Energy

Despite the B.C. government’s announcement that the $8.8-billion Site C dam is going ahead, First Nations and land owners in the Peace River Valley say the battle against it is still on and will spark opposition to other resource projects.

“It’s far from being a done deal. This fight is just getting started,” Chief Roland Willson of the West Moberly First Nation said Wednesday.

“We were shocked,” he said of the band’s reaction to Premier Christy Clark’s announcement on Site C, Tuesday. “It was basically a spit in the face.”

VICTORIA — For Premier Christy Clark, the decision to proceed with building Site C is one that will bear fruit over the next 100 years.

“Long after this announcement today is over, long after my working days in this job are over, I believe that the people of our province will continue to prosper and continue to create wealth and opportunity,” she declared Tuesday.

For Energy Minister Bill Bennett, the giant hydroelectric dam on the Peace River “will be the last of its kind,” here or anywhere else.

VANCOUVER – A look at what was said about the B.C. government’s decision to proceed with the controversial $8.8 billion Site C hydroelectric dam.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark: “In the life of any province, there are moments where each of us has an opportunity, a responsibility, to make big decisions, ones that are going to matter, in this case, for a century. And today is that day.”

Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs Grand Chief Stewart Phillip: “This is an ill-advised and incredibly stupid decision the province has made regarding the Site C Project. “

Climate disruption jumped to the fore of the global political agenda in 2014 and a series of developments cemented both renewable energy and carbon pricing as lead solutions to the crisis.

Washington and Beijing struck a landmark deal to limit emissions, noted Canadian conservatives stepped forward to support emissions pricing, and the divestment movement moved from student union buildings to boardrooms, with many, from Catholic bishops to Rockefeller oil-fortune heirs, moving their money out of fossil fuels.

The power mavens have already pronounced its energy too costly to warrant construction. You’d think that would be the end of it. But no. BC Hydro and its masters in Victoria remain doggedly committed to the construction of the Site C Dam to power the export of Canadian energy.

A recent BC Hydro poll suggests British Columbians are split on the issue. More correctly, British Columbians are in the dark when it comes to the public policy implications of Site C.

It’s time to start using the F-word. The F word is food.

Remember back in 2006 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper boasted confidently that Canada was about to become an “energy superpower?”

A February 2014 report by the International Monetary Fund shows that Canada never was and, probably now, never will be. The IMF report is similar to one by the Canadian Energy Research Institute in 2011. It found that 94 per cent of the economic benefits of expanding the oil sands remain in just one province, Alberta.

The picture painted is startling:

The crackling log fire, flickering in an open hearth, may win the day for romance or Christmas cards. From the modern viewpoint of efficiency and good health, it’s more of a horror-show. Our ancestors, living in unvented huts lit and warmed by open fires, wheezed and coughed their way to early death.

'Oil, tar sands, coal, natural gas: What's behind the expansion drive of Canada's and North America's fossil fuel industries?' talk by Roger Annis of Vancouver Ecosocialist Group, at University of California Santa Barbara, April 11, 2014

Though BC Hydro has yet to receive environmental or government approval for the proposed hydroelectric dam at Site C on the Peace River, the utility has begun the selection process for one of the biggest contracts on the estimated $8-billion project. Hydro issued a request for qualifications late last week for would-be builders of the giant earth-fill dam and associated engineering works, the first stage of a selection process that is slated to wrap up the summer of next year. The itemized to-do list, posted on the B.C. Bid website, points to a massive undertaking.

Techno-optimists have hoped that technology would solve the climate crisis for us by delivering a renewable energy revolution. They regularly point to amazing technological advances in solar panels, wind turbines, advanced biofuels, hydropower and enhanced geothermal. If only. The ugly climate data from global energy experts like the IEA and the US Energy Information Agency's (EIA), however, shows this isn't happening. Today, renewable energy supplies the same small percent of the world's energy as it did a quarter century ago.