Unplug electricity self-sufficiency strategy

Premier Clark's family first agenda has sent the energy minister, Rich Coleman, off to review what's up at BC Hydro. What's up, besides massive salaries and crumbling infrastructure, is a dimwitted policy for electricity self-sufficiency. 

The government is forcing B.C. Hydro to make the province self-sufficient in electricity production by 2016, just five years away. By 2020, Hydro must be self-sufficient - in the worst case scenario. In other words, BC Hydro has to be able to produce all the electricity we need each year, plus an additional 3,000 gigawatt hours of energy, above and beyond the basic requirement. This means most of the time, we'll have a lot of electricity generating capacity sitting around unused.

 

In fact, electricity self-sufficiency is one of the political mandates driving electricity rates up by 50 per cent over the next five years. It would probably be a lot less costly for Hydro - and families trying to make ends meet - to continue importing power to meet peak demand instead of having all this infrastructure sitting around.

Ironically, the BC Liberals go on and on about how they are a free-market party, but self-sufficiency comes right out of the communist handbook. 

Self-sufficiency is an old fashioned and discredited economic theory that used to be supported only by the loony left. For some though, no policy seems too loony these days. The government is telling us we need to be energy self-sufficient and what this will magically do is let us take care of the environment at the same time. To take care of the environment, the government is increasing taxes on energy and channeling subsidies and tax breaks to companies that meet its definition of green.

What people here need, though, is not energy self-sufficiency, but energy security - the ability to buy energy whenever we need it. If we build a big supply of subsidized energy projects, we pay higher taxes, waste tax dollars, and could make people a lot worse off. For example, Spain, the country often heralded as the model of green electricity generation, now has an unemployment rate hovering around 20 per cent.

Self-sufficiency could reduce our energy security and anyway,  energy self sufficiency makes no sense for B.C. B.C.'s electricity grid is integrated with Alberta and the western United States. So it very easy for us to buy and sell electricity - to trade. In fact, BC Hydro's trading arm, Powerex, makes billions of dollars every year trading electricity. A lot of that money goes back to government general revenue. Economic growth and all the benefits that come with it will allow us to continue to import energy to meet domestic demand if we ever do have a supply shortage. The government's focus on energy self sufficiency is a step backward  and --  in fact -- contradicts its commitment to free trade.

We can have energy security if government gets out of the way and lets economic growth increase the wealth of the citizens of B.C. Energy self-sufficiency will not provide us with a secure, reliable supply of affordable energy. Don't be fooled and let fear of a lack of energy let government get back into the business of subsidizing businesses in a losing attempt to pick winners.