The Democracy of Power Generation

"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Winston Churchill

I'm a little late, but I just wanted to write a short post commending the BC government for pushing forward to the next stage of constructing the 'Site C' dam on the Peace River.

Reliable, sustainable power sources that don't emit much in the way of greenhouse gases (and don't create multi-billion dollar deficits for jurisdictions that use them, and require huge insurance subsidies from the government - yes, I'm talking about nuclear) are awfully hard to come by, and large scale hydro projects that are close to existing power corridors and can make use of existing reservoirs are even more rare.

Just Under the Wire

I see that B.C. Hydro has introduced a two tier set of rates whereby anyone using more than 1,350kwh of electricity over two months will be charged a higher rate. I checked my consumption and my highest two month period over the last two years topped out at around 450kwh, so there's not too much to worry about on a personal front, I guess.

In general, it seems like a smart way to cut overall electricity use. One concern is that in the long run we're better off using electricity (which is generally renewable here in B.C.) than natural gas (which isn't) and this rule might encourage people to stick with gas rather than electric heat for their houses.

Another concern is that it might have been more fair/effective to vary the target based on region as some parts of the province (Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island) have a climate that makes it much easier to stay under this threshold and other parts of the province have a climate that makes it pretty difficult.

Of course, higher consumption is higher consumption, but the incentive to conserve won't be very effective in areas where everyone can easily stay below the limit without conserving, nor in areas where even exceptional efforts aren't enough to reduce the usage below the threshold.

On the other hand, maybe the rule provides some compensation for us poor Vancouverites forced to live in little apartments due to high (albeit falling!) housing prices, while folks in other parts of the province can take advantage of slightly less crazy housing prices to buy detached homes...