The BC government has been spending a lot of money lately advertising (for the election coming next spring).
In the meantime, they and their agency (BC Utilities Commission) have been dragging their heels since the summer of 2015 in responding to the outcry from the people suffering for using environmentally responsible, renewable electricity to heat their homes and from rural citizens who have to provide their own night lighting and operate water systems which sometimes require heat tracing.
Why the complaints? Because BC Hydro, followed by Fortis BC, introduced a two-tier electrical rate system that charges about 50 per cent higher rate in tier 2 and these customers have to pay most of their electricity use at this higher rate.
BC Hydro used to encourage electrical heat by offering lower rates for heat use and then pulled the carpet out from under these customers and started penalizing them in 2008 (and Fortis in 2012).
What does this two-tier system do? It encourages people to use natural gas where it is available and penalizes those who heat with electricity.
Several times it has been requested to have a moratorium on this two-tier rate system before this winter and the only response so far from this Liberal government has been to advertise.
This Liberal government has been advertising that they are doing their part for the environment by developing clean natural gas. It has been on TV so often as to constitute brainwashing, that natural gas is clean.
Look at the Natural Resources Canada website http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/corporate/statistics/neud/dpa/showTable.cfm?type=CP§or=res&juris=bc&rn=5&page=0 and you will see that the residential sector of BC produced 2.3 Mt of CO2 in 2013 (latest year available). That’s 2.3 billion kg or over five billion pounds of greenhouse gas. The BC government calls this clean, and they penalize electricity.
BC Hydro cheats customers by encouraging them to go all electric and then penalizes them after they’ve committed to this. Electric customers are subsidizing fossil-fuel burning customers.
The majority of customers are receiving a small dollar subsidy at the burden to a minority of customers who pay a large dollar penalty for using an environmentally-friendly heating system.
Some of these customers are poor seniors on fixed incomes living in rural areas or small communities without access to natural gas who are subsidizing well-off customers who heat with natural gas.
The questions to ask are: Why is the BC government encouraging residential use of natural gas? And why are the equivalent flat-rate costs for electricity so high in BC?
The government of BC needs to have an enquiry into this, not encourage the use of natural gas for residential heating.
Jerrilynn DeCock, Penticton
