Last week I wrote about BC NDP’s Bill 17: Clean Energy Amendment Act, 2020 that proposed amendments to the Clean Energy Act allowing BC Hydro to:

1. Implement a 100% clean energy standard;
2. Remove BC Hydro’s self-sufficiency provision. That is BC Hydro is currently required to hold the rights to enough electricity from generating facilities solely within the province to meet its projected energy demand (more on this below).
3. Remove Burrard Thermal from the list of heritage assets which would allow BC Hydro to dispose of, or develop, this asset.

In my blog post entitled Bill 17, Burrard Thermal, BC Hydro self sufficiency and clean electricity, I detailed a series of amendments that ensured:

1. BC can still implement a 100% clean energy standard;
2. Burrard Thermal will be removed from the list of BC Hydro’s heritage assets;
3. BC Hydro’s self sufficiency requirement for average water conditions at their legacy hydro electric dams is retained;
4. The definition of clean electricity reverts back to the original Clean Energy Act.

That blog post, together with my exchange during Question Period with the Minister of Energy Mines and Petroleum Resources on July 15th, provides a comprehensive analysis of why I proposed the amendments. I conclude the post with this:

I have communicated my intention of supporting the bill at second reading to both the BC NDP and the BC Liberals. If the bill fails at second reading, I won’t get a chance to introduce my amendments during committee stage and I fear that its positive aspects will be lost. That is, the preverbial baby will be thrown out with the backwater. The onus is ultimately on my former colleagues in the BC Green Party to indicate whether or not they support the Bill as it stands, or the amended Bill as I have proposed. Under the “good faith and no surprises clause” of the Confidence and Supply Agreement Premier Horgan and I signed in 2017, the BC Greens will have to communicate their intentions to government prior to the bill being called for debate.

In an odd press release and through an an even more odd, and unsupportable amendment, the BC Greens made it clear that this Bill will die on the order papers. And this troubles me.

The press release appears to be tone deaf. The feedback my office received from Indigenous communities has been almost exclusively on the government’s proposed removal of the self sufficiency clause (see my blog and also my Question Period exchange for more details). Yet the BC Greens propose no amendments in this regard and instead make the bizarre claim that more consultation is needed. The BC Greens could have either proposed to support my amendments to remove the self sufficiency clause, which has been sitting on the order papers since July 14, or introduced similar amendments themselves. This would ensure that the very positive aspects of Bill 17 are passed in a timely fashion. They chose not to, thereby ensuring Bill 17 will die on the order papers.

Unfortunately, the BC Greens’ proposed amendment is unsupportable and in my view shows a lack of understanding of the complexities of the energy file. I too heard feedback from stakeholders that the definition of clean electricity was problematic. However, many of the people raising this issue didn’t realize that the existing Clean Energy Act has very similar regulation enabling legislation. My amendments ensured that the existing definition remained in place for clarity.

Below I reproduce all definitions so I can expand upon this:

The various definitions

1) Existing definition in Clean Energy Act:

“clean or renewable resource” means biomass, biogas, geothermal heat, hydro, solar, ocean, wind or any other prescribed resource;

[there is no definition of clean electricity]

2) BC NDP government proposed change:

“clean electricity” means electricity

(a) generated from a clean resource, or
(b) deemed under the regulations to be clean electricity;

“clean resource” means a prescribed resource;

3) My proposed amendment to government’s change:

“clean electricity” means electricity generated from a clean or renewable resource;
         (a) generated from a clean resource, or
         (b) deemed under the regulations to be clean electricity;

“clean resource” means a prescribed resource;

4) BC Green proposed amendment to government’s change:

“clean electricity” means electricity generated from a renewable non-fossilized resource, including biomass, biogas, geothermal heat, hydro, solar, ocean and wind;

(a) generated from a clean resource, or
(b) deemed under the regulations to be clean electricity;

“clean resource” means a prescribed resource;

You’ll see that the government proposed to essentially leave the definition of “clean electricity” up to regulation. My amendments simply reverted the definition to what has been in place in the existing Act for more than a decade.

The BC Greens basically took the existing definition in the Clean Energy Act and added “non fossilized resource”. While at first glance this might seem sensible, it is problematic for a number of reasons:

1) “non-fossilized resource” is not defined in the bill.
2) Their definition of “clean electricity” may in fact preclude aspects of the establishment of a hydrogen economy. One of the main ways to generate hydrogen is to use steam-methane reformation and partial oxidation to strip it from methane molecules.
3) Despite the BC Green claim, leaving in: “clean resource” means a prescribed resource means that the definition of clean electricity and clean resources is not in fact stronger. It is, ironically, weaker.

In summary, it appears to me that rather than doing what is right and ensuring that the key aspects of the bill are retained while more work is done on the self sufficiency clause, as I proposed, the BC Greens have chosen to introduce 11^th hour politically-motivated amendments as a face-saving exercise.

I am profoundly disappointed in the BC Greens for forcing the baby to be thrown out with the bathwater on Bill 17. As I noted earlier, under the “good faith and no surprises clause” of the Confidence and Supply Agreement Premier Horgan and I signed in 2017, the BC Greens should communicate their intentions to government prior to the bill being called for debate. I’m not sure what the BC Greens were thinking, but I certainly understand why the BC NDP might not choose not to bring this bill forward for debate in light of the uncertainty created by the BC Green position on this file.