Policy

BCSEA and Sierra Club BC endorsed a package of measures designed to help low-income customers of BC Hydro, in a BC utilities commission proceeding in October. The two groups threw their weight behind the BC Old Age Pensioners Organization (BCOAPO) and other groups represented by the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre (BC PIAC) who are asking the commission to assist the hundreds of thousands of BC men, women and children who are struggling to cope with the high and rising costs of electricity service from BC Hydro.

Climate leadership can take on many roles: it involves setting realistic targets rooted in scientific principles, developing an effective plan to achieve those objectives, and perhaps most important of all, inspiring citizens to take meaningful climate action.

Climate leadership can be carried out at different scales; most notably governments should be responsible for leading by example, therefore encouraging citizens to follow along their footsteps.

‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,’ BCSEA and Sierra Club BC told the BC utilities commission in a late September argument on FortisBC’s electricity net metering program. FortisBC wants approval to ban net metering customers from having generating equipment big enough to regularly generate an annual surplus of net energy. BCSEA and Sierra Club told the regulator that an annual net surplus is not a problem. In fact, they said, it is highly desirable, assuming the price is reasonable and the equipment is below the maximum 50 kW generator size.

The Ministry of Environment graphics department has done its best. Cute silhouette graphics show how turtles, hikers and bunnies can happily coexist with helicopters, factories and container ships. Photos of eagles and green forests reinforce the bright and cheery prose.

The BCSEA Kamloops Chapter held two consultation meetings concerning an update to Kamloops' Official Community Plan, called KAMPLAN.  An official community plan is all about land use, with implications for transportation, housing, parks, and many other aspects of our lives.  All of this relates to energy, of course.  If your city is fairly dense with mixed-use neighbourhoods that include shops, schools and parks in addition to homes, you have the potential for people to walk or cycle near home.  It's easier to build a good transit system in a city that doesn't have a lot of sprawl.

The Energy Forum, of which BCSEA is proud to be a member, has released this letter to Premier Christy Clark, urging her to take the Climate Leadership Team's recommendations seriously, and bring BC back to its status as a climate leader.

Click here to view the press release with more information and download.

Change is in the air, if you go by the mood at town hall meeting, hosted by M.P. Randall Garrison in Esquimalt High theatre on May 27th.

Two hundred and fifty people filled the theatre to hear and talk about how Canada can deliver its share of the greenhouse gas emission cuts needed to keep global warming below 2 degrees – preferably below 1.5 degrees – Celsius.

More than 160 B.C. businesses have signed the following open letter calling on the B.C. government to commit to strengthening the province’s carbon tax as part of the Climate Leadership Plan, due out this spring.