The Vancouver Sun profiled Premier Gordon Campbell on Friday in Denmark endorsing not the Copenhagen Accord, but the Danish policy of subsidizing private wind power at the expense of taxpayers. He claimed that Denmark sets an example for us if we want to develop clean energy. And indeed it appears that his government has been in many ways following the Danish example. Unfortunately, neither he nor his advisers appears to have taken the time to discover how wrong the Danish approach has turned out to be and how costly it will be to Danish taxpayers.

Campbell wants to develop privately owned small hydro and wind power to produce something in the order of 20% of the energy produced in BC. Similarly, Denmark set out a few years ago to have 20% of its electrical energy capacity in the form of wind. While Campbell’s initiative is still getting started, Denmark’s has been underway long enough to draw some conclusions. And they are not encouraging .

Denmark has now pays for about 19% of its electrical capacity in the form of wind power, but in reality only about 2% of its electricity consumption has turned out to come from it. In the course of getting to this point, the government signed contracts with private wind producers at guaranteed prices well above the average market prices for electricity, arguing that this was necessary to meet the extra costs of clean energy. The results of this program are now clear. The problems are almost exactly those that I and others have argued will accompany the Campbell policy in BC.

The biggest and most obvious problem is that the electricity produced by wind has seldom been produced when it is needed by the system. Wind as we all know is highly variable, both within any given week and seasonally. Electricity consumption is also variable, by time of day and season. But these two types of variations are hardly ever in synch. Far too often when peak electricity is required from the windmills, there is little or no wind to provide it. So the electricity has to be acquired from outside Denmark because no cheaper alternate sources have been developed in Denmark. The affect is that the government must pay a premium for electricity, usually from dirty sources, at a large loss to Danish taxpayers Other times, like at night or in the summer and fall, there is plenty of wind energy, but lots of hydro power is available cheaply because consumption has dropped (at night) or because hydro dams are full and river runs high (summer and fall). At these times the government must still buy the high priced wind power it contracted for, but it must turn around and find find buyers outside the country at deep price discounts. The affect is that the government incurs a large loss that has to be paid for by taxpayers.

Experience has established that the wind producers are in fact able to supply only about 2% of the demand for electricity on a reliable and continuing basis, rather than the 19% that is being paid for. The losses to the government and taxpayers are becoming so large that the government is now looking at developing the capacity to make up the missing 17% with new hydro and gas powered plants all at a large additional cost to the government. And it is stuck with buying all of the unreliable wind energy at inflated prices under the contracts in place and selling that energy outside the country at a large loss.

The overall result has been that developers of the private wind power have become wealthy at taxpayers expense as large amounts of money have in affect been laundered through the energy supply system into their private coffers. Taxpayers and energy consumers are the big losers, while the climate in the end has gained virtually nothing.

This is exactly what many of us have argued will be the result of the energy policy being forced on BC by the Campbell government. It is the result that the BC Utilities Commission tried to avert with its ruling earlier this year. The Cam.pbell government has now used legislation to overturn that ruling. It will press ahead with highly subsidized private hydro power that is supposed to replace the part of our energy supplied by natural gas during periods of low water flows. But this it can not do, because the private power producers will have no power to produce at these times. They will only have power when BC Hydro already has more than enough to supply BC. So it will have to sold outside BC as surplus at a large loss to BC Hydro.

I have suggested that since this whole system essentially involves a non-earned transfer of billions of dollars from BC citizens to private power producers, and that this result is perfectly obvious to anyone who takes the time to follow the money, the whole arrangement is essentially corrupt. The fact that the whole program has been developed behind closed doors in association with private power producers simply strengthens that argument. Some have objected to this characterization, saying that while it may be bad policy it is not necessarily corrupt. I remain to be convinced. Meanwhile, it is perhaps worth noting that on the very week that Campbell profiled the Danish program, investigators in Denmark commenced a corruption investigation into the arrangement there. Perhaps a closer look at what is happening here in BC is warranted after all. Especially since the BC program is almost a total replica of that of Denmark.

Today, November 24, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin. This now notorious book is perhaps more than any other both the most reviled and the most admired book in the history of science. Darwin set off a stormy debate and protest that has resonated through generations and continues to this day. And the world remains almost as divided today as it did 150 year ago on the book.

It is perhaps risky for a non scientist like myself to speak to a scientific subject. However Darwin’s theory has suffered from attacks most frequently from non-scientists, most often in relation to educational policy. Non-scientists involved in policy making and politics have an obligation to understand and appreciate what Darwin had to say.

Resistance to Darwin is based on two sets of arguments, the first dating back to when he first published and the other having more modern origins. The first are rooted in his fundamental observation that animal (and plant) forms, or species, change in their basic make up over time. This runs counter to the fundamental Christian belief that all life was created by God and remains immutable in keeping with God’s design. He made things worse by suggesting that these changes result in evolution, and that over time species adapt to their environment. This he said can lead over much longer periods of time to the creation of new species that are related to but fundamentally different from existing ones. All of this was and is seen as radical challenge to the notion of God the Creator. As such, it has been the centre piece of Christian objections to Darwin ever since the publication of the Origin of the Species .

The second set of arguments, more recent in origin, relate to the argument for intelligent design. This argues that the theory of evolution contains no convincing mechanism that can explain the amazing detail and complexity of functioning organisms. In fact, it is argued, the complexity, sophistication and functionality of organisms can only be explained by the existence of an intelligent designer. Since this designer cannot be observed at work, it is not much of a stretch to name her God. Whether this is the same God as that of Christians is often glossed over, but it is at least plausible that it is.

A problem for those who object to evolution is that any reasonable person can observe from the historical record that, through generations, life forms do change, and often in a way that suggests survivability of some and extinction for others.

At one time some argued that the fundamental changes that take place occur during the life time of single individuals, sometimes in response to their environment. This is now accepted as false with respect to the basic characteristics or traits of species. In simple terms, the traits of individuals are immutable during one’s lifetime (nature), even though behavior of individuals may respond to environment (nurture). It is now agreed that change in basic characteristics has its source in an inter-generational process.

Darwin’s description of this process of change has largely survived intellectual and scientific challenge. He said that individual members of species have different traits, (variability), these traits are transmitted by parents to offspring and that offspring assume a mix of traits of parents, (heritability), some of the (different) offspring are better than others at competing for scarce resources (scarcity) and thus some survive the competition for scarce resources while others die out (natural selection). As a result, over time, some traits dominate the make up of members of species while others die out and disappear.

Some things are left unexplained by this. It took the development of genetics and gene theory to fill the blanks. There are still questions about how to explain the source of all of the variability among individuals, although it would be generally accepted that random mutations are part of the explanation.

Darwin’s genius was to set an overall framework of change and survival of life forms based on scientific observation. If we did not have Darwinism, we would have to invent it. His book is a remarkable work that has weathered 150 years of criticism intact.

His findings are nevertheless the subject of continuing debate in educational policy. Anyone who has been a Minister of Education or a member of a public school board knows that anti-Darwinism is very much alive and well. Alberta recently made a concession to these views in its curriculum. Other school boards are less than clear in their handling of the teaching of evolution.

It is important that the case for the science of evolution be supported. We cannot expect to have first class educated young people who respect and understand science if we waffle on evolution. And pretty much everyone agrees that educated people are fundamental to maintaining a modern, knowledge based, high value added, high productivity economy.

The scientific case for evolution is unassailable. Everyone in public life and education should celebrate Darwin’s findings, in recognition of good science and the importance of defending its findings.

A few days ago I argued that the sole reason the BC Campbell government ordered BC Hydro to take the Burrard Thermal gas generating station off its base supply is to make room for newly rich private owners of high cost hydro plants to make piles of money at our expense. Campbell claims it is to reduce the production of green house gases. This needs to be sorted out.

Under his plan, expensive private suppliers will supposedly make up the energy supply gap that BC Hydro is legally required to fill as a result of the government’s order to pull Burrard Thermal . Who cares that the gap was created by a stroke of Campbell’s pen? Not being able to count Burrard Thermal means that BC Hydro, whom the government will not permit to invest in cheap plants for expansion, must take power generated by the expensive and environmentally destructive private hydro plants being developed all over the province. Worse, this power won’t be there when it is most needed. Burrard Thermal produces cheap and efficient energy during the parts of the year when BC water levels are low and BC Hydro water generated power is available in limited amounts. Private hydro producers supported by government guarantees to buy their electricity can’t produce much energy during these parts of the year, for the same reasons. They can’t fill the gap. So now BC Hydro will have to go to expensive private suppliers elsewhere who also burn gas or coal during these periods. Ironically the net affect will be more greenhouse gases.

I was attacked by more than one defender of the government for suggesting that the motive for Campbell’s policy was profit for his friends in the private power sector at the expense of BC Hydro customers. They said I was wrong, and that Campbell’s real motivation is, as he claims, to cut back on the amount of BC natural gas burned. In so doing, they claim, he intends to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases created from burning BC gas.

I tried to confirm that the gas burned at Burrard Thermal would be held back rather than burned elsewhere. I was told quite the opposite. His own Ministry said that there are no plans to take that gas off the market. Rather it will be sold to be burned elsewhere, adding as much or more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Further eroding the credibility of Campbell’s claim, we have the announcement that Nexen Inc. will spend $200 million on the government’s Horn River shale gas field over the next year to quadruple its current output of gas to be sold and burned, pumping a huge amount of additional carbon into the atmosphere. Nexen added in its statement that the company plans to triple its gas capacity from the area again in the following 12 months. All of this thanks to the policy of this government.

The company will drill eight 1,800-metre horizontal wells this winter and use 18 fracture stimulations in each well to destroy the rock and drain and waste vast amounts of scarce water, just to allow the gas to be recovered. In last year’s program, the company was using only 10 fractures per well. Which means more damage to the environment from this government’s Alice in Wonderland energy policies, where nothing is what it seems.

The government’s electricity plan makes no sense in terms of green energy. It only makes sense if the intention is to use us, the consumers, to line the pockets of the high cost private power producers. That is not the role of government. This whole policy needs to be opened up to public scrutiny. But the government has directed the BC Utilities Commission to accept it without review, which is in fact to rob it of its role. Don’t you wonder what’s going on here?