Charles asked me to look at this WUWT reader Earthling2’s submission.
Having done so, the saga is so loaded with ironies that this guest post resulted.
Site C is a (very troubled) hydroelectric dam under construction on the Peace River in NE British Columbia (BC) in Canada. It will have 900MW of installed capacity—about equal to two medium-sized advanced CCGT costing about $2.2 billion according to EIA December 2020 (more on this irony below). The newly reported decision NOT to cancel a now $16 billion ‘geotechnically challenged’ dam originally projected in 2014 to cost ‘only’ $8.3 billion (plus $400 million contingency) was made for two newly announced reasons: too much sunk cost, and CLEAN energy. Harvard Business School taught me to NEVER throw good money after bad; sunk costs are irrelevant to future investment—except to BC politicians excusing a long history of poor Site C decisions.
Site C was one of four hydro locations along the Peace River originally proposed in the mid-1950s. Two were built. A serious look at Site C in the early 1980’s concluded it was neither economic nor needed. It was revived in 2014 on green grounds despite another pre-construction study finding BC did not need the electricity. It would all be exported to the US (California), and at CA wholesale electricity prices would return BC over its life about $1.8 billion, leaving BC ratepayers on the hook for about $7 billion—a very bad deal even at the outset.
BC politicians pushed ahead anyway, despite strong opposition from First Nation Tribes and the BC Green Party since the dam would flood much fertile Native Canadian farmland along the lower Peace. A Tribe Treaty lawsuit still pends.
The then ruling BC Liberal Party pushed to get the project to the point of no return before the 2017 election. They did so—but lost anyway. Doing so was a BIG mistake, because actual construction started before finishing the preconstruction dam foundation civil engineering. Which is why Site C is ‘geotechnically challenged’. Its shale bedrock isn’t stable, and the roughly $8 billion cost overrun from 2014 is necessary to stabilize the dam’s foundations.
That the bedrock under Site C wasn’t stable did not need a completed civil engineering study to figure out. That same Site C shale, southeast of the dam site, is home to major shale gas fracking operations—which ironically could have provided cheap gas to those two medium sized CCGT, which in turn could have saved First Tribes farmland AND ~$14 billion. Because of the fracking and accompanying wastewater reinjection, the area has been subject to increasing swarms of small to medium fracking induced earthquakes—just like Oklahoma. In 2017-2018 alone, 6551 quakes greater than Richter 0.8—compared to ‘only’ 71 registered in the Canadian earthquake database! A paper at PolicyNotes.ca contains the following map of the area for those two years.
Their politicians also just told BC ratepayers that it will all be ‘OK’ after the dam is finally completed in 2025. That is because Site C’s clean hydro is dispatchable. It will enable higher future wind turbine penetration—which would further reduce its hydroelectric output and worsen its awful economics. Last I checked NE BC also has a heck of a lot worse winter weather than Texas, so adding future unneeded wind is beyond ironic. But BC will finally have truly green energy to export to California at a big financial loss—since according to the California PUC new hydro and new pumped hydro storage are NOT green.
Everything about Site C teaches the folly of Green New Deals. It is plainly a Green BAD Deal.
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As a BC resident (northern BC) I have a few comment. The article pretty much echoes all the talking points of the various (and many ) anti dam groups.
I work in the area and am familiar with the farmland being lost, and its quality. It was, until recently underused and of poor quality. The first Nations complaints are not an argument against the damn since EVERY development is protested by native bands.
Given the increased electrical demands expected from electric cars and our increased electrical use I doubt the power from site c will be exported. Further, hydroelectric power is well suited to electric cars as owners can charge overnight when power use is low and water is just flowing over the spillway, unused.
Lastly, those in the comments suggesting we get what we vote for are unfamiliar with politics in BC. The site c dam, for all its flaws made a hell of a lot more sense than the proposals of the other party at the time. Started under our ‘right wing ‘ government, it was continued under our left wing one. Who would you have had us vote for?
It isn’t poor quality farmland that was the problem why a lot of the land wasn’t fully developed or utilized. It was the fact that all that Class 1 farmland has been in a BC Hydro flood reserve that would see the land expropriated. So in many cases, the land was just used to put up a couple crops of hay per season, knowing it would be gone from the available agriculture base. It is a well known fact that this area of the Peace River has a fairly favorable spring/summer microclimate with some of the best productive farm lands in Canada.
This area of the peace is also huge, and the area to be flooded rather small.
The importance of the land is being overstated by opponents of the dam and trumpeted by folks who for reason see the dam as part of the green energy movement. It has never been a green issue. It is a resource development issue. A secure energy source issue . A British Columbia issue.
The Clean Energy Act was a treasonous bit of legislation that made utilizing our own nat gas for electricity production illegal. All while planning to subsidize the export of LNG being compressed by very expensive but subsidized hydro electricity from Site C (1000 km away) which the taxpayers will be left holding the bag. I am surprised anyone would support this poor choice of economics by implicitly supporting the banning of natural gas for electricity production when we are still going to export the nat gas and drive up the price of that commodity for homeowners heating their houses. Of course they are trying to make that illegal too. But home owners and tax payers are going to get shafted on both ends of this issue.
You clearly have no idea about soil if you think the farmland is poor quality. Under utilised yes.
Underutilized if you prefer. Also in small parcels for the most part. As for why it wasn’t developed, sure, if you say so. That land has been that way for decades, and very little effort would have been needed. They have a lot of prime land up there, much of it under used. This little bit became so important only in the minds of folks opposed to the dam.
BC and BC hydro are using decades of low power rates to convince chevron to change the design for their Kitimat LNG project from gas turbine to electric motors, which makes me rub my hands together.
That will be where the site C power goes, 10 50MW LNG compressors making nice beautiful LNG
Using renewable hydro to make it means its CO2 footprint drops dramatically compared to the Shell Canada LNG project
Which appears to be important to the BC govt and our virtue signaler in chief PM Trudeau IIN (idiot in charge)
It’s also why the local Green Party tried so hard to kill the dam as they know it will be used to make evil LNG and “greenwash” it.
Whatever floats your boat
It certainly works for me
Gee wiz – a civil project having an enormous cost overrun due to insufficient geotechnical work prior to design. That’s never happened before – has it?
As an installer of CCGT generators it is really ironic that one of the highest number of new installations for these units was NE British Columbia. My company installed over 35 new units in this area of BC in the last 5 years. This is because of a power shortage and a lack of infastructure to support the new gas fields developed with the use of fracking. It was cheaper for the resource companies to install 3 or 4 units at the gas gathering and processing facilities than it was to pay for BC Hydro to upgrade their power distribution system to supply power to these sites. Another problem with this area of BC is that they did not have an excess of power available to supply these new gas plants until Site “C” comes on line. The existing power from the BC hydro dams in place is all spoken for already and the area in question is actually getting its power from a large CCGT plant in Taylor BC or it can be supplemented from Alberta by a power line supplied by more CCGT’s on the Alberta side.
The Greens think that energy comes from a Unicorns back end and have NO concept of how the system really works. What is laughable is they have been installing over 100 windmills in this area and it is always fun to drive by them and see how many are actually turning on any given day. The wind does not always blow in this area and most of the time these windmills are turning slowly or not at all. At least when they are not turning they are not chopping the bird population to mincemeat.
The blog The Black Rod out of Winnipeg, has been monitoring the fiasco that is Manitoba Hydro for years. It is of interest to me as my father was intimately involved in the design and construction of Pine Falls hydro plant in the early 1950s. He was a huge believer in hydro electric power, but it was be ashamed of the bungling in the last decade.
This is a good summary of the all the article The Black Rod has compliled
https://blackrod.blogspot.com/search?q=hydro+power
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a Letter to the Editor here in Invermere BC. I said some of the same stuff in this essay and added my thought that our coal being shipped to China seemed counter productive and we should think about making power from it in BC and exporting to California.
The paper banned my letter and me.
In 2017-2018 alone, 6551 quakes greater than Richter 0.8
Not being a geologist, I feel I need to ask for some clarification about these quakes.
Do these relatively small quakes forestall future larger quakes ?
No, in general. The point was never minor earthquakes per se. As said in a comment above, it was only that unstable bedrock should have been known beforehand from this map, and cost planned for, but wasn’t. Hence the about $8 billion foundation shoring up 2014 cost over run.
This is an interesting story about another failed green energy scheme. But all anyone wants to talk about is acronyms.
Disappointing. Neither Charles nor I thought that CCGT would trigger such a response, since has been used here for years
My personal former Army acronym label favorite was GHSx, where x could be Y R G or X
Translation: grenade, hand, smoke, colors yellow, red, green, or grey— each having a separate signal code. Green meant a clear LZ. Red meant not clear. We always understood X grey as not smokey but rather WTF.