Friday, October 03, 2003

IPPBC members:

Pollution Probe (Toronto) has been given the mandate by NRCan to organise five workshops in green power throughout Canada.

The Vancouver workshop will be in March (probably the GLOBE week). They will discuss different topics around green power at each workshop, bringing together some 60-100 stakeholders, national and international speakers, etc.

Martin Tampier, a local consultant working with PP, has appoached IPPBC. He advises that the series will result in a document that summarises the discussions, although it will not impose any views or define a national policy. But it WILL collect a lot of information that the government will use to develop such a national policy. Its objective is that by March 2004 the feds may be ready to announce a national green power target (hopefully higher than what is currently in the Climate Change Action Plan) and that there will be some idea how to bring the provinces together to implement such a target.

Note that the development of PP's input will be starting at their Halifax workshop in September. The Vancouver workshop is the concluding one and is the synthesis of previous workshops and is titled "Next Steps". In other words, if you are interested in this topic, dont wait until the Vancouver workshop.

Martin advises that PP is looking for additional funds for their workshops. They are hoping to entice some other players in BC to contribute as well. Please contact him at martin.tampier@telus.net if you want to contribute to or directly plug into the process.

He advises that IPPBC will be very welcome to participate in the workshops regardless of our lack of financial capability.

The backgrounder to the workshop series is attached in PDF format. Please let me know in case you want to assist or plug into this process.

Regards,

Steve Davis
President
Independent Power Producers assn of BC
email: steve.davis@ippbc.com