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The $9-billion Site C dam being built in northeast British Columbia should be an environmentalist’s dream. It’ll generate clean, renewable and affordable power and help the country meet its climate change commitments. It would also earn money for BC Hydro, its proponent and also the provincial crown corporation at the heart from the West Coast province’s green image.
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Instead, the hydroelectric mega project is receiving the type of rough treatment most recently reserved for pipeline proposals. First Nations, environmental activists and landowners wish to stop its construction, the lawsuits are flying – including one going prior to the B.C. Court of Appeal in a few days – and also the provincial NDP is gaining fans by threatening to pull the plug around the dam in mid-construction if elected the coming year.
Things are getting so heated that some compare the confrontation to a new War within the Woods – referring to the battle Two decades ago to prevent logging in Clayoquot Sound that inspired a lot more skirmishes against natural resource rise in the province.
There’s even some debate about whether Site C is even needed whatsoever, or at best enough that Premier Christy Clark’s Liberal government made surprise proposal to export Site C capacity to Alberta and asked for $1 billion in authorities help to better connect the two provinces’ electricity systems.
Alberta, which is in early innings of their own controversial transition from coal to renewable energy, has stated it’s not going to buy B.C.’s power unless it may get bitumen pipelines to the B.C. coast – something its western neighbour has given it a lot of grief over.
But if the two provinces and the federal government can accomplish a contract, the end result might be a grand bargain that provides Ottawa more green energy, Alberta its pipelines and B.C. its dam.
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If they do not, the Site C dam might be damned, just like many mega projects before it, showing that even governments that wrap themselves in green, as B.C. has been doing, don’t get a totally free pass from increasingly aggressive activists who’ve ever-restrictive views about what is environmentally acceptable.
As Carlo Dade, director of trade and investment policy in the Canada West Foundation, put it, the controversy re-enforces that building anything big in Canada today is “approaching impossibility” and thwarting the nation’s capability to trade.
“This isn’t (just) about pipelines,” he explained. “Whether we’re referring to obtaining a sewage treatment plant in Victoria, or creating a ring road around Calgary, or expanding an airport runway in Toronto, or creating a new intermodal rail facility in southern Ontario, we’re seeing a truly alarming rise in ale dedicated opponents of infrastructure development to obstruct or halt projects that will benefit wider regional and national economies.”
Behind the talk is really a fair concern: the long planned dam, the province’s largest public-sector project and the last of BC Hydro’s planned dams, may cause environmental harm to the Peace River valley even though it’s uncertain that the power it’ll generate is even needed.
Site C was first proposed within the 1980s and will be the third to reap electricity from the Peace River near Fort St. John. The very first, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, named following the B.C. premier who created BC Hydro, was completed fifty years ago. Construction on-site C has begun, job fairs are ongoing, and billions in contracts are now being signed.
Site C is scheduled for completion in 2024, must have 1,100 megawatts of capacity and generate 5,100 gigawatt hours of energy per year – enough to power about 450,000 homes each year.
B.C.’s economy is doing well, because of tourism promoted by the low Canadian dollar and Asian cash flowing in to buy real estate, which in turn is boosting renovations and new housing. Nevertheless its industrial sector is struggling and also the much-anticipated liquefied gas market is doubtful – in no small part due to environmental and Aboriginal activism.
“Current forecasts show that demand in B.C. is anticipated to increase by approximately 40 per cent over the next 20 years, driven with a projected population increase of more than one million residents, and continued economic expansion,” BC Hydro has stated. “B.C.’s emerging liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry could further increase electricity demand.” In a recent presentation, the crown corporation also said it needs new infrastructure to maintain and replace aging facilities.
But the joint federal/provincial panel that reviewed the project – and made no recommendation on whether or not this is going ahead – expressed doubt about the demand forecast.
“The panel concludes that B.C. will require new energy and new capacity sooner or later,” the panel said in 2014. “Site C will be the least expensive of the alternatives, and it is cost advantages would increase with the passing decades as inflation makes alternatives more expensive. The panel concludes the proponent hasn’t fully demonstrated the need for the project around the timetable set forth.”
Among the expense, the panel said the dam, which would replace part of the Peace River by having an 83-kilometre reservoir and flood 5,550 hectares of land, would significantly impact the use of land and resources by Aboriginals and affect their treaty rights.
In addition, “it would end agriculture on the Peace Valley bottom lands, and while that will ‘t be significant poor B.C. or western Canadian agricultural production, it would highly impact the farmers who would bear the loss.”
It’s also great for Canada because it means we’re supplying Alberta with our clean energy so they can leave their coal habit.
But across the border in the Site C site, in which the town of Peace River, Alberta, continues to be coping with changes in river levels in the W.A.C Bennett Dam since its startup, Mayor Tom Tarpay said he’s for Site C despite its environmental implications and would welcome a power-for-pipelines deal.
“There is a have to generate green power, which does not have CO2 emissions related to it,” he explained. “We need to change our energy portfolio in Alberta and that i know it’s B.C. power and we will need to buy it from B.C., but from a Canadian perspective, we want more hydro power along with other green forms of energy.”
The B.C. Liberals fulfilled an offer promise by providing the work the go-ahead in December 2014. Opponents, including the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, NGOs and land owners, quickly mobilized for battle: lawsuits were filed, a protest camp, since turn off by the courts, was setup close to the construction site, as well as an encampment before BC Hydro’s Vancouver head office is ongoing, complete with a hunger striker.
Premier Clark’s approval came when the LNG industry, a possible big electricity buyer, still appeared to have legs. Jock Finlayson, executive vice-president and chief policy officer at the Business Council of Bc, said it’s unclear whether that industry is going to be one of any scale and size when Site C comes to fruition, and whether it would use hydro to fuel operations or depend on gas for power.
Meanwhile, all of those other provincial industrial economy, which has historically consumed another of the provincial power, has also been struggling, he said.
Pulp mills and mines have closed down, there’s a lack of new investment in large projects, and forestry is contracting because of the pine beetle infestation, that is reducing the accessibility to timber.
“The relevant question today is: By how much will (the industrial economy) shrink, because it’s highly unlikely to grow within my personal view,” Finlayson said.
He said his group supports B.C. electricity exports to Alberta, the construction of bitumen pipelines, and greater cooperation between the Western provinces. “We want to see tidewater access for Canadian energy resources, including Alberta oil,” he explained. “And you want to see greater trade across Canada in energy, both electricity and hydrocarbons.”
B.C. pitched the idea of exporting hydro to Alberta in Ottawa in early February, if this requested $1 billion in funding to construct an association forwards and backwards province’s grids.
“For us, it’s great,” Premier Clark said at that time. “That’s profit for BC Hydro, which means it is good for ratepayers. It’s also ideal for Canada because it means we’re supplying Alberta with our clean energy so they can get off their coal habit.”
The idea was re-enforced when premiers met with Pm Justin Trudeau in Vancouver last month to speak about a national climate change plan.
“I don’t believe it will likely be brain surgery for the two provinces to operate together to ensure that each of our economies could be strengthened with the stuff that need to happen,” Bill Bennett, B.C.’s energy minister, said within an interview.
Bennett said there aren’t any formal negotiations with Alberta at this point, but there have been discussions between B.C. energy ministry staff as well as their Alberta counterparts, in addition to between BC Hydro and Alberta energy players. He said Ottawa has additionally expressed interest.
“It’s initial phases,” he said. “We are floating the concept. We’re hoping that Alberta might sooner or later decide that it makes sense for them to purchase our clean electricity to set the renewables that they are likely to be building in that province.”
The Canadian Energy Institute recently completed a major study the feasibility of utilizing hydro to decarbonize oilsands’ production. It concluded that it might take 600 kilometres of transmission lines to link Site C with the oilsands, which would come at a expensive relative to natural-gas-powered generation and have a big impact on communities on the way.
I don’t believe it’s going to be rocket science for that two provinces to operate together
The Alberta government’s response to date continues to be cool.
Under the province’s climate change plan, coal-fired generation is going to be phased out within the next 15 years, but Rachel Notley’s NDP government wants to switch the lost energy by using locally produced wind projects, with natural gas because the backup.
Alberta Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd has repeatedly said Alberta won’t be buying power from B.C. if it can’t get its oil towards the coast.
“We are in ongoing discussions with B.C. on a quantity of issues, but we’re not negotiating while there is no specific proposal to barter on,” she said within an emailed statement. “The idea of our provinces cooperating has merit and we’re prepared to explore it. Genuine a requirement for more power if our province can’t find a power outlet for our product.”
Still, the dam dilemma has softened B.C.’s position on pipelines and handed Alberta unexpected leverage.
B.C. previously rejected both Northern Gateway and the TransMountain expansion between Alberta and also the B.C. coast before the National Energy Board and demanded they meet five conditions, such as ensuring they have a world-leading spill response, protect Aboriginal treaty rights and give B.C. its “fair share” of the fiscal and economic benefits. Neither project has yet met the demands.
Bennett said his government isn’t in opposition to bitumen pipelines and has not said “never, no way.”
“If they are going to get built – and we realise why they have to get built – they need to be carried out in B.C. in a manner that reflects the values of our population, and protects our environment and ensures that our First Nations benefit,” he said.
“I think Alberta shares those self same values and i believe we can work our way through this. I don’t think it is really an impasse.”
ccattaneo@nationalpost.com
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