Site C offers high-cost power we don’t need
Bills will continue for years, writes Galen Armstrong.
Throughout the province, B.C. Hydro ratepayers have packed the halls of the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) review of the Site C dam — and have been overwhelmingly opposed to the project.
Participants voiced many reasons that the dam should be scrapped: it’s incompatible with the B.C. government’s commitment to uphold the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; it will flood prime agricultural land and sacred sites; there is no demand for the power it will create; and it will have severe impacts on migratory birds, grizzly bears and fish, as well as the world’s largest freshwater delta downstream.
One reason came up repeatedly: money. Site C would cost at least $9 billion, causing continued dramatic rate increases for Hydro customers. What are we getting for that money? Is it worth it?
There are better, cheaper and more environmentally sound ways of creating jobs and power (if and when we need more).
Jobs have been a key Site C selling point, for the previous government, for B.C. Hydro and for the project’s supporters. But just how good a job creator is Site C?
Since work began, 1,500 people on average have been employed each month. B.C. Hydro currently claims 2,549 are working. Hydro hasn’t been clear how it arrives at its jobs claims, but let’s take its higher number at face value. Each job ends up costing $3.4 million.
A report by Blue Green Canada showed investments in energy efficiency would cost roughly $110,000 per job, while wind- and solar-energy investments would cost around $130,000 and $120,000 per job, respectively.
Yet here we have the Site C dam portrayed as a great creator of jobs. It’s not. It’s the opposite in fact: a poor job creator.
A report commissioned by the Peace Valley Landowners Association suggests that renewable alternatives like wind and solar are a more flexible and cost-effective means of addressing our future energy needs. The cost of renewable energy such as wind and solar continues to fall.
The cost of Site C — well, we can only expect it to rise.
Cancelling and remediating the site would cost $1.1 billion, according to a Deloitte LLP report commissioned by the BCUC. The cost to complete the dam would be an additional $6.7 billion.
And that’s assuming the project comes in on budget. There are clear indications from B.C. Hydro itself and the Deloitte report that this won’t be the case. Hydro recently conceded that it will miss its 2019 river-diversion target, adding $610 million to the total bill.
The infamous Muskrat Falls hydro project in Newfoundland and Labrador is now estimated to cost more than double its original budget, and residential hydro rates there are expected to double too. The Deloitte report warns that Site C could face similar cost overruns, possibly coming in as much as 50 per cent over-budget.
It will be you and me — the ratepayers and taxpayers — who will be paying for this. Just as in Newfoundland, where the public now has to cover the cost of budget overruns, British Columbians could see large Hydro rate increases, taxpayer bailouts of Hydro debt and reductions in our province’s credit rating.
And we would be paying for at least the next 70 years. Imagine starting your adult life today with the prospect of paying for this ill-conceived white elephant on each and every Hydro bill you receive for the rest of your life?
It’s senseless and irrational to spend billions on a dam whose power we don’t need to create jobs at a cost of at least $3.4 million a head. The simple matter is that there are better and cheaper ways to create power and jobs, and with far fewer negative impacts. The B.C. government should scrap the Site C dam and invest in a clean-energy portfolio that will be more jobsintensive and save us all money.
That’s smart financial decision-making. That’s good government. With BCUC’s final report due Nov. 1, and decision time imminent, we can only hope that Premier John Horgan and his cabinet are listening.
Hydro conceded that it will miss its 2019 river-diversion target, adding $610 million to the total bill.