The dirty business of clean power | National Post - Sarah Cox:
May 14, 2019 - This year’s nominees for the Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing [include] Journalist Sarah Cox [who] takes on the dirty business of clean power in Breaching the Peace: The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand against Big Hydro.
SC: "Large hydro dams are a hugely expensive and destructive way to generate renewable energy. They are neither 'green' nor environmentally friendly.... Among other impacts, the Site C dam will destroy habitat for more than 100 species already vulnerable to extinction, including bird, plant, butterfly, bee and mammal species. The Site C dam and its reservoir will also eliminate some of Canada’s richest farmland, ancient wetlands called tufa seeps, old-growth boreal forests and a living laboratory for scientists to study how species adapt to climate change.... As many as 30,000 songbirds and woodpeckers nest in the dam’s future flood zone....
"Just how 'clean' big hydro dams really are is called into question by many scientists. One study by U.S. scientists shows that reservoirs produce considerably more carbon emissions than anticipated. About 80 per cent of these emissions are in the form of methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide....
"[T]here was a concerted lobby by construction trades unions to continue the Site C dam. The same unions donated generously to the NDP — to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of dollars — and they continue to form a key part of the party’s labour base. The unions directly lobbied the NDP government and held well-attended press conferences in Vancouver and Victoria to champion continued Site C construction....
"[T]he independent B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) would normally have examined the Site C dam to determine whether or not the project was in the public interest. The watchdog commission rejected the project in the 1980s.... B.C.’s Liberal government ... changed the law in 2010 to strip the commission’s oversight of Site C. When the NDP came to power in 2017, it ... sen[t] the project to the BCUC.... But, notably, it didn’t allow the BCUC to determine whether or not proceeding with Site C was in the public interest and the BCUC wasn’t given the most up-to-date financial information for the project....
"Two Treaty 8 First Nations have filed civil claims alleging the Site C dam and two previous dams on the Peace River unjustifiably infringe on their treaty rights.... Already, BC Hydro contractors are clearcutting 13 areas in the Site C project zone that the nations have identified as critical to maintaining cultural practices guaranteed to them in the treaty signed in 1899. Three of those areas fall within a corridor for a transmission line that cuts through ... two wetlands — Sucker Lake and Trappers Lake — where First Nations have hunted moose and trapped for millennia....
"It made financial sense to build large hydro dams in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s when there were fewer renewable energy options available and they were far more expensive. But ... Canada’s publicly owned energy corporations are largely stuck in an old model and haven’t kept up with the times. Plummeting prices for wind energy and other renewables, coupled with the abundance of shale gas, mean that power from expensive new hydro dams can’t be sold for anything close to what it will cost to produce it. So, in addition to their devastating impacts on the environment and Indigenous peoples, large Canadian dams are no longer economical....
"Ultimately, provincial ratepayers will suffer, or taxpayers — they are largely the same people. B.C.’s NDP government just bailed out the deeply indebted BC Hydro for more than $1 billion, for example, and that’s even before many more billions in Site C costs come due."
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May 14, 2019 - This year’s nominees for the Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing [include] Journalist Sarah Cox [who] takes on the dirty business of clean power in Breaching the Peace: The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand against Big Hydro.
SC: "Large hydro dams are a hugely expensive and destructive way to generate renewable energy. They are neither 'green' nor environmentally friendly.... Among other impacts, the Site C dam will destroy habitat for more than 100 species already vulnerable to extinction, including bird, plant, butterfly, bee and mammal species. The Site C dam and its reservoir will also eliminate some of Canada’s richest farmland, ancient wetlands called tufa seeps, old-growth boreal forests and a living laboratory for scientists to study how species adapt to climate change.... As many as 30,000 songbirds and woodpeckers nest in the dam’s future flood zone....
"Just how 'clean' big hydro dams really are is called into question by many scientists. One study by U.S. scientists shows that reservoirs produce considerably more carbon emissions than anticipated. About 80 per cent of these emissions are in the form of methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide....
"[T]here was a concerted lobby by construction trades unions to continue the Site C dam. The same unions donated generously to the NDP — to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of dollars — and they continue to form a key part of the party’s labour base. The unions directly lobbied the NDP government and held well-attended press conferences in Vancouver and Victoria to champion continued Site C construction....
"[T]he independent B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) would normally have examined the Site C dam to determine whether or not the project was in the public interest. The watchdog commission rejected the project in the 1980s.... B.C.’s Liberal government ... changed the law in 2010 to strip the commission’s oversight of Site C. When the NDP came to power in 2017, it ... sen[t] the project to the BCUC.... But, notably, it didn’t allow the BCUC to determine whether or not proceeding with Site C was in the public interest and the BCUC wasn’t given the most up-to-date financial information for the project....
"Two Treaty 8 First Nations have filed civil claims alleging the Site C dam and two previous dams on the Peace River unjustifiably infringe on their treaty rights.... Already, BC Hydro contractors are clearcutting 13 areas in the Site C project zone that the nations have identified as critical to maintaining cultural practices guaranteed to them in the treaty signed in 1899. Three of those areas fall within a corridor for a transmission line that cuts through ... two wetlands — Sucker Lake and Trappers Lake — where First Nations have hunted moose and trapped for millennia....
"It made financial sense to build large hydro dams in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s when there were fewer renewable energy options available and they were far more expensive. But ... Canada’s publicly owned energy corporations are largely stuck in an old model and haven’t kept up with the times. Plummeting prices for wind energy and other renewables, coupled with the abundance of shale gas, mean that power from expensive new hydro dams can’t be sold for anything close to what it will cost to produce it. So, in addition to their devastating impacts on the environment and Indigenous peoples, large Canadian dams are no longer economical....
"Ultimately, provincial ratepayers will suffer, or taxpayers — they are largely the same people. B.C.’s NDP government just bailed out the deeply indebted BC Hydro for more than $1 billion, for example, and that’s even before many more billions in Site C costs come due."
