The following letter to the editor appeared in BC Business Magazine February edition.

Dear Editor:

John Calvert’s October article “Brace for a Hydro shock” contains a dozen false allegations and misleading half-truths. This brief letter will counter just three.

Calvert alleges “the government has arbitrarily banned new investment by BC Hydro in electricity- generating facilities.”

Not true. BC Hydro continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in generating facilities.  It recently confirmed that it is also seriously considering building the huge Site C project. 

BC Hydro’s 2006 Integrated Electricity Plan lists projects it is working on that total $7 billion. BC Hydro is expanding so much that the government is increasing their past borrowing restriction to $8.8 billion. Some “ban”!

Calvert alleges that BC Hydro is forced “to buy energy from private interests through long-term contracts at prices almost double those of other options.”

Not true. BC Hydro buys from a many sources including; industrial generators, Alberta, Alcan, US generators, and also from itself.

IPPs prices are competitive with, if not cheaper, than other long-term supply options. The BC Utilities Commission reviewed the competitiveness of recent IPP bids before approving them. Incidently, BC Hydro’s Aberfeldie run of river project will add 20 MW for $93 million which is about twice the capital cost of similar sized run of river IPPs in the most recent bid.

Fellow SFU professor, and past BCUC Chair, Dr. Mark Jaccard  said, upon reviewing a similar Calvert report in April, “Long-term cost of supply, new supply, is higher cost. Electricity prices will rise no matter who builds the new capacity. Mr. Calvert is simply comparing apples and oranges” 

Calvert states that BC Hydro “could explore whether Site C, with its more than 4,000 megawatts of potential capacity, should be built rather than damming up hundreds of pristine streams”.

Not true. First, Site C is 900 MW, not 4,000 MW.

Second, run of river IPP projects don’t use dams. They use weirs - most of which are made of inflatable rubber and stand less than 3 meters high. And the amount of water held back by all the run-of-river IPP projects ever built in BC is less than 0.2% of just one BC Hydro dam, like their most recent one near Revelstoke.