Climate change & energy policy

Are Smart Meters Worth the Cost?

Oct 12, 2011
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A notice in my mailbox last week told me that smart meters are going to be installed in my neighbourhood. I’ll admit that the geek in me would like to see real-time information about my energy usage, but as an economist I’m interested in costs and benefits of the program. So far we have seen… View Article

Fighting energy poverty

Sep 28, 2011
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Today we released a new Climate Justice Project report, Fighting Energy Poverty in the Transition to Zero-Emission Housing: A Framework for BC, by yours truly, Eugene Kung (a lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre and a steering committee member of the CJP) and Jason Owen (who worked on this project as a student at UBC, now with… View Article

A ‘Jobs for Jobs’ Strategy

Sep 23, 2011
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It is ironic that within weeks of its much publicized report and stated concern about the upward pressures on BC Hydro rates, the government announces a job strategy that will drive up electricity rates more than anything else — more even than the self-sufficiency policy government has belatedly recognized must go. The plan for new… View Article

“Climate change starts here: the BC dirty jobs plan”

Sep 19, 2011
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We are still on Day One of the Jobs Plan, and the afternoon news is all about proposed liquid natural gas plants in Kitimat, which will take pipelined gas and send it by tanker to Asia. Quoth the Premier: Creating a new industry with the capacity to export B.C.’s natural gas to overseas markets for… View Article

Jobs and BC’s Resource Extraction Mindset

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Day One of the week-long BC’s Jobs Plan: the Premier was in Prince Rupert to announce a commitment to making the port a “gateway” to Asia. Quoth Premier Clark: I am in Prince Rupert today because if you are looking at Canada from Asia, with an eye to investing in our country, Canada truly starts… View Article

So Where is the Science?

Sep 8, 2011
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The headline in the Globe today was certainly ominous — “Clark’s Hydro policy threatens to collapse B.C.’s climate change progress, scientist says”. The purported policy change seemed scary — the government might roll back the requirement for BC Hydro to be able to meet domestic electricity requirements in drought conditions. And the scientist’s description of… View Article

BC Hydro Review

Aug 12, 2011
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If it were true that BC Hydro could effectively plan and operate its system with 20% fewer workers, as the government panel has recently suggested in its Review of BC Hydro, one would have to assume that the BC Hydro Executive and Board, as well as the BC Utilities Commission, have all grossly failed in their… View Article

Decarbonizing BC homes and the price of gas

Jul 28, 2011
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Our climate justice framework for BC is to eliminate fossil fuels by 2040. In the household sector, this poses a significant challenge, not so much in terms of technology and knowledge, but because natural gas is much cheaper than electricity per unit of energy. Even though BC has among the lowest prices in North America,… View Article