This week at a ceremony in Prince George, B.C. Energy Minister Adrian Dix signed away half the capacity of the Site C dam to the American-owned Ksi Lisims LNG terminal.
The controversial dam cost British Columbians $16 billion to build. Now we’re paying another $6 billion (at least) for a transmission line to get that power to the coast.
All so BC Hydro can sell our electricity, at a huge loss, to a fossil fuel project controlled by Wall Street investors in U.S. president Donald Trump’s inner circle.
This may be the most ruinous economic decision the BC NDP has ever inflicted on the people of this province.
Just three years ago, B.C.’s publicly-owned power utility reported $8 billion in revenue, including $2.7 billion in profit from selling surplus electricity to California and other customers.
But for the last three years, our dam-reliant province has become a net importer of electricity from the U.S. Why? Because drought caused by climate change has lowered water levels.
We could boost our solar and wind capacity, install battery banks in every community, waste far less electricity and once again sell our surplus energy at premium prices.
Instead, B.C. is diverting our most valuable and strategic resource to subsidize a foreign-owned fossil fuel project.
But this isn’t the end of the story. If we kill this American LNG proposal, we can free up billions of dollars’ worth of clean electricity to power our economy.
