Much has been said about Canada’s performance at Copenhagen, much of it negative. Many are disappointed that Canada did not take a stronger stand and provide greater leadership. Harper says it was a success and that the world followed Canada’s lead. However the government’s response has been seemingly halfhearted, seeming to confirm the critics’ view that the conference accomplished little and that Canada provided no leadership.

In terms of the substance of the negotiations, there are some reasons to support Harper’s claim. Before going he set out a number of goals for Canada in the international negotiations. First, Canada did not want a simple renewal of Kyoto. It insisted that Kyoto was a flawed deal, since it called for unrealistic reductions in carbon emissions, had no monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, and was ignored by most countries. Second, Canada insisted that all major countries must be part of a deal, refusing to participate if the emerging industrial nations are not part of any deal. While the industrial countries currently contribute about 75% of the missions, he maintained that will change rapidly as Brazil, China, India and other emerging powers grow rapidly over the next few years. Third, Canada insisted that commitments must be “realistic” and achievable. Harper was not prepared to take part in a deal that was bound to fail because it does not include plans for implementation that will be followed. Fourth, Harper insists that Canada must follow the United States and its commitments, given the close integration of the Us and Canadian economies. To do otherwise he insists would put Canada’s economy at a large disadvantage and would not be sustainable.

On the first three points he certainly has a point. Kyoto was a failure. Canada is perhaps the best example of how ineffective Kyoto was. After making ambitious commitments, Canada proceeded to do very little. No progress was made on reducing emissions. In this respect it was little different from many countries, although to be fair European and Nordic countries showed real progress. However in abandoning Kyoto Canada (and the United States who took the same position) relieve themselves of having to make up for their failures to implement it, conisderably reducing any obligations they will have. On the second and third points, Harper’s views also are credible. If any deal is not broad, inclusive and binding and certain to he honoured, it is hard to see the point. As Harper’s press secretary stated, the global warming crisis is serious and the international effort must be more than just a political game played out for its optics.

Some hard questions remain about Canada’s claims coming out of Copenhagen however. One is the claim that the conference was a success. As many critics have stated, so far we have no more than an agreement on principles and targets. A binding agreement must still be hammered out. This is much less than many had hoped for. However, it is not likely that Canada played much of a role in this outcome. Rather, the complexity of the issues and the negotiations, and the highly complex strategies of the major players, made a hard agreement impossible. The need to proceed in steps toward a hoped for concrete agreement reflects the realities of the situation rather than any leadership by Canada.

The second and more important question is whether Canada should have acted as a leader or follower in setting directions and content of climate policies. Harper says we must follow the United States. That is in many ways what informed Harper’s positions. Others including the opposition party leaders and the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec say this is as abrogation of Canada’s responsibilities both domestically and internationally. This is a credible criticism. There is a real danger that Canada’s interests could be subverted by those of the US if we just blindly follow. There is also a danger that Canada will fail to address problems of regional equity and efficiency if it simply follows the US model.

However the idea that Canada can or should devise broad policy instruments and outcomes sufficiently different from the US is not all that credible. Harper is right in saying that Canada must operate on a generally level playing field with the US. To do otherwise would impose huge costs on Canada with few corresponding benefits. To work Canada’s approach must be an integral part of a larger North American effort. It is a stretch to argue that Canada can or should come up with something that takes us in a different direction from that of the US. And of course as a Conservative leader supported by many business and core right wing voters deeply skeptical about global warming, it is not surprise that Harper sees no virtue in exceeding the US effort.

The real concerns coming out of Copenhagen are threefold. One is the question of whether the US can find a way to commit to a major effort. The majority in Congress seem unlikely to take bold action. If the US flags, the world wide effort will be minor in scale. The next few months are needed to move the weight of opinion there. In that sense a delay is not a bad thing.

Second, Canada must sort out its internal problems. As the Premiers of Quebec and Ontario have pointed out, domestic policy will determine how the burden of any carbon reductions are to be distributed by region and industry. Charest and Migiunty fear that the relatively lower per capita carbon contributions of their provinces will be used to relieve demands on other regions to take substantive action. The most controversial question here is whether carbon dirty heavy oil production in Alberta will be given a break simply because other industries which are doing much better. The Premier of Alberta expressed great anger at these two Premiers over their positioning in the issue just prior to Christmas, giving credence to this argument.

This may very well be the biggest failure on Harper’s part to date. A break for the oil sands at the expense of much cleaner industries in central Canada could make Trudeau’s national energy policy look like a minor irritant. Delay in working out the internal framework for Canada’s policy within Canada could very well be the prelude to a much larger national conflict pitting Central Canada against the West. Harper must find a way to diffuse that. Otherwise Canada could be in paralysis when the time comes to act with the rest of the world. It is still likely that the US and the rest of the world will follow Copenhagen with negotiations leading to a deal later this year. Canada needs to get its act together in the interim.

The third concern is the affect delay has in providing the ground rules of industries to make investments in carbon reductions. If 2020 goals are to be met, each year of delay imposes larger annual reductions than would otherwise be the case. It is critical that Canada act on the assumption that a binding deal will come in 2010, that that it start providing a framework for action for key industrial sectors. There is a desperate need for basic ground rules now. This more that the outcome of Copenhagen puts real pressure on Canada to get a policy framework in place on the expectation that an international accord is coming soon.

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.

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?