Bill 31 and the North Coast transmission line

The politics of power

Bill 31, the 2025 Energy Statutes Amendment Act, allows B.C. to fast-track the North Coast transmission line.

The line is key to making Ksi Lisims “one of the world’s cleanest LNG operations,” according to Prime Minister Mark Carney. It will also provide clean power to multiple mining projects, creating 9,700 full-time jobs and around $950 million in revenue, adding nearly $10 billion annually to B.C.’s GDP, according to Premier David Eby.

The North Coast transmission line is a multiphase project, led by BC Hydro. Phases 1 and 2 will see the building of about 450 kilometres of high voltage transmission lines between Prince George and Terrace (projected cost $6 billion — up from $3 billion in 2023). Phase 3, from Terrace to Bob Quinn Lake near the Alaska border (350 kilometres), has no cost estimate yet.

According to BC Hydro, the new lines could affect as many as 101 private properties, including agricultural land, traplines and woodlots, crossing waterways that are habitat for at-risk white sturgeon, and within 200 metres of archaeological sites.

Bill 14, the Renewable Energy Projects (Streamlined Permitting) Act, passed this spring and exempted the North Coast transmission line from environmental assessments. A project this significant would normally require B.C. Utilities Commission certification, confirming it is needed and in the public interest. Not wanting to wait, B.C. intends to order certification from the commission.

Richard Mason, a former B.C. Utilities commissioner, believes the commission could help reveal critical information about the North Coast transmission line and whether there are better electrification options for the northwest.

“Is a transmission line really necessary? Would it actually be better off overall if BC Hydro generated the electricity locally?” he asks.

The commission could help get British Columbians on board.

“I agree that we need to make sure that we expedite projects of provincial significance…”, South Surrey independent MLA Elenore Sturko said. “But that doesn’t mean that we should entirely remove the ability for public input and consultation.”

According to Andy Hira, political science professor at SFU and a Clean Energy Research Group director, these are public decisions are affecting the bottom line for B.C. taxpayers and they’re affecting our ability to create jobs and compete and so they should be made public.

“Maybe there is a case to be made that the revenues from LNG will be so great that we should make sure we put enough electricity in them, despite the damning picture that they create in terms of climate change, but that case needs to be made in a public forum,” said Hira.

Green Party MLA Jeremy Valeriote called the North Coast transmission line “another public subsidy for resource extraction.”

Aside from Cedar LNG, none of the projects have a final investment decision and none are guaranteed to proceed.

Electrifying LNG production could be problematic said Kathryn Harrison, professor of political science focusing on climate policy at UBC.

“If the province is expecting to deliver a lot of clean electricity to mining and LNG, should we be confident that we’re also going to have enough increased capacity to electrify buildings and transportation and other smaller industrial users? Because to get to net zero, we basically will be electrifying almost everything.”

Without an additional 3,700 megawatts (more than three times the capacity of the Site C dam), B.C. could face an energy deficit by 2029, according to BC Hydro’s latest estimate, not including northwest B.C.’s massive mining and LNG needs (additional 3,000 megawatts minimum).

B.C. also plans to reduce costs for industries to connect to the grid by modifying tariff supplement No. 6. Dating from 1991, supplement No. 6 protects BC Hydro customers from higher rates by requiring new industrial customers seeking more than about 150 megawatts (enough to power 65,000 homes) to pay the costs of generating and transmitting power exceeding that threshold.

There are only three options for recouping costs of new electricity infrastructure and generation capacity, Mason noted.

“It’s either the new customers, all customers or the government, which means taxpayers,” he said.

Harrison observed the government stated an intent to “provide cost certainty” for large industrial customers.

“[That] seems to be about giving them certainty that those costs will be shared with other electricity consumers. It’s certainty that they wouldn’t have to pay the full cost of the delivery of that electricity to these very large users and that’s a real worry because those costs are still going to exist. Who is going to pay them, if not those big users?”

Sturko argued British Columbians deserve answers about their power and who will pay.

“I’m really concerned that at the end of the day, whether it’s federal funding or provincial funding or it ends up on somebody’s hydro bill, this is all coming out of taxpayers’ pockets, and we don’t really have the certainty that we even have the electricity to make this thing successful.”

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.