New BC Political Discussion - POST BC Election 2017

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Tfreder

According to a tweet it will be live on the BC Liberals Facebook page. It will be great to see how everyone performs.

Thank you!

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I think that was a Mayor's Council decision that somehow got buried in all the other fun stuff.

Nah, I'm pretty sure Bowinn and the province are supporting that one. I think that came up during one of my friends transit gripe sessions.

[theKB]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Well I think the problem now is they've started huge civil work for this dam. They either quit now and have a $2-3B sunk cost, or finish it and probably end up with a $10-12B cost on an $8B project. I don't think they can entertain different proposals at this stage.

This project needs to be completed. With 2-3 billion already spent there is no point in killing a project that will start to generate revenue once it is completed. This is the same narrative that the NDP used when they complained about the convention centre and BC place. Supporters and NDP pundits alike loved to point out it was way worse than the "fast ferries" except they neglected to mention that the ferries were sold for scrap and saw very little service. That would be like putting a wrecking ball to the convention centre. The GMB is also a key point, this bridge is part of the expansion of the region, they may have made a few tweeks (allowing for rail in the future etc) but it was a sound plan, it would also push for future expansion of crossings into Vancouver which are badly needed as well.

As per usual the NDP are grandstanding with no viable solutions to back it up. The cancellation of tolls as executed was a terrible decision, there were studies and models that told the government of the issues of removing the tolls but they didn't need a year to study that political move (a la uber/ridesharing).

It would be great if the Greens canned their agreement with the NDP and worked with the LIBS.

[retro_orange]

Originally Posted by theKB

This project needs to be completed. With 2-3 billion already spent there is no point in killing a project that will start to generate revenue once it is completed. This is the same narrative that the NDP used when they complained about the convention centre and BC place. Supporters and NDP pundits alike loved to point out it was way worse than the "fast ferries" except they neglected to mention that the ferries were sold for scrap and saw very little service. That would be like putting a wrecking ball to the convention centre. The GMB is also a key point, this bridge is part of the expansion of the region, they may have made a few tweeks (allowing for rail in the future etc) but it was a sound plan, it would also push for future expansion of crossings into Vancouver which are badly needed as well.

As per usual the NDP are grandstanding with no viable solutions to back it up. The cancellation of tolls as executed was a terrible decision, there were studies and models that told the government of the issues of removing the tolls but they didn't need a year to study that political move (a la uber/ridesharing).

It would be great if the Greens canned their agreement with the NDP and worked with the LIBS.

From what I remember reading, the business case for site C was heavily flawed and the numbers were fudged to appear that it would make money. Once you actually ran all the calculations it will lose money for many years, moreso than the new Port Mann bridge did.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by theKB

This project needs to be completed. With 2-3 billion already spent there is no point in killing a project that will start to generate revenue once it is completed. This is the same narrative that the NDP used when they complained about the convention centre and BC place. Supporters and NDP pundits alike loved to point out it was way worse than the "fast ferries" except they neglected to mention that the ferries were sold for scrap and saw very little service. That would be like putting a wrecking ball to the convention centre. The GMB is also a key point, this bridge is part of the expansion of the region, they may have made a few tweeks (allowing for rail in the future etc) but it was a sound plan, it would also push for future expansion of crossings into Vancouver which are badly needed as well.

As per usual the NDP are grandstanding with no viable solutions to back it up. The cancellation of tolls as executed was a terrible decision, there were studies and models that told the government of the issues of removing the tolls but they didn't need a year to study that political move (a la uber/ridesharing).

It would be great if the Greens canned their agreement with the NDP and worked with the LIBS.

As somebody who runs a business, you should be familiar with this concept:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

[Bcasey25raptor]

site c should NOT be completed, I am NOT willing to pay as a tax payer $8 billion dollars for a wasteful project that we don't even bloody need right now.

Furthermore the site C Dam breaks treaty rights and unless you think spitting on first nations people and their rights is justified, you need to oppose the project.

As for the bridge project mentioned? Needed? Are you freaking kidding me? The plan was to build a mega bridge when the ridership does NOT support such a massive bridge, we are wasting BILLIONS of dollars the province doesn't fucking have on these legacy projects and I for one am not willing to sit by and watch BC run it's fiscal ship into a blackhole and wind up like greece.

Build a reasonable energy project that costs less, ditto for the bridge to Tsawassen.

If the NDP are cancelling these fiscally retarded mega projects then the NDP are proving to be more fiscally sound and yes, even Conservative than the BC Liberals ever were.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by Bcasey25raptor

site c should NOT be completed, I am NOT willing to pay as a tax payer $8 billion dollars for a wasteful project that we don't even bloody need right now.

The climate and food security arguments are ridiculous full stop. BC needs more renewable power and that is being ignored broadly. The NDP who just go elected in have no concrete plans on how to come up with this power, and this is just going to make our future deficit of renewables worse. BC can handle almost every volume of new power thrown at it coming up -if- you assume we want to get off fossil fuels.

The province needs to replace oil used in transportation and natural gas primarily used for heating with electricity which is dispatchable and storable for seasonal variation which in BC is huge. We have almost 100% renewable electricity in BC, but only 14% of our total energy needs are covered by this. Nobody arguing against this dam realizes the fire under our asses for replacing fossil fuels. It's not as easy in Canada as in many other places.

The context of this dam is that it's about 1/3rd done, the environment has been stripped of vegetation in the reservoir. It's been planned. It's been engineered. It's on an already dammed river, which has no salmon run (which is important in BC). It's near big generating stations that are already hooked up to transmission lines. It's been studied to death since the 1980s, and it can be ready soon.

This dam is on a river which already has the 8th largest reservoir on earth, and that was all man made. That reservoir was made without properly stripping the forests or soils down. 176,000 hectares of forest flooded. Site C just floods a canyon downstream of the 2 existing dams, an additional 9,330 hectares for another 30% more power on the same system. Alberta meanwhile is studying adding another dam downstream of Site C.

People regularly compare Site C to the existing dams in BC. They say that existing power costs make the new power look expensive. It is relatively, but mostly because the existing dams were heavily paid for by the Columbia River treaty. BC has some of the cheapest power in the world.

Americans paid BC to flood huge areas of the province to provide flood protection for Portland, Oregon. They paid the cost of the dams, and we only had to pay for the generating stations. We also get paid for the ongoing benefits of flood protection and additional power made at the Grand Cooley Dam. People reference that we can get some of that power, but they seldom say why the power we have now is so cheap.

The agriculture argument is crazy. This area barely generates hay currently. It could provide about 2,000 people with caloric requirements if intensively farmed. It's mostly a canyon bottom. If it was as good as it's implied, it would be farmed intensively already. I've heard people claim that the area of the reservoir could feed a million people! Canada meanwhile exports more food than just about any other nation.

The only legit concern I have with Site C is First Nations rights. The treaties (or lack thereof) in BC are a bigger mess than anywhere else in North America. I'll leave this up to the sociologists and politicians. I have no expertise in this area, but a lot of other FN bands farther north have done very well off these types of construction contracts. There can be huge social benefits of having first nations contractors form, and work on these types projects. Specifically the Forrest Kerr Run-of-River project was great for the Tlingit.

[WarrenC12]

^^^^^ My only factor for this decision is financial. My problem is we don't seem to have reliable numbers, they are all over the map, and the initial estimates were woefully short. Mistakes are in the Billions, which is huge for a province like BC.

To be totally clear, I don't care about the people or the local environment there, and I do think the renewable power generated by hydro is a great current and future source of electricity.

With that said, I can still be against it if the numbers don't work.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

^^^^^ My only factor for this decision is financial. My problem is we don't seem to have reliable numbers, they are all over the map, and the initial estimates were woefully short. Mistakes are in the Billions, which is huge for a province like BC.

To be totally clear, I don't care about the people or the local environment there, and I do think the renewable power generated by hydro is a great current and future source of electricity.

With that said, I can still be against it if the numbers don't work.

The big factor is what you think interest rate is going to be on this plant.

5,100 GWh is worth a lot. Depending on your power prices, $250M to $300M per year. ($50K-$60K/GWh).

Wind is getting down there in cost, but storage is very expensive. I don't know how many days storage is needed if we stop building dams, but it will increase pretty significantly after a while.

Overnight storage essentially doubles the power of solar power right now for off-grid applications in sunny climates. The batteries will get cheaper, but the bigger gaps you have to fill in with intermittent supply the larger the cost is.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

The big factor is what you think interest rate is going to be on this plant.

5,100 GWh is worth a lot. Depending on your power prices, $250M to $300M per year. ($50K-$60K/GWh).

Wind is getting down there in cost, but storage is very expensive. I don't know how many days storage is needed if we stop building dams, but it will increase pretty significantly after a while.

Overnight storage essentially doubles the power of solar power right now for off-grid applications in sunny climates. The batteries will get cheaper, but the bigger gaps you have to fill in with intermittent supply the larger the cost is.

Interest rates are creeping up, hopefully not too much more.

I thought the original $8B pricetag showed approximately 12-15c/kWh wholesale pricing for 50 years in today's dollars. That's quite expensive vs. what current dams provide. Hydro is it's own battery and certainly very flexible there. But if the price of the dam has increased and we're pushing 20c/kWh to breakeven, you really need to reconsider whether this is worthwhile.

One thing that does perplex me is that electricity demand in BC seems relatively flat. BC Hydro keeps predicting future demand increases, but they have yet to materialize. Electric Vehicles should provide some of that increased demand, but who knows... especially if residential prices continue to increase at double the rate of inflation, there will be serious conservation efforts.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Interest rates are creeping up, hopefully not too much more.

I thought the original $8B pricetag showed approximately 12-15c/kWh wholesale pricing for 50 years in today's dollars. That's quite expensive vs. what current dams provide. Hydro is it's own battery and certainly very flexible there. But if the price of the dam has increased and we're pushing 20c/kWh to breakeven, you really need to reconsider whether this is worthwhile.

One thing that does perplex me is that electricity demand in BC seems relatively flat. BC Hydro keeps predicting future demand increases, but they have yet to materialize. Electric Vehicles should provide some of that increased demand, but who knows... especially if residential prices continue to increase at double the rate of inflation, there will be serious conservation efforts.

Like I say 84% of our energy use in BC is fossil fuels. Replacing any significant portion of that means huge amounts of electricity.

If we want to hit any meaningful climate goals, you need more electricity.

Conservation can only take you so far before you hit diminishing returns and sacrificing useful economic activities. Replace all lighting with LEDs, insulate houses like mad, replace baseboards with heat pumps, etc. Then what? Hope more disruptive technology develops really soon? Fusion?

Everything I've seen was more like $60MWh ($0.06/kWh) for costing.

[EastVanMark]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

The climate and food security arguments are ridiculous full stop. BC needs more renewable power and that is being ignored broadly. The NDP who just go elected in have no concrete plans on how to come up with this power, and this is just going to make our future deficit of renewables worse. BC can handle almost every volume of new power thrown at it coming up -if- you assume we want to get off fossil fuels.

The province needs to replace oil used in transportation and natural gas primarily used for heating with electricity which is dispatchable and storable for seasonal variation which in BC is huge. We have almost 100% renewable electricity in BC, but only 14% of our total energy needs are covered by this. Nobody arguing against this dam realizes the fire under our asses for replacing fossil fuels. It's not as easy in Canada as in many other places.

The context of this dam is that it's about 1/3rd done, the environment has been stripped of vegetation in the reservoir. It's been planned. It's been engineered. It's on an already dammed river, which has no salmon run (which is important in BC). It's near big generating stations that are already hooked up to transmission lines. It's been studied to death since the 1980s, and it can be ready soon.

This dam is on a river which already has the 8th largest reservoir on earth, and that was all man made. That reservoir was made without properly stripping the forests or soils down. 176,000 hectares of forest flooded. Site C just floods a canyon downstream of the 2 existing dams, an additional 9,330 hectares for another 30% more power on the same system. Alberta meanwhile is studying adding another dam downstream of Site C.

People regularly compare Site C to the existing dams in BC. They say that existing power costs make the new power look expensive. It is relatively, but mostly because the existing dams were heavily paid for by the Columbia River treaty. BC has some of the cheapest power in the world.

Americans paid BC to flood huge areas of the province to provide flood protection for Portland, Oregon. They paid the cost of the dams, and we only had to pay for the generating stations. We also get paid for the ongoing benefits of flood protection and additional power made at the Grand Cooley Dam. People reference that we can get some of that power, but they seldom say why the power we have now is so cheap.

The agriculture argument is crazy. This area barely generates hay currently. It could provide about 2,000 people with caloric requirements if intensively farmed. It's mostly a canyon bottom. If it was as good as it's implied, it would be farmed intensively already. I've heard people claim that the area of the reservoir could feed a million people! Canada meanwhile exports more food than just about any other nation.

The only legit concern I have with Site C is First Nations rights. The treaties (or lack thereof) in BC are a bigger mess than anywhere else in North America. I'll leave this up to the sociologists and politicians. I have no expertise in this area, but a lot of other FN bands farther north have done very well off these types of construction contracts. There can be huge social benefits of having first nations contractors form, and work on these types projects. Specifically the Forrest Kerr Run-of-River project was great for the Tlingit.

Excellent, well thought out, factual post. Thanks for the interesting read.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

Like I say 84% of our energy use in BC is fossil fuels. Replacing any significant portion of that means huge amounts of electricity.

If we want to hit any meaningful climate goals, you need more electricity.

Conservation can only take you so far before you hit diminishing returns and sacrificing useful economic activities. Replace all lighting with LEDs, insulate houses like mad, replace baseboards with heat pumps, etc. Then what? Hope more disruptive technology develops really soon? Fusion?

Everything I've seen was more like $60MWh ($0.06/kWh) for costing.

Take these sources with their appropriate grains of salt:

The Tyee:
https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/05/08/F...stions-Site-C/

If you’re asking whether Site C will reduce rates, the answer is no. Site C’s power will cost BC Hydro between $83 and $95 per megawatt hour to produce, while the average rate charged to British Columbians (residential and industrial) is around $83. Site C has no firm buyers for the increased production, so it will likely be sold at a loss on the spot market, currently priced at $25 to $30 per megawatt hour. The cost of building the dam will add $8.8 billion to BC Hydro’s $18 billion in debt. With or without Site C, rates will need to increase at some point to start paying down the debt

Debt servicing certainly concerns me, and like you say, interest rates are key.


G&M:
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/new...beandmail.com&

Independent power producers have argued they can meet B.C.'s growing need for electricity at a competitive cost, but they say the province tilted the playing field last fall when it changed the way it collects dividends from BC Hydro and reduced water-rental charges for the Crown corporation. As a result of those accounting changes, the cost per megawatt hour of Site C electricity decreased by one-third, from $83 a megawatt hour down to somewhere between $58 and $61 a megawatt hour. BC Hydro says it would cost $96 a megawatt hour for alternative energy.

Some math fudging for BC Hydro, So I'm more inclined to believe the $83 figure.


A quick google search did not really turn up any links that would be "pro" Site C based on the end price to consumers, from what I could tell.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

The climate and food security arguments are ridiculous full stop. BC needs more renewable power and that is being ignored broadly. The NDP who just go elected in have no concrete plans on how to come up with this power, and this is just going to make our future deficit of renewables worse. BC can handle almost every volume of new power thrown at it coming up -if- you assume we want to get off fossil fuels.

The province needs to replace oil used in transportation and natural gas primarily used for heating with electricity which is dispatchable and storable for seasonal variation which in BC is huge. We have almost 100% renewable electricity in BC, but only 14% of our total energy needs are covered by this. Nobody arguing against this dam realizes the fire under our asses for replacing fossil fuels. It's not as easy in Canada as in many other places.

The context of this dam is that it's about 1/3rd done, the environment has been stripped of vegetation in the reservoir. It's been planned. It's been engineered. It's on an already dammed river, which has no salmon run (which is important in BC). It's near big generating stations that are already hooked up to transmission lines. It's been studied to death since the 1980s, and it can be ready soon.

This dam is on a river which already has the 8th largest reservoir on earth, and that was all man made. That reservoir was made without properly stripping the forests or soils down. 176,000 hectares of forest flooded. Site C just floods a canyon downstream of the 2 existing dams, an additional 9,330 hectares for another 30% more power on the same system. Alberta meanwhile is studying adding another dam downstream of Site C.

People regularly compare Site C to the existing dams in BC. They say that existing power costs make the new power look expensive. It is relatively, but mostly because the existing dams were heavily paid for by the Columbia River treaty. BC has some of the cheapest power in the world.

Americans paid BC to flood huge areas of the province to provide flood protection for Portland, Oregon. They paid the cost of the dams, and we only had to pay for the generating stations. We also get paid for the ongoing benefits of flood protection and additional power made at the Grand Cooley Dam. People reference that we can get some of that power, but they seldom say why the power we have now is so cheap.

The agriculture argument is crazy. This area barely generates hay currently. It could provide about 2,000 people with caloric requirements if intensively farmed. It's mostly a canyon bottom. If it was as good as it's implied, it would be farmed intensively already. I've heard people claim that the area of the reservoir could feed a million people! Canada meanwhile exports more food than just about any other nation.

The only legit concern I have with Site C is First Nations rights. The treaties (or lack thereof) in BC are a bigger mess than anywhere else in North America. I'll leave this up to the sociologists and politicians. I have no expertise in this area, but a lot of other FN bands farther north have done very well off these types of construction contracts. There can be huge social benefits of having first nations contractors form, and work on these types projects. Specifically the Forrest Kerr Run-of-River project was great for the Tlingit.

Excellent post.

One point I would like to add to the discussion.

The amount of money spent on this will likely exceed 10 billion dollars.
The energy produced by this damn will likely not be sold at a profit considering the escalating build out costs, and likely cost the electricity will be sold at.

Would this money not have been better spent creating a 10billion dollar, green energy incubator, focused on alternate energy sources that can get BC green, and create an entire industry that could then be used for export?

We could have started our own Tesla + SolarCity with this money.

The auxiliary benefits of this would be huge, and it could leave a lasting legacy further fostering our green tech reputation.

Seems like a huge missed opportunity in favour of a project that was sold on a very dubious business case.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Like I said. It's all about the financing costs.

Take the Cap-Ex, multiply by in % interest rate, divide by power production, remove some money for Op-Ex (not much) and there's your cost of power at the plant.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by rofina

Excellent post.

One point I would like to add to the discussion.

The amount of money spent on this will likely exceed 10 billion dollars.
The energy produced by this damn will likely not be sold at a profit considering the escalating build out costs, and likely cost the electricity will be sold at.

Would this money not have been better spent creating a 10billion dollar, green energy incubator, focused on alternate energy sources that can get BC green, and create an entire industry that could then be used for export?

We could have started our own Tesla + SolarCity with this money.

The auxiliary benefits of this would be huge, and it could leave a lasting legacy further fostering our green tech reputation.

Seems like a huge missed opportunity in favour of a project that was sold on a very dubious business case.

Because a green energy incubator can't pay financing costs for a $10B loan. We don't have $10B sitting somewhere. This is all about issuing a huge pile of debt, and having asset that will work away for decades covering that debt off.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by rofina

Would this money not have been better spent creating a 10billion dollar, green energy incubator, focused on alternate energy sources that can get BC green, and create an entire industry that could then be used for export?

First, hydro power IS green energy. No emissions, no fuel, no waste, no mining.

Second, a solar startup and/or solar farms would be near useless in BC. Even in sunny deserts like Nevada, solar has a capacity factor of around 25% (meaning that only a quarter of the maximum electricity output ends up as actual electricity).
Up north, we see the sun less than a third of the year, and most of the remaining sunlight bounces off due to high latitude albedo. That reduces our solar capacity factor to 6%. Compare and contrast with Site C's estimated factor of 58%.

For a direct comparison, Topaz Solar Farm cost $2.5 billion to construct. Nameplate capacity is 550 MW/h monthly, and it takes up 25 square km.
$10 billion would get you four of those farms to produce 132 MW/h monthly, and they'd take up 100 square km... Site C is set to crank out 580 MW/h and take up 93 square km, which ironically makes it cheaper and more compact than solar.

In terms of large-scale power generation, it's either hydro, nuclear or fossil fuel... and BC Hydro has outright rejected nuclear. The choice seems obvious.

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

First, hydro power IS green energy. No emissions, no fuel, no waste, no mining.

Except for the construction of the dam and reservoir, of course. But then again, if you take construction into account solar isn't all that green either. Hydro's operation is non-polluting (except they've found that reservoirs emit more methane than we previously thought) so I guess in that sense it's green, but all that cement needs to be made, construction vehicles need to operate during its construction, etc, etc, etc. And the impact to the surrounding environment caused by flooding a valley isn't nothing too.

But as you say, of all the options it's the least shitty one. But let's not pretend that hydro is "green" and doesn't have any impact. Renewable is a much better term.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

Except for the construction of the dam and reservoir, of course. But then again, if you take construction into account solar isn't all that green either. Hydro's operation is non-polluting (except they've found that reservoirs emit more methane than we previously thought) so I guess in that sense it's green, but all that cement needs to be made, construction vehicles need to operate during its construction, etc, etc, etc. And the impact to the surrounding environment caused by flooding a valley isn't nothing too.

But as you say, of all the options it's the least shitty one. But let's not pretend that hydro is "green" and doesn't have any impact. Renewable is a much better term.

I think I put that link up in another thread. The methane usually comes from not logging the valley before it's flooded - then you've got an entire forest decomposing underwater (with no oxygen) and emitting more gases than it would in regular air. I believe that Site C's already been logged.

Overall point taken, though. Most renewables aren't "green" so much as "low-carbon."

[whatnext]

The former CEO of BC Hydro says kill Site C now. Particularly interesting are the comments regarding Burrard Thermal:

Mismanagement, politically motivated decision-making and lack of transparency have dogged BC Hydro’s support for the Site C dam, says a new report submitted to the BC Utilities Commission by the former CEO of BC Hydro...

...The Burrard Station, with a similar capacity to Site C, was operated by BC Hydro in Port Moody as a standby plant to provide emergency power or electricity during periods of peak demand.

The natural gas powered plant cost BC Hydro about $20 million a year to operate until it was shut down in 2016.

“If the Burrard Generating Station had not been removed from BC Hydro’s Integrated Resource Plan there would be no need for the commission’s inquiry,” writes Eliesen. “There would have been no scenario upon which the construction of Site C could have been justified.”

Eliesen says the commission must assess the energy available from Burrard as well as the province’s entitlement under the Columbia River Treaty in its final report.

“The need to cancel Site C can be established without regard to Burrard or the Columbia River Treaty, but there is no practical public policy or prudent business reason for excluding these viable options from the slate of alternatives to Site C,” he says....

https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/10/13/K...ls-Commission/