislature with promises of savings for hydro customers. The Act has 16 objectives to develop clean power investments and keep rates down for the consumer. Victoria would like to inject a billion dollars to install smart metres in homes claiming the average household could save between $150 and $450 a year.

Not everyone is convinced however. Joe Foy with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee says the government,  which touts itself as green, is anything but and the act is little more than a green cloak. He says "They're giving away the public's rivers to private companies and then still signing these sweetheart deals where the companies get way more than market rates for electrical power, power that we don't need and that comes at the wrong time of the year."

He adds the Liberal government isn't in the game of conservation either, and points to the 53 hundred hectares of land that will be flooded once the Site-C Dam is built on the Peace River. "We already produce green energy, what this does is wreck a whole bunch of rivers to produce low quality power and they kind of wrap it up in a green package that's how we see this."

Foy  believes the act will lead to higher power rates as the government offers subsidies to private companies.