Sunday, November 12, 2017

Keefin' It 1600 (More Years In The West Annex)

RunOfRiverUberAlles
GordCoForeverVille


Before I get to the good Mr. Baldrey's latest linear type column for Glacier Media (most helpfully 'reprinted' by the Globalopoly), I present to you an actual fact that directly contradicts BC Hydro's longtime claim that energy demands are rising in BC, as rendered visual by Norm Farrell:



Now, off to Mr. Baldrey's latest:

...As our population inevitably swells, and electricity consumption rises as a result, what is the best way to meet that demand? A hydroelectric dam, which is the most reliable form of energy, or alternative energy sources as solar, wind or geothermal (all likely cheaper but far less dependable)?

Lost in the debate is that any alternative energy projects would likely be built by private companies, and not B.C. Hydro itself. If the Crown Corporation stops building Site C it is unlikely to add to its already-alarming debt load by building more energy projects.

Thus, the old debate on IPPs (Independent Power Projects) may be re-ignited. While in Opposition, the NDP and its labor allies strongly opposed the growth of IPPs. It would be deeply ironic indeed if the NDP kills Site C, only to watch IPPs come to life...



Do you see what I see, sans even the tiniest shred of 'irony'?



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The above passage from the Keef is actually buried way below the lede which posits  that no matter how much Site C eventually costs us it will be the fault of the current Dipper government....Gosh...It's almost as if Mr. Baldrey never actually heard Ms. Christy Clark say that thing that even the Dean knows she actually, well, you know....Said.


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20 comments:

North Van's Grumps said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lew said...

Keef and the Site C booster club keep building their straw man out of short straws.

cfvua said...

One can only hope that as BCHydro headhunts a new IPP negotiator that the actual prices paid to same IPPs are lowered. After all this is the main cause of the potential bankruptcy of the corporation. Hydro exec with help from the KootenayBill understated production many times. Has been discussed here. And by about the same amount as site c will produce. Not insignificant also is the 17% increase in production from legacy facilities. When the complete equation with all of its algebra comes out it will show we are well over capacity and installation of any alternatives other than by self reliant folks for grid ties or co-gen will be unnecessary. Only way to get banks to finance is to say there is a shortage, which there clearly isn't.

Anonymous said...

yes no droughts earthquakes(fracking etc) failed dams or transmissionline tower fails?

ban any IPP -and BCHydro build their own not more p3 outsourcing sweetheart deal 50 year inflation adjusted contracts?

rub 2 sticks together in an emergency as burrard thermal is politically neurtered.

North Van's Grumps said...

expropriate ipp

Anonymous said...

When public doesnt do their homework all you get is perpetual hockey stick forecasting which should be illegal except for auditor general to say?even then.?public policy propaganda?

Anonymous said...

One wonders what the Keefer's speaking fee is?

Anonymous said...

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TAn5uAxFsSI/VocoTl_Y4PI/AAAAAAABGf0/Ekee9LrEfEk/s640/Segments%2B2006%2B2016%2B640.jpg

11 year flat demand!!!

North Van's Grumps said...

Keith Baldrey: Linkedin Skills
Public Relations, Communications Planning, Politics, Media Relations, Editing, Newspaper, Strategic Communications, Social Media, Public Speaking, Corporate Communications, Writing, Crisis Communications, Storytelling, Social Media Marketing, Nonprofits, Newspapers, Press Releases, Reputation Management, Internal Communications, Event Planning, Blogging, FUNDRAISING, Marketing Communications, Journalism, Radio, Publicity, Event Management, Content Development, Copywriting, Copy Editing, Television, Speech, Writing, Research, Creative Writing, Broadcast, Photography, Radio Broadcasting, Video, Political Risk Analysis, Online Journalism, Video Production, News Writing, Political Communication, Broadcast Journalism,
New Media, Advertising, Editorial, Feature Articles, Magazines, Newsletters

davemj said...

Balderdash & Plumber they remind of that song bring in the Clowns.What a joke.Great Article Ross and thanks, Norm.

e. a. f. said...

Baldrey's hope springs eternal but he will have to accept the NDP is now in office and there is a very good chance they don't want to spend $9B or more on something we don't need and can't afford.

Norma Farrell has once again supplied the stats and we really don't need that dam. even as the population increases there are constantly new technologies which will make a new dam if not obsolete, unnecessary.

As to those IPPs, those were el gordo's doing. nice reward to some. In the meantime the NDP can pull a WAC expropriate them. We can restore the rivers they're wrecking and get on with life. Once B.C. Hydro stops paying out all the money they can start paying down their debt. But first they need to stop running up all that new debt the B.C. Lieberals left laying around.

e. a. f. said...

we really don't need that dam. In Oct, Scotland produced almost all their electricity from their wind farms. Interesting article up over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole, on Wind power in Europe. Yes, that dam is not going to be needed and we don't need to flood that farm land.

Anonymous said...

Keeyask/Muskrat/Bipole 3 = problems 3 ?

Scotty on Denman said...

Population swelling? Well, maybe, but what kind of population?

First consider the Baby Boomers’ bulge now entering, for the past six years, the maw of life’s uncoiled serpent, as ‘t were, where it will appear a pronounced distension about the size of a baby elephant for the next dozen-or-so years before being digested, demographically speaking. I tell my teenage grandchildren that when I was their age there were four times as many of us as there currently is of them, demographically speaking (and before they roll their eyes like I’m going to tell them it was uphill both ways to and from the two-room schoolhouse I went to as a boy — which is actually two-thirds true — I do some fun-with-figures by asking them to imagine: for every school chum they have now, we had four back then; where did they think half the great music they listen too — still! — came from).

I prefer blank stares to smirks, but it is hard for them to imagine — it’s even hard for me to imagine!

So what kind of a population is this Boomerdom? It’s a very expensive one that earned and spent much more than any society in history, whose immediate descendants will inherit what remains of some $100 billion CAN after Big Pharma, warm-climate vacations, and geriatric care take as much as they can before the boom goes bust forever. Not only is it populous, it still likes — and probably always will — its indulgences to be familiar and conveniently available at a whim. It is the receding gold standard whose imitators are driving the world past its environmental capacity. Fortunately it is probably the last such population that will be mostly gone in twenty years time.

The new population that succeeds it is already “hip” (forgive me the anachronism) to cheaper and less environmentally damaging technologies and habits. What we Boomers enjoyed musically in lots of watts and voltage to push it, for example, they now do in milliamperes. My own family was considered small at five, back in the incandescent zenith of youthful Boomerdom; now three or four is average in the solar-panel-paved, LED era. But it is, unlike the Boomer-in-a-candy-store profligates, considerably more constrained. And for the youngest (are we up to Generation Z, yet?), house-shopping in Vancouver probably means rental, if lucky, or house-shopping elsewhere.

Is it any wonder, then, that energy consumption is flat-ish, or that conventional generation is shrinking? The most affluent and indulgent consumers ever are beginning to attrit (in a decade the curve will finally decline steeply), and their replacements, inured to environmental concern and, in any case, much shorter of disposable income (some of it a one-time, inherited “bulge”), are beginning to register in lower energy use. And it’s increasingly a different kind of energy, too.

Maybe Baldry wants to get out in front of the dinosaur parade almost a third of British Colubians are marching (or wheeling) in — his Prancing Majorette having been recently retired — but he should note the spectators’ youth and markedly advanced culture. Doubtless he won’t see the pedestrians, bicycles and public transit that infill newly lighted streets as the barricades come down and the dino-parade passes by.

Hey, I probably won’t, either; but I think I know something better ‘n’ him — like a less cynical outlook that comes from a factual interpretation of the signs that bloggers like Norm and Ross, for example, reveal for us. And especially for us dinosaurs!

Thanx, guys.

Anonymous said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkI9Dmi5RLg

Hugh said...

"As our population inevitably swells..."

So the population is assumed to grow every year, forever.

I know, that's what the real estate developers want to hear.

They who apparently run the govt.

But how is that even mathematically possible?

Or desirable? Traffic congestion is not bad enough?

Ed Seedhouse said...

Long ago read an article by Isaac Asimov that pointed out that, due to the miracle of compound interest, if the human population increase by 2% per year, in 8,000 years the total mass of humans will exceed the mass of our local galaxy. Or something like that.

Obviously then, this can go on forever and ever. Right?

Anonymous said...

Zero growth,now negative as of last quarter, for 11 years and you want to blow 12 billion dollars and sell surplus power at a potential loss after?
Why is it you never see an annual demand graph from BCHydro Hmmm...?You may not sell to Alberta .Thay installed a gas turbine ,like the politically neutered burrard thermal.?

2007-2017
http://media.commonsensecanadian.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Chart-1.png

Hugh said...

Another graph on Norm's site shows how relatively expensive IPP power deliveries to BC Hydro has been increasing, 2004-2017.

Over the same time period the amount of cheap power produced by Hydro's own plants has been decreasing by an equivalent amount.

"BC Hydro Domestic Sales in GWh"

https://in-sights.ca/2017/10/28/utility-woes/


North Van's Grumps said...

1944 the Australia politician Arthur Calwell

All this vaunted freedom of the press on the part of newspaper magnates will not permit views to be published which they do not desire to be published. There is no such thing as freedom of the press, except for those who own and control the newspapers of Australia.