BC Government Plan to Integrate with US Power Grid Will Destablize BC’s Electric
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Vancouver:
For Immediate Release
The BC Liberal Government's plan to closely integrate the province's electricity system with the power grid in the western United States through an entity known as Regional Transmission Organization West (RTO West) will destabilize the province's transmission system and greatly increase the possibility of blackouts and catastrophic system failure.
If implemented, the BC Government's Energy Plan will result in BC Hydro ceding control of our transmission system to a private sector consortium of U.S. utilities. In the process, British Columbians will lose the ability to plan the system to meet the needs of BC businesses and citizens as a first priority. By needlessly making our transmission system subservient to U.S. interests, the Government is, once again, making an enormous public policy mistake as a result of blind ideology.
“BC Hydro has always provided a secure, stable supply of power for all British Columbians. That's because our electricity system is maintained with great rigour and expertise built over forty years of dedication to excellence in the provision of publicly owned power. As an engineer and former employee of BC Hydro, I know that our public system is unmatched anywhere when it comes to reliability, and this reliability must be maintained. If we go down a path that leads to dozens of private U.S. utilities controlling our transmission destiny, we will increase the risk of blackouts and system failure for all British Columbians,” said Malcolm Metcalfe a consulting engineer with SEMPA Consulting.
RTO West is being created as an unhappy compromise in a badly organized and unreliable system of private utilities in the western U.S. Recognizing that their patchwork system was ineffective, the utilities reluctantly adopted a management model to try to overcome some of the problems resulting from the status quo. By agreeing to become subservient to this strange collection of private interests, the BC Government is gambling unnecessarily with the security and stability of BC's energy future.
“Just look at what happened yesterday throughout ontario and ask yourself if it really makes sense to deliberately destroy a highly stable system in return for one that brings all of the risks of ontario's disastrous approach to electricity restructuring. The answer, of course, is that it makes no sense at all. The BC Government should abandon its plans to make our transmission system a creature of RTO West and focus instead on preserving and enhancing the excellent asset that the citizens of British Columbia know as BC Hydro,” said Jim Sinclair, a Director of BC Citizens for Public Power and President of the BC Federation of Labour.
For more information contact: John Young
604.681.5939
604.317.1231
BC Citizens for Public Power
@ August 26, 2003