Down Town Energy Plant Another Pie In The Sky Idea For Prince George

By Ben Meisner

The City of Prince George is heading off in yet another pie in the sky plan to accomplish what it is hard to fathom.

The proposed community energy system is poorly thought out, without any real effort at reducing the problems of the City's air shed.

The project will cost according to the City (and as we all know virtually nothing comes in on budget) $8.3 million dollars with the Canada, BC Municipal Rural infrastructure fund throwing $5.3 million into the program.

By building the facility, will we then see better air quality with the industry in the community cutting their emissions or for that matter the city using more common sense in sweeping streets and no longer using materials that cause severe road dust ?

Don’t be silly, the City hopes that industry and people with wood stoves will follow the lead.

Lead in what the new facility that the city hopes to build will emit 1 tonne of pm2.5 a year, and will see a b-train full of material arrive every, “three or four days". Well that is at the outset, but keep in mind the City would like to expand the facility, sell power to the BC Hydro Grid and maybe even provide heat to some down town business.

Well I hate to rain on the party but BC Hydro is not interested in the power that the City might produce, in fact, the Minister in charge has already said  Prince George will not  be getting access to the grid.

But there is more to this offer, buy into this program today and in a few years (just as the beetle wood runs) out we will charge you more for the product that you need to run your facility.

What of those pesky people who own fire burning appliances? Well did I neglect to tell you that the City figures that when they introduce their new facility you will immediately jump on board and buy a new wood burning appliance which will reduce your contribution to the air quality by 17%. That is the figure that has come out of  the new  research which  has  yet to be  made public.

You may ask, Oh prey tell how did you came up with that figure?  Do you know how many wood burning appliances there are in the city?   Answer:  well golly gee whiz we don’t,  it’s just an estimate, but we do know how much you contribute to the air quality in the city.

The whole affair has the stink of a pulp mill. If you want to introduce such a facility put it where it can cover a large complex like UNBC, which by the way is  already plumbed for the project and where it might be shown to accomplish what you want the world to see.

I can’t help repeat what Councilor Don Basserman had to say at the meeting discussing the project.” It will go a long way in putting us out there to demonstrate to the world that this Council really cares about what they do and how they do it “.

Before we try and pretend that we have suddenly gone green, we had better get our ducks in a row. The pulp mills, the refinery and the other major contributors to our air quality are sitting back and laughing like hell… I wouldn’t even be surprised if they would vote for the same Councilors.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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