The B.C. government has created a Green Energy Advisory Task Force to review BC Hydro regulations and to look for ways to expand 'green' power projects to create jobs and keep electricity rates competitive. A tall order and one that is unlikely to be achieved. If international experience is any indication, we're likely to get nothing more than a new shade of corporate welfare, bringing fewer jobs, higher taxes and higher energy costs.
 
The Green Energy Advisory Task Force is divided into four subgroups. The subgroup reviewing BC Hydro regulatory reform includes no one from BC Hydro and more importantly, no one from the current BC Hydro regulator, the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC). The absence of the current regulator creates a great deal of concern because BCUC's mandate is to keep BC Hydro rates competitive. If that mandate is now off the table because the government is more interested in promoting a 'green' agenda, it could leave families shivering in the dark in the face of skyrocketing electricity costs.
 
Yet, higher priced electricity is only part of the problem. The three other subgroups are stacked with representatives from renewable energy companies and environmental groups. If they push the government to force BC Hydro to purchase electricity from the companies these groups promote, as the experience from Spain shows, people may not have jobs to pay for escalating electricity costs.
 
The 'green' job creation experience in Spain is touted by US President Obama as an example for the US to follow. However, a Spanish study shows that the US would lose nine jobs in the productive sector for every four jobs created in the subsidized renewable energy sector.
 
The 'Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources' shows that in Spain, green job creation destroyed jobs in metallurgy, non-metallic mining and food processing, beverage and tobacco industries. Not only that. Most of the renewable energy jobs in Spain were temporary and created in the construction of the renewable energy projects. Only one-in-ten jobs in the 'green' energy sector were permanent jobs, and included those in the operation and maintenance of the renewable sources of energy. The study found it cost almost $900,000 to create each 'green' job in Spain.
 
But we don't have to look as far away as Spain to see how green corporate welfare fails to create permanent jobs and wastes tax dollars. We have our own made-in-B.C. example -- Ballard Power. At its height in 2001, employment at Ballard Power reached about 1,400 but by April 2009, it had fallen to about 400. In August 2009, it announced the elimination of another 85 jobs. Ballard Power took $22 million from B.C. taxpayers by 2000, and tens of millions more from federal corporate welfare programs. Despite these generous Canadian taxpayer funded handouts, Ballard abandoned its fuel cell business in 2008 and left the Japanese energy cogeneration market in 2009 because the Japanese government declined to subsidize it. Ballard has never made an operating profit in its 25 years of existence.
 
The Green Energy Advisory Task Force is stacked against the taxpayer to promote a green corporate welfare scheme that, if experience is any guide, will be an expensive failure. Unfortunately, the B.C. government doesn't seem all that interested in hearing from anyone who might bring that up. It has given the public only the month of December, which includes the Christmas holidays, to provide input to the Task Force. The Task Force then has until sometime in January to provide its findings to government. This process is a sham and as in most cases when the government picks winners, it makes losers out of competitors, taxpayers and consumers.
 
Let the Task Force know what you think. Go to their website to add your input.

By: Maureen Bader
Posted: December 14, 2009
Topic: British Columbia

Contact the regional director Jordan Bateman for further information.

Type: Commentary

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