Vancouver Area Relocalisation Network

This discussion is particularly relevant with the current debate about independant power producers (private utility companies) and run-of-river projects. Jaccard was instrumental in recommending the formation of the BC Hydro Transmission Corporation (overseeing power through the grid), which opens the door for private utilities to produce and transmit power using the existing infrastructure.

There are a lot of concerns over water licences for BC rivers and community consultation, as well as with purchase agreements for the electricity produced by IPPs, which do not prevent IPPs from eventually selling their energy to the highest bidder and transmitting through the BC Hydro Transmission Corp. If you're interested in BC being self-sufficient (BC is currently a net-importer of electricity), have a look at the BC Government report:

On page 7 of the report:

See also BC Hydro's 2008 Long-Term Acquisition Plan and 2006 Integrated Electricity Plan, which outline IPP procedures: http://www.bchydro.com/info/iep/iep53076.html

Here's an except from an article in the Georgia Straight that discusses Jaccard's famed book:
(full article here http://www.straight.com/article/fuels-in-question-0,
See also an article interviewing Bill Rees and Jaccard http://www.straight.com/article-116431/prof-says-politicians-blinkered-o...)

Following a lunch-time presentation to the Association of
Professional Engineers in Victoria, the SFU professor and author takes
exception to the suggestion that we can't make do with the energy
sources we are already more than familiar with. “The technologies are
there. The energy is there. We don't need to talk science fiction
here,” Jaccard says between signing copies of his new book Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy, which on April 27 won the prestigious Donner Prize, awarded to the best book on Canadian public policy.

More than one person has done a double take at that title. The words fossil fuels and sustainable
in the same sentence, let alone a phrase, seem oxymoronic. Readers may
also do a double take at the book's cover—surely the author and
publisher's intent—which features a photo of someone outfitted in a
green, plastic-covered dinosaur costume riding a bike along a wet
pathway. Is our overwhelming dependency on fossil fuels taking us the
way of the tyrannosaur? Or is that no doubt well-intentioned
environmentalist on the bike working up a heavy sweat for nothing?

Jaccard's
take on energy sustainability is that energy sources should endure for
long periods of time, although not necessarily forever, and be clean.
Moreover, we need to think about how an expanded energy system,
including fossil fuels, can help improve human health and well-being.
Used as we are in the West to power at the flick of a switch, we tend
to forget that two billion people in the world today live without
electricity, burning wood and other biological material in open fires
and highly inefficient stoves. As Jaccard notes, up to 1.6 million
people die prematurely each year as a result of constantly breathing in
particulate-laden smoke.

Jaccard's book is a hypothesis, a
prediction, really, of how the global energy system could unfold as we
attempt to meet human needs in a world where the population is poised
to climb from six billion to 10 billion people by 2100. Like Roberts,
Jaccard remains skeptical about how far renewable energy can be pushed.
But he is far from discounting its tremendous potential. His scenario
for wind power, for example, is like Nortel's stock-value appreciation
before its great fall—an 820-fold increase in output this century,
while solar power rises at 13 percent per year for 50 years before
leveling off to five percent annual growth through 2100. Big increases
are also forecast in tapping into the heat trapped beneath the earth's
surface (geothermal) and in the burning of wood residues and other
“biomass” under extremely high temperatures, which generates power that
is then fed onto hydro grids. But even with all this robust growth, we
will need more, much more.

No less than James Lovelock, the man
famed for developing the Gaia hypothesis, which argued that Earth
itself is a single living thing, has advocated that in order to head
off a climatic catastrophe we need to look very seriously at expanding
nuclear power. But even he might be shocked at what this means. In
Jaccard's scenario, nuclear power triples over the next century, at
which point it is responsible for six percent of the earth's power
production. To get there, we would need to build 2,275 new nuclear
plants and refurbish and keep running everything that is already in
production.

Which brings us to what Jaccard calls the “unusual
suspects” in his future energy system: fossil fuels. At some point, we
will reach the end of oil. But it is still a ways off. Clearly, the
fossil fuel receiving the most attention these days is oil, and with
good reason. Jaccard acknowledges its growing scarcity, noting that if
we increased our present use by just half of one percent per year we
will tap out conventional oil in less than 150 years, and the peak
could be as early as next year. For this reason, his scenario has oil
use declining over the next century. But for natural gas, the use more
than doubles between now and 2050, and by the end of the century it is
still 68 percent higher than today.

And then there's coal. World
reserves are estimated at 1 trillion tonnes. The potential resource
could be seven times that. The amount out there is “substantial
compared to our current use rate”, Jaccard says. Thus, he predicts that
through this century worldwide coal consumption could increase
six-fold. Small though the rise is when compared with renewable energy
sources, the implications of such a surge are breathtaking. By 2100
nearly half (47 percent) of our total global energy system would be
fired by the black stuff.