Site C

[rustled]

...
From a "whole Earth" perspective, these technologies are more damaging than a hydro-electric dam for the same amount of power over their lifetime."

Weaver and Horgan seemed to feel this was important, before political expediency required them to reject Site C.

[hobbyguy]

Las - research is your friend. Suggest you take a look at Todd Whitcombe's resume - rather puts your buddy and and his one man show to shame.

That said, Todd Whitcombe is expressing an opinion, albeit from a more qualified background. At least he understands the science behind all of this, and not some political science or communications grad who just doesn't.

Point blank - the Alaska Highway news is a tin pot little paper that has - one reporter - who is also the editor, and so can publish whatever non factual tripe he chooses. And he does. He may not even realize it, but he does. The guy doesn't have either the background or the time to properly research the issues he writes about. He also writes and edits an online local news outlet, and covers everything from the local fair to weddings and comings and going in the community.

And forget your conspiracy theory about site C failing and causing the second arrival of the flood. The geotechnical reports are publicly available, have been peer reviewed, and were thoroughly examined during the JRP process. I actually looked at the reports, and from a curious layman's perspective they appear thorough, and showed no significant problems - but I am not qualified to judge - so I will go with the qualified folks at the JRP that were fine with them.

You DO realize that windy-solar California is now #1 among western US states for habitat destruction? https://www.kcet.org/redefine/california-leads-western-states-in-habitat-loss

"Take for example the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which Jewell promised to finish in Tuesday's speech:

That’s why, this year, I look forward to getting a number of things across the finish line to cement the forward-thinking path we have embarked upon. That includes completing the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan [DRECP], where the Bureau of Land Management is working with state and local partners to map out our part of 22 million acres in the California desert where we want to encourage wind and solar projects, and where we want to manage for conservation.

Landscape-level development and conservation plans are only effective if you follow them, of course, which wasn't the case for Interior's recent approval of Soda Mountain, planned for a location the DRECP doesn't deem suitable for solar development. But ignore that detail for now. As written, the DRECP would allow as much as 276 square miles of public lands in the California desert to be developed for solar, wind, and geothermal energy, as well as the infrastructure necessary to run the plants and get their power to consumers. That's not 276 square miles of development areas, some of which will still be available as potential habitat in the spaces between projects: that's 276 square miles of project footprint, of pavement and mirrors and bladed gravel where once there was habitat.

That's more than a third of the astonishing amount of habitat California lost to all kinds of development in the first decade of the 21st Century, expected to be sacrificed for one industry."

So you want to destroy wildlife habitat by building service roads and transmission lines and big noisy wind turbines all over the place? That's nuts! And most of for what John Horgan and I call "junk" power? Expensive and not produced when we need it.

Don't forget, silly installations like the Pennask wind IPP are very disruptive of wildlife corridors. When you look at that installation, it will produce around 6 MW of energy - and most of it off peak "junk". To match the site C peak energy capacity, you would need at least 400 of those installations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_California#/media/File:San_gorgonio_pass_wind_farm_california_pano.jpg

And those solar panels made in China? https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs , http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/ , http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html , https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/chinas-solar-panel-production-comes-at-a-dirty-cost/

Just because the damage is not in front of your nose, doesn't mean it isn't happening - we only have one planet.
Don't forget the MIT study I posted waaay back in the thread that clearly shows that large scale hydroelectric is far better for the environment than wind and solar.

Your argument about workers and jobs is just way off the mark. The silly Pennask wind IPP is a good example. The qualified workers came from where? Work in construction and you go where the work is! There are people working at site C from all over the province. There is nothing wrong with camp life, I know folks who love it, two weeks or more on, two weeks or more off - all kinds of arrangements. The other thing to consider is that most of the labor content in site C is BC work. We don't make wind turbines - they would come from elsewhere. We don't make solar panels - they would come from elsewhere - mostly China. So the BC labor is a relatively small part of those types of projects.

More importantly, the lower delivered cost of electricity and reliability from hydroelectric dams means we can attract industries right in peoples communities. In the meantime Ft. St. John gets lots of activity and gets some permanent jobs in the end - right in THEIR community.

The entire weight of factual information says that IF you have the option of large scale hydroelectric, and especially on a river that is already dammed twice, then a project like site C just blows the doors off wind - solar and other non synchronous sources.

[Smurf]

When you look at all those articles you have to wonder if some of those sites aren't as bad or worse than our tar sands. The sad part is the Chinese are far behind in both their disposal and clean up. Oh well for some I guess it doesn't matter if it's not in their back yard. However one thing it does do is make site C look really good. I also noticed in one article that there could possibly be shortages of some materials in 30 or so years. Wonder what that will do to prices if it does happen. Site C will be cruising along long after that.

[hobbyguy]

It all boils down to the fact that there is no free lunch.

The solar and wind industries like to portray what they do as a "free lunch", but it has myriad side costs and environmental penalties - almost all of which have been dumped on the little guy, whether it be a Chinese peasant farmer or the working poor in California that have seen their electricity soar to the point where they now are officially classed as being in "energy poverty".

How California got there is somewhat speculative, but it also relates to "environmental" lobbyists like Tides et al who have spawned their own industry. That lobby industry cut its it teeth on being anti-nuclear. Thus when the realizations about climate change came along, they had no real alternative but to latch onto wind and solar - even though, at the time, wind and solar technology were very weak. The "environmentalist" lobbies were quite willing to say that "future developments" in wind and solar tech would save the day - yet had so boxed themselves in as to be unable to even look at safe Gen III nuclear.

So we have this weird situation where California is struggling with electrical supply, and spending billions and billions, but won't even consider the obvious answer right under their noses. Gen III safe nuclear plants - like the ones China is building dozens of.

Of course, we are lucky to have site C as our option, the lowest environmental impact of the non fossil fuel options.

[lasnomadas]

Good grief, HG, you're all over the map with that last dissertation. How does one even begin to respond? Maybe I should start by telling you that I lived in the CA desert from 1987 - 2006, and that part about dropping a pin anywhere in the desert and being within 3.5 miles from habitation is a crock, and don't try to tell me that all that development sprung up like a crop of mushrooms during the past decade. In fact that whole KCET article, which was written in April last year by someone called Chris Clarke is full of nonsense. Where do you find these obscure websites? (I'm not even going to bother with those links from 2014).

At one point in the article 'Chris' writes about the habitat loss from logging, mining, road building and urban development . How much logging do you suppose is being done in the desert? What are they cutting down.......creosote bushes and sagebrush? You could ride your dune buggy for miles and not see any mining, road building or urban development either. While I lived there, they were building an expressway about 30 miles from my place and the whole project ground to a halt because environmentalists said one of the overpasses was endangering the fringe-toed lizard that dwelt there. So don't try to tell me that the desert wildlife habitat is being destroyed by development.

I'm not even going to get into a debate about the journalists in northern B.C. You believe the ones whose narrative fits your own ideology. I believe the ones who live in the Peace Valley.

And no, Smurf, none of CA's wind, solar, or geothermal projects look anything like the tar sands, or the Site C dam construction site. Good Lord, man, have you not seen the photos?

[butcher99]

It all boils down to the fact that there is no free lunch.

The solar and wind industries like to portray what they do as a "free lunch", but it has myriad side costs and environmental penalties - almost all of which have been dumped on the little guy, whether it be a Chinese peasant farmer or the working poor in California that have seen their electricity soar to the point where they now are officially classed as being in "energy poverty".

How California got there is somewhat speculative, but it also relates to "environmental" lobbyists like Tides et al who have spawned their own industry. That lobby industry cut its it teeth on being anti-nuclear. Thus when the realizations about climate change came along, they had no real alternative but to latch onto wind and solar - even though, at the time, wind and solar technology were very weak. The "environmentalist" lobbies were quite willing to say that "future developments" in wind and solar tech would save the day - yet had so boxed themselves in as to be unable to even look at safe Gen III nuclear.

So we have this weird situation where California is struggling with electrical supply, and spending billions and billions, but won't even consider the obvious answer right under their noses. Gen III safe nuclear plants - like the ones China is building dozens of.

Of course, we are lucky to have site C as our option, the lowest environmental impact of the non fossil fuel options.

Before I go on to your nuclear plan let me say nobody says solar and wind are a free lunch. At present solar costs about the same as conventional fuel sources and wind is about half that cost. There is no free lunch. Although as technology continues to improve the cost will get lower and lower.


Nuclear plants have become prohibitively expensive. They are by far the most expensive. Take a look at plant construction in the US and how far off budget and behind time it is. Take for instance the two in South Carolina. They have just been cancelled. At 9 billion dollars spent and only 40% completion they are just stopping construction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/clim ... ml?mcubz=1

There is a new plant in Tennessee but the one in Georgia is also hopelessly over budget and behind time. Westinghouse and Toshiba have taken a 6 billion dollar loss to get out of nuclear reactor construction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/busi ... ml?mcubz=1

Electrical use in North America continues to fall, not rise. Why are we investing billions for something that is not a growth industry.

This is the timeline for profitability for Site C. Not in your time. Not in your kids time. My grandkids will be 87 83 and 78 when Site C finally turns a profit. My grandkids will probably have grandkids and possibly great grandkids! Where is all your incredulity about leaving debt for your children and your childrens children. Now you want to leave it for your grandkids grandkids to finish paying off?
If this was an NDP plan you would be yelling and screaming about costs, cost over runs, debt, leaving debt for your grandkids grandkids but no, this was a liberal plan so you have to defend it no matter the cost to future generations.

If this plan was an NDP plan or a Green plan I would still be against it. It is too expensive and not needed. The liberals were so afraid that the BC Utilities Commission would find that it was a stupid idea that they actually passed legislation to stop them from even looking at it. That alone should tell you all you need to know.

[rustled]

When you look at all those articles you have to wonder if some of those sites aren't as bad or worse than our tar sands. The sad part is the Chinese are far behind in both their disposal and clean up. Oh well for some I guess it doesn't matter if it's not in their back yard. However one thing it does do is make site C look really good. I also noticed in one article that there could possibly be shortages of some materials in 30 or so years. Wonder what that will do to prices if it does happen. Site C will be cruising along long after that.

Good point, Smurf. You got me wondering if they're called "rare earth minerals" because they're rare. Not so much, apparently, but... location, location, location.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element

[rustled]

It all boils down to the fact that there is no free lunch.

The solar and wind industries like to portray what they do as a "free lunch", but it has myriad side costs and environmental penalties - almost all of which have been dumped on the little guy, whether it be a Chinese peasant farmer or the working poor in California that have seen their electricity soar to the point where they now are officially classed as being in "energy poverty".

How California got there is somewhat speculative, but it also relates to "environmental" lobbyists like Tides et al who have spawned their own industry. That lobby industry cut its it teeth on being anti-nuclear. Thus when the realizations about climate change came along, they had no real alternative but to latch onto wind and solar - even though, at the time, wind and solar technology were very weak. The "environmentalist" lobbies were quite willing to say that "future developments" in wind and solar tech would save the day - yet had so boxed themselves in as to be unable to even look at safe Gen III nuclear.

So we have this weird situation where California is struggling with electrical supply, and spending billions and billions, but won't even consider the obvious answer right under their noses. Gen III safe nuclear plants - like the ones China is building dozens of.

Of course, we are lucky to have site C as our option, the lowest environmental impact of the non fossil fuel options.

California needs freshwater, too, and some of the newer nuclear options would solve both their energy and water shortages.

Whether or not they reconsider that route, we are lucky, indeed.

[Urban Cowboy]

It all boils down to the fact that there is no free lunch.

The solar and wind industries like to portray what they do as a "free lunch", but it has myriad side costs and environmental penalties - almost all of which have been dumped on the little guy, whether it be a Chinese peasant farmer or the working poor in California that have seen their electricity soar to the point where they now are officially classed as being in "energy poverty".

How California got there is somewhat speculative, but it also relates to "environmental" lobbyists like Tides et al who have spawned their own industry. That lobby industry cut its it teeth on being anti-nuclear. Thus when the realizations about climate change came along, they had no real alternative but to latch onto wind and solar - even though, at the time, wind and solar technology were very weak. The "environmentalist" lobbies were quite willing to say that "future developments" in wind and solar tech would save the day - yet had so boxed themselves in as to be unable to even look at safe Gen III nuclear.

So we have this weird situation where California is struggling with electrical supply, and spending billions and billions, but won't even consider the obvious answer right under their noses. Gen III safe nuclear plants - like the ones China is building dozens of.

Of course, we are lucky to have site C as our option, the lowest environmental impact of the non fossil fuel options.

Before I go on to your nuclear plan let me say nobody says solar and wind are a free lunch. At present solar costs about the same as conventional fuel sources and wind is about half that cost. There is no free lunch. Although as technology continues to improve the cost will get lower and lower.


Nuclear plants have become prohibitively expensive. They are by far the most expensive. Take a look at plant construction in the US and how far off budget and behind time it is. Take for instance the two in South Carolina. They have just been cancelled. At 9 billion dollars spent and only 40% completion they are just stopping construction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/clim ... ml?mcubz=1

There is a new plant in Tennessee but the one in Georgia is also hopelessly over budget and behind time. Westinghouse and Toshiba have taken a 6 billion dollar loss to get out of nuclear reactor construction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/busi ... ml?mcubz=1

Electrical use in North America continues to fall, not rise. Why are we investing billions for something that is not a growth industry.

Says who you and your alternate factipedia figures? I suppose next you'll be telling us the population is declining too, like one of your cohorts tried a few hundred pages back.

That alone should tell you all you need to know.

Your choice of data that you base your position on tells me all I need to know.

[hobbyguy]

butcher - get it through your head - wind and solar are NOT cheap. Theoretical generating cost is is a small part of the picture. Add storage to account for peak power, you add as much or more cost. Add the transmission facilities that spread out wind-solar require and your grid costs go through the roof. Per MW wind and solar have the highest transmission grid costs of any electricity source. Those last two are ignored by advocates because they are "inconvenient truths" as Al Gore likes to say.

What matters is the price delivered to where you need it. Wind and solar are very poor in that regard, which is why I keep going back to this challenge for the windy-solar crowd:

Please post a link to windy-solar non synchronous grid jurisdiction that has abundant, renewable, reliable, affordable electricity without subsidies.

IF you could do that, then you can justify the statements you make, and prove me wrong. But you can't, because no such thing exists. That's because in the real world, wind and solar don't work.

[Smurf]

lasnomadas wrote:

Good grief, HG, you're all over the map with that last dissertation. How does one even begin to respond? Maybe I should start by telling you that I lived in the CA desert from 1987 - 2006, and that part about dropping a pin anywhere in the desert and being within 3.5 miles from habitation is a crock, and don't try to tell me that all that development sprung up like a crop of mushrooms during the past decade. In fact that whole KCET article, which was written in April last year by someone called Chris Clarke is full of nonsense. Where do you find these obscure websites? (I'm not even going to bother with those links from 2014).

At one point in the article 'Chris' writes about the habitat loss from logging, mining, road building and urban development . How much logging do you suppose is being done in the desert? What are they cutting down.......creosote bushes and sagebrush? You could ride your dune buggy for miles and not see any mining, road building or urban development either. While I lived there, they were building an expressway about 30 miles from my place and the whole project ground to a halt because environmentalists said one of the overpasses was endangering the fringe-toed lizard that dwelt there. So don't try to tell me that the desert wildlife habitat is being destroyed by development.

I'm not even going to get into a debate about the journalists in northern B.C. You believe the ones whose narrative fits your own ideology. I believe the ones who live in the Peace Valley.

And no, Smurf, none of CA's wind, solar, or geothermal projects look anything like the tar sands, or the Site C dam construction site. Good Lord, man, have you not seen the photos?

Have you been down there since and actually looked around. I have not concentrated on California that much but I can tell you that the desert in Arizona has changed completely since I started living there every winter since 2003. We stayed in Welton east of Yuma in 2004/05 and there was mostly open desert as far as you could see in all directions. A few small towns and ranches. Now when you drive east of Welton there is a solar site so large that when you are half way by you can't see either end, and that's flat desert. There are more coming. At welton itself there was nothing south of the highway but a crappy little golf course that you had to drive to, to see. Now there is another town with homes, huge golf course, mall, you name it. A whole new large development. That is the way things are going in the desert.

West of Yuma running past the sand dunes they have enlarged the large water/irrigation ditch for miles and totally cemented it to stop water loss. They also put in huge storage tanks to hold water until such time as the California fields and or people need it. New huge casino built west of Yuma, just off the highway on the way to Mexico. All this and much, much more just within miles of Yuma. Development in the desert is going crazy. In fact we are going down the 101 on the west coast in October and will get a first hand look at what is happening in California.

And no lasnomadas if you had read all of Hobby guy's information you might have been able to comprehend what I was talking about as Rustled didn't seem to have any problem. I was talking about all the information about mining sites for rare earth minerals. Places in China where they are actually running into farmers fields dumping their waste and leaving. It is becoming a disaster. The plants for building the are also terrible. But as I said that probably doesn't bother you because it's not in your back yard. Do you care at all about the destruction in China to build these solar panels. Please don't try to compare it to the small amount of area that is actually affected by site C. Because you know as well as me that there is no comparison.

I can agree though that these huge solar and wind sites are extremely destructive to the environment. Much more than a small footprint like site C.

Also I have to disagree with National Geographic and New York Times being obscure websites. I believe your actual problem is they are reputable but don't agree with your ideas.

[butcher99]

Your choice of data that you base your position on tells me all I need to know.

My choice of data? Show me where I am wrong. You just make statements. For someone who calls himself old techie you seem unable to use the search function of the internet. If you did you would find that every statement I made was true.

Tennessee is the only state with a new nuclear reactor. South Carolina did quit on a 6 billion dollar investment for a nuclear power plant. Westinghouse and Toshiba have decided to not do anymore plants. Just which statement is wrong?

As for electricity use declining. Since 1960 electricity use has grown year after year. It is now declining and you would know that if you used that search function. 7 of the last 10 years showed a decline in electricity use in North America.

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2017 ... ouseholds/
http://www.ien.com/supply-chain/news/20 ... e-declines
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2017/05/08/ev ... ouseholds/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampen ... 2a901518d4
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/u-s-hom ... -1.2479249

[butcher99]

I can agree though that these huge solar and wind sites are extremely destructive to the environment. Much more than a small footprint like site C.

Also I have to disagree with National Geographic and New York Times being obscure websites. I believe your actual problem is they are reputable but don't agree with your ideas.

It is basically impossible to dispute your first statement because you do not name the site other than Arizona and you give no indication of the size other than it took a long time to drive past and you have no idea the amount of power it provides .

Although it is not possible, if all the US power could be generated by solar power it would take 84,000 sq. miles. At present coal mining covers 34,000 sq. miles. You just have not ever driven by a mountain top removal operation. It is not all that large an area.
Solar takes 7 times the amount of land to produce the same amount of power hydro does but dams usually take the best farm land out of production. Solar can be built in areas where the land is poor and unusable for farming. Like for instance, a desert in Arizona.

Site C will generate about 35 per cent of the energy of W.A.C. Bennett Dam, built in the 196os, with five per cent of the reservoir area. Site C will have two to three days of water storage compared with two to three years for the Williston reservoir.
Site C will cost the same (with inflation adjusted figures) as the bennet dam with only 1/3 of the power generating capacity and none of the holding power. It remains just a poor deal.

[erinmore3775]

I do not know how some contributors here can use the data quoted to show that electrical consumption will continue to decline in the next 20 years when they do not include predictions for a 20% or greater increase in EV car and truck transport. I prefer to rely on data that compares closely to Canada's climate and geographical circumstances. Therefore, I look to Europe. With that said there is one difference; size. Canada's size means that additional energy transmission costs and the distance between centres of the population must be added into the cost equation.

"Between 2004 and 2015, the share of renewable energy almost doubled, reaching 16.7 % of gross final energy consumption in 2015 (see Figure 9). The two main drivers of this increase were the implementation of support schemes for renewable energy technology and falling costs of renewable energy systems [15]. (However, it must also be kept in mind that updated and more accurate statistical information, as a result of revisions based on specialised surveys, have also contributed to this increase, in particular data revisions in the area of solid biomass (wood) consumption in households). Over the past decade, there has been a steady growth in installed capacity for renewable electricity and heat generation, driven by policies such as feed-in tariffs, grants, tax credits and, more recently, tenders. At the same time, an introduction of obligatory quotas has stimulated the use of renewable transport fuels [16]. In the electricity sector, an upscaling of global production volumes as well as technological advances have allowed producers to substantially cut energy costs. New photovoltaic power stations built in 2016 produce electricity for a third of the costs required in 2009 and are approaching the cost level of onshore wind. The offshore wind industry has also achieved dramatic cost cuts, roughly halving costs per kilowatt-hour between 2011 and 2016 [17]. Electricity from wind turbines and large solar installations is becoming increasingly competitive with new fossil fuel plants" (underline my emphasis)

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Europe_2020_indicators_-_climate_change_and_energy

I realize that there is little that I can say or show that will convince some contibutors that stopping Site C and turning to SWEG power is NOT the best choice for BC. Europe, and especially Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands have used first what they had and then turned to SWEG to assist in the development of a well integrated synchronous/non-synchronous electrical power grid. They acknowledge the high cost of SWEG compared to what they already have. They acknowledge that their inclusion of SWEG was large to reduce population and their carbon based footprint. They acknowledge that development of SWEG was at a high cost supported by levies, tariffs, and subsidies. Using that information and logic, Site C should be developed first or in conjunction with SWEG.

[rustled]

I can agree though that these huge solar and wind sites are extremely destructive to the environment. Much more than a small footprint like site C.

Also I have to disagree with National Geographic and New York Times being obscure websites. I believe your actual problem is they are reputable but don't agree with your ideas.

It is basically impossible to dispute your first statement because you do not name the site other than Arizona and you give no indication of the size other than it took a long time to drive past and you have no idea the amount of power it provides .

Although it is not possible, if all the US power could be generated by solar power it would take 84,000 sq. miles. At present coal mining covers 34,000 sq. miles. You just have not ever driven by a mountain top removal operation. It is not all that large an area.
Solar takes 7 times the amount of land to produce the same amount of power hydro does but dams usually take the best farm land out of production. Solar can be built in areas where the land is poor and unusable for farming. Like for instance, a desert in Arizona.

Site C will generate about 35 per cent of the energy of W.A.C. Bennett Dam, built in the 196os, with five per cent of the reservoir area. Site C will have two to three days of water storage compared with two to three years for the Williston reservoir.
Site C will cost the same (with inflation adjusted figures) as the bennet dam with only 1/3 of the power generating capacity and none of the holding power. It remains just a poor deal.

Fortunately for those of us with both Google and a willingness to dig deeper, Smurf told us precisely where it was. A quick search turns up this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang ... bea8a57423

Yes, solar can be built in areas where the land is poor and unusable for farming. I was pleased to discover how little of the land impacted by Site C is good-quality farm land. Those of us who are concerned about all aspects of land usage understand this:

While these giant solar power plants have been a favored choice for utilities for meeting renewable energy mandates, they have become less popular. That's because giant projects rely on so much land and create big impact on wildlife, water or other resources.