California power market tough to crack

California 30 MW hydro cap limits renewable energy recognition for hydroelectric projects, excluding most B.C. facilities from RPS premium rates, while alternatives like wind, solar, and small run-of-river qualify in cross-border electricity markets.

British Columbia should not look to California to support its ambitions to develop a lucrative renewable electricity export industry, a U.S. power market expert said.

Jan Hamrin, secretarygeneral of the Environmental Tracking Network of North America, said California is unlikely to change a policy that disqualifies many B.C. smallhydro projects from access to the state as premiumrate renewable electricity sources, even as B.C. aims to shift its renewable agenda into high gear domestically.

The Tracking Network is a nonprofit agency funded by the U.S. government to track renewable energy trades across North American grids.

California is expected to maintain rules that do not recognize hydro projects with a production capacity larger than 30 megawatts as renewable power, even though private power plays a vital climate role today.

Many highprofile independent power projects in B.C. are significantly larger, and thus do not qualify for the premium rates California is prepared to offer for electricity generated from wind power resources, solar or smallscale runofriver hydro. California’s own largescale hydro projects are considered to be unfortunate historical artifacts in an arid state.

“There are technologies that are highly charged emotionally in certain places. Hydro is one of them,” Hamrin told a conference organized in Vancouver by the joint public advisory committee of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation.

“Californians get very emotional about hydro, partly because of some negative experiences we’ve had within our own state with hydroelectric facilities.

“States and provinces are not generally going to enact policies to encourage development in another state or province or region.

“So if California has most or all of its hydro resources already fully developed from an electricity development standpoint, it is going to be very difficult to encourage California legislators to change the rules in a way that would encourage hydro development in Canada, in British Columbia.”

Paul Wieringa, executive director of the B.C. energy ministry’s electricity and alternative energy division, told the conference that California is not the only potential market for premiumpriced green power that would be developed under B.C.’s forthcoming energy export policy, with green energy deals potentially on the horizon for B.C. suppliers today. “That export [policy] doesn’t necessarily mean south of the border,” Wieringa said. “It could certainly mean [selling] to Alberta, which has 80plus per cent coalfired power as I understand it. So I think there will continue to be a lot more development of these kinds of resources within British Columbia whether the California situation comes to fruition or not.”

Lawrence Pitt, associate director for the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, which represents all four of B.C.’s major public universities, said climate change trends appear to favour relatively drier weather in the western Pacific states, and a higher volume of precipitation in this province. That trend, he said, could elevate British Columbia’s role on the western grid, provided environmental regulations don’t complicate the situation, as seen when BC Hydro pulled the plug on a power project amid permitting disputes.

Gwen Barlee, policy director for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, challenged the notion that small hydro projects meet environmental standards that her group and its members would consider adequate (especially run-of-river projects in sensitive watersheds).

“There is over 150 creeks and rivers that are staked in the Sea to Sky corridor, there is over 200 on the Sunshine Coast, and the government doesn’t look at the cumulative impacts of these projects on the land base. That is why there is such an extremely high degree of concern in B.C. about this rush for clean energy projects around rivers and creeks in B.C.,” Barlee said.

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