The Many Faces of BC "Hydra"

(Originally published in the Northeast News, February 25, p. 24)

Hydra: Greek mythology. A mythical, nine-headed monster. When a head was struck off, it was replaced by two new ones. The Hydra was eventually slain by Hercules.

The thing about BC Hydro’s Chief Executive Officer, Bob Elton, is that he really gets it. Elton understands that when it comes to energy consumption, we need something akin to a conservation revolution—a dramatic paradigm shift that would actually reverse rising domestic demand for electricity.

I don’t know much about Bob Elton, but I admire his courage. Not your ordinary CEO, he is a Chartered Accountant who also has a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University, where he studied English literature. Elton has attributed his keen moral awareness to his training as an accountant. Surely, his background in the humanities also helped to shape his social conscience.

The problem is, other elements in BC Hydro’s corporate culture appear inclined to regard steadily increasing demand less critically, as a “requirement” that must be met. This position, in turn, is used to support a purported need for projects like Site C.

The different faces of BC “Hydra” (serious conservation vs. an expansionist agenda ultimately linked to export) are vividly revealed by two BC Hydro graphs that imagine BC’s future energy needs in very different ways.

Figure 1, below, appears as part of a cover letter, signed by Bob Elton, accompanying BC Hydro’s 2007 Conservation Potential Review: Summary Report. In this letter, Bob Elton describes “a visionary approach” that looks at how “electricity demand in British Columbia could be reduced.”

Figure 1

“Our goal,” Elton writes, is to develop and foster a conservation culture in BC that leads to customers choosing to make a dramatic and permanent reduction in electricity [use].” Pursuing this vision, Elton “strongly” believes “we can go beyond” the “conservation target set out by the 2007 BC Energy Plan and lead a change such that in 2027 we would return to 2007 electricity consumption levels while allowing for growth and economic prosperity.”

“In British Columbia,” Elton says, “saving energy must be more than a technical solution. We must also address the issue of wasted electricity. We use more electricity per capita than almost anywhere else in the world.”

According to Elton, “some progressive European communities use 60% less electricity in their homes than comparable communities in BC without compromising quality of life. What seems like an amazing conservation feat is really quite possible. It’s due to efficient lifestyle choices that are rooted in the culture.”

Industry, Elton notes, “can play an important part too. Current world leaders in industrial production are over 40% more efficient than most industries in BC.”

Figure 2, below, also from BC Hydro, imagines a very different future. What you see here is my partial recreation of a demand-supply graph that appears in the Site C Feasibility Review (p. 2). For the purposes of this article, I’ve simply highlighted the demand outlook presented by the Site C team. The steadily rising dotted line indicates a “mid-range demand forecast.”

Figure 2

According to Hydro’s Feasibility Review, “The current forecast for electricity demand indicates that BC’s electricity requirements will grow by between 25 per cent and 45 percent over the next 20 years. . . . While the magnitude of the [supply-demand] gap in any particular year is uncertain, there is a consistent trend of steadily rising demand” (p. 2; emphasis added).

The implied justification for new, large projects like Site C is clear: “the province needs to examine some large projects to meet growing demand . . .” (p. 2). Here, long-term, growing demand is presented as a given, as an unquestioned reality that must be accommodated.

Seen in this way, the Peace River is valued primarily as a potential resource for hydro-electric development, not as an inherently valuable aspect of a fragile ecosystem. It is, in fact, very evident that the recently completed "public consultation" for Site C was largely an exercise in public relations, a multi-million-dollar sales pitch that framed the issues from a pro-development perspective.

Take another look at the two graphs. The difference is remarkable. In Figure 1, we find a way to eliminate unconscionable waste and help save the best place on earth. In Figure 2, that little, wandering, dotted line of increasing demand goes on and on, up and up, seemingly without end. And “that way,” to quote Shakespeare, “madness lies.”

Of course, the difference in the two forecasts is a result of different macro-modeling assumptions. The steadily rising line in Figure 2 reflects the pattern in a “reference case” also described in the 2007 Conservation Potential Review (p. 10). This reference case relies on estimated population and economic growth, but does not factor in “new [demand-side-management] initiatives (pp. 5, 9).

Just as BC Hydro makes choices in deciding how to imagine the future, we too need to make some choices. It's high time to see through expansionist propaganda that will turn BC into an energy farm for California. Let’s embrace the visionary goals of the CEO and choose a path that would help to mitigate the need for massively destructive projects like Site C.

The 2007 Conservation Potential Review: Summary Report (appropriately abbreviated as “CPR”) is available on the web and should be required reading for everyone who cares about “generations” to come.

For a discussion of Hydro's export motives, see the column archive for "BC Hydro Has History of Overbuilding for Export" (Originally published in the Northeast News, Wednesday, September 24, 2008, p. 32).