Canada Selling ‘Green Scam’ To California?

On a visit to the legislature by British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell, California State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore found himself wondering what bill of goods this huckster was selling the Golden State? Turns out it was just more "green" snake oil. DeVore decided to "follow the money" and discovered a "green energy scam that costs California taxpayers millions while robbing California of jobs due to higher electricity costs and electricity imports."

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DeVore reminds Californians that in 2005 the state had to sue Powerex, the Canadian energy producer, when it was discovered that it was complicit in "rampant market manipulation that ended up costing California consumers millions." DeVore reports that in March of 2005 Powerex settled and only refunded a fraction of the profits it had made from its California customers. Of course, one of the reasons that this situation became so easy to carry off is due to her absurd environmental laws, California is unable to produce its own energy at necessary levels.

California has become America’s largest electricity importer. With 37 million people producing about 13 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, California imports about 23 percent of its electricity. This situation is compounded by the state’s environmental laws which, if a power plant can be built at all, typically consume seven years for permitting and construction vs. three years in competing Texas.

DeVore then points out that a "trio of California energy policy laws" is killing her ability to serve the people.

AB 32 mandates a 30 percent reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (BC Premier Campbell was particularly enthusiastic about this law). SB 1368 outlaws the renewal of coal-fired electricity contracts—imported coal energy powered about 16 percent of California’s grid in 2008. While SB 107 accelerated the requirement that California derive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources this year, renewable being defined as small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass (we missed the target, meaning utilities, read ratepayers, get dinged).

It gets even more absurd from there. DeVore notes that while California is killing itself with its environmental laws and while British Columbia is being enriched by unfair energy prices off the backs of California, the BC energy industry is actually importing more energy than it makes and it has done so for ten of its eleven years of existence. And where does it get the power it imports? Coal and gas-fired energy plants in Washington State and Alberta Canada. It is some of this power Powerex turns around and sells to naive Californians who imagine that the hydro-electric power it is supposedly getting from British Columbia is "clean energy." DeVore has a sensible solution.

Rather than practice electrical grid colonialism, simply importing power while sending jobs and emissions elsewhere, Californians need to get serious about generating more of their own affordable and reliable power. In many places around the world, this means modern nuclear power. California needs to lift the state moratorium on building new nuclear power plants signed into law by then-Governor Jerry Brown in 1976.

Will California stop being so naive with its childish greenism? For the sake of its own economic health, let's hope so.