PRESIDENT’S REPORT
2004-5
It has been a very full year and a bit since ten of us first
sat in my living room in Victoria, in December 2003, to
discuss forming a new society. And I don’t think
it’s going to slow down any time soon!
As members, you have supported us with your spirit, your
dollars, your political letters and emails, and for some
of you, your activities in the Chapters that have formed
during the year, in Vancouver, Kamloops, Victoria, Kelowna,
Central Interior (Prince George), and Nanaimo.
 If there is one thing that gives me more pleasure than any,
it is the knowledge that the Chapters are up and running
as autonomous entities, getting on with activities with enormous
freedom. The BCSEA set up the framework, and the Chapters
jumped right in. This report will not attempt to lay out
all that the Chapters have done. They will do that themselves
in due course, when their own AGMs come up. Between the Chapters
and the Board’s committees, in some months there may
have been as many as 20 BCSEA meetings happening on different
nights to plan and strategize for a BC beyond fossil fuels.
The global challenge has not changed. The proportion of
CO2 in the atmosphere has continued to rise, and the impacts
of climate change continue to be felt all over the world,
as droughts, storms, melting ice, and heat waves. The warnings
from the world’s climate scientists are far more urgent
than they were four years ago. The carbon we have released
is playing havoc with the Earth’s temperature, and
looks set to melt most of the world’s glaciers, all
of the Arctic sea-ice, and some or all of Greenland’s
2 kilometer deep ice-cap, and West Antarctica’s 2.4
kilometre deep ice-sheet. Taken together, we’re looking
at a potential long-term sea-level rise of up to fifteen
metres.
Meanwhile, the world’s supply of oil has continued
to shrink, as it approaches the half-way peak in the total
world supply. North America’s supply of natural gas,
likewise. With gas now over a dollar a litre, the need to
craft a future for British Columbia based on green, sustainable
energy is critically important. The entire adventure of our
industrial civilization is premised on the use of cheap fossil
fuels, dug, sucked, and blasted from their million year old
graves under the Earth’s surface.
We know for a fact that once the Earth’s “one-time-only” supply
of fossil fuels is gone, we will live, love, and run our
economies on sustainable forms of energy, for the next however
many thousand years. Our task in the BCSEA is to help each
and every community in British Columbia to accelerate its
transition to sustainable energy as quickly and smoothly
as it can, so that we can cease being dependent on fossil
fuel energy, and ratchet our global greenhouse gas emissions
down to zero.
If that is the goal, what have we done during our first
year to contribute to the goal? Given that we are all been
volunteers, I think we’ve made quite a good start.
To simplify this report, I will squeeze my remarks into a “Top
Ten Hits” list.
1. We Got Ourselves Organized
That may sound boring, but if you are struggling to balance
initiatives on fifteen different front, it really helps.
As a result of three Strategic Planning Workshops that
we undertook as a Board, we now have a clear sense of our
structure, the relationship between the Board and the Chapters,
and our four main focus areas: Organizational Development;
Education and Outreach; Policy and Advocacy; and Consultancy
and Projects. For this, we would like to thank TJ Schurr,
for her excellent guidance. As a Directors, we have worked
our way through 28 successive Board meetings. With the
Strategic Planning meetings, that comes to well over 100
hours of focussed attention – plus a host of smaller
meetings. That’s what it takes to launch a new organization!
At this point, I’d like to thank our Board of Advisors,
Roger Colwill, Kathryn Molloy, Ken Wu, Peter Ronald and David
van Seters, and our Honorary Directors, who allowed us to
us rub their status all over us, to help us get started.
This was, quite literally, an energy transfer which applied
charge for a jump-start. I would also like to thank Holly
Vivian, who has worked to get tonight’s bylaw changes
in order.
2. We Established Ourselves in the Electronic World
We made the decision very early on to become a fully electronic
society. Out of our 400 plus members, only 10 do not communicate
by email. Approximately 85% of our members used our electronic
function sign up, justifying the technical effort and expense
of setting it up. It was a lot of effort, for which we
owe a big thanks to our illustrious vegan
cycling webmaster, Dave Shishkoff, to our Vice-President Kevin Pegg, who very
kindly and generously operates our server for no charge,
and who chases down various bugs when the need arises,
and to Mike Boyd, and to Randyn Seibold, Brooke Watson,
and Kees Schaddelee, who have all put their shoulders to
the wheel to pick up the pieces and make it work.
We also put a lot of time and effort into building a high
quality website, which has played an important part in establishing
our credentials. There’s lots more that we want to
do with it, but it has been a good start. We are currently
getting 250 unique visitors a day, and our Sustainable Energy
Directory has 20 company listings.
3. We Have Money in the Bank!
Given how much effort we have put out, I am pleased to report
that we have a healthy balance in the bank. This is due
to three things: our steady support from new members; the
generous support from VanCity Savings, who kindly gave
us a $10,000 capacity building grant; and the fact that
we have been tight-wads, and very careful in how we spent
our income. Long may this continue! I’d like to extend
our thanks to Tom Hackney, who took on the task of being
our Treasurer, and has done a great job of it.
With the benefit of the VanCity grant, we were able to hire
Kim Hendess as our Coordinator after a lengthy process, for
which I would like to thank David Kidd, Zev Fisher, Nitya
Harris, Kevin Pegg, and TJ Schurr, and all of the candidates
who put their names forward. Kim has been a great help, but
alas we are losing her all too soon, as she wants to move
more fully into the field of organic landcare. This means
that we need to find her replacement. If you think this job
has your name written all over it, please step forward!
4. We’re in the Publishing Business!
We launched our quarterly newsletter, The Joule, last summer,
and according to our web stats, over 2000 copies have been
downloaded, which is very satisfying. For this, I’d
like to thank everyone who has contributed articles, and
most particularly, our illustrious editor, Andrea Wilmot,
who took it on having never edited a newsletter before,
and her illustrious sidekick, Michelle Atkins, who stepped
forward and contributed her very considerable design skills
to make it into a proper, professional-looking affair.
Thankyou, to both of you. We have also kept in touch with
all our members through our monthly email newsletter, Watt’s
Happening? Our members are our lifeblood, and we believe
it is critically important to keep you in the loop with
our various activities.
5. Our Book Has Chapters!
In fact, it has six Chapters, and I am pleased to report
that as of today, our Vancouver and Kamloops Chapters will
sign their MoUs, and advance to Regular Chapter Status.
We hope that our Victoria, Kelowna, Nanaimo and Central
Interior Chapters will soon follow.
The Chapters have been meeting monthly, attracting up to
50 people to some of their meetings. They have been putting
on speakers and organizing display booths to help us fulfil
our goal of educating the public, and raising awareness about
sustainable energy. The Vancouver and Kamloops Chapters have
both undertaken One Tonne Challenge projects. For all this
work, we would like to thank all those who stepped forward
to take the lead: Dale Littlejohn, Taylor Zeeg, Naomi Devine,
Richard Pearson, Denise Stocco, Freya Keddie, Barry Milner,
Walt Jones, Russ Purvis, and Graig Pearen.
Our Chapters Committee put in an inordinate amount of work
trudging through 15 successive drafts of the Chapters Bylaws,
laying a clear and strong foundation for future growth. This
is essential, necessary work, which will enable the Chapters
and the Board to grow hand-in-hand, on a firm, reliable basis.
For all this trudging, we would like to thank Dale, Taylor,
TJ Schurr, Graig Pearen, and myself.
6. We’re Getting Into Hot Water!
As an organization, we know we have the potential to put
together teams of members who can act as consultants on
sustainable energy projects. Dale Littlejohn has begun
to establish a framework which will allow us to do this,
enabling us to reach into new areas. Nitya Harris picked
up one of our early ideas, and has run with it. As a result,
we now have a fully fledged Solar Hot Water Acceleration
Project underway, with funding so far from the BC Ministry
of Land, Water and Air Protection, and from CMHC. Our long-term
goal is to see 100,000 solar hot water systems on rooftops
in BC. Our short-term goal is to see 100 systems installed
in three pilot communities, giving us a chance to examine
the obstacles that hinder widespread uptake, and take steps
to eliminate them. The communities that are under consideration
are Salt Spring, Abbottsford, the Olympic Athletes Village
in Vancouver, Kelowna, Prince George, and Dawson Creek.
We would like to thank Nitya for her work on this project,
which is not only advancing the cause of solar hot water,
but also the good name of the BCSEA, as she carries our
flag into numerous meetings.
I also want to thank Gunter Honold, who arranged an educational
field trip to the ocean-source heat system at Brentwood College
in Mill Bay earlier in the year, and who has been persistent
in his work of contacting engineers and other ASHRAE professionals
on behalf of the BCSEA.
We also enjoyed a second field trip to Salt Spring in the
summer, when 40 members toured solar, micro hydro, and rammed
earth installations, and laughed and tumbled through Salt
Spring’s hidden lanes. Many thanks to the organizational
efforts of Kevin Pegg, Mike Boyd and Kees Schaddelee.
7. We’re Wading into Politics
We’re not going to see much progress with sustainable
energy in BC until we have good sustainable energy policies,
which are noticeable by their absence. We have met with the
Ministry of Energy and Mines Alternative Energy Division,
and established a good relationship there, and we have met
informally with Barry Penner, MLA, who will be chairing the
government’s newly announced Task Force on Alternative
Energy. We have also participated in BC Hydro’s Integrated
Electricity Planning process, attending workshops and meetings,
and we spoke at the IPPBC’s annual conference in Vancouver,
last November.
Under Tom Hackney’s relentless leadership, our Policy
Committee of twelve members has researched the best policies
that we think will work in BC, and created 14 successive
drafts of our Sustainable Energy Policy Document, which will
be released on April 17th. During the weeks of the provincial
election, we will be working to attract as much attention
to this as we can with help from Stuart Hertzog, our newly
appointed media impresario, and our new “Adopt a Constituency” outreach
initiative.
8. We’re Duking it out over Natural Gas
Our mandate is to work for sustainable energy solutions,
not fight old battles, but as the proposal to build a 252
MW natural gas plant at Duke Point, Nanaimo, rolled its
way towards approval, after a long and complicated history,
we could not resist jumping in. If it is allowed to be
built, it will prevent many sustainable energy projects
from happening on the Island, while pumping out 800,000
tonnes of CO2 a year, as well as local air pollution which
will blow across Gabriola Island and over to the mainland.
The BCSEA filed as an intervenor, and together with the
GSXCCC and SPEC, and thanks to the GSXCCC’s legal experience,
we have been able to engage the legal services of Bill Andrews,
first as we challenged the plant through the legal avenue
of the Electricity Purchase Agreement enquiry, and most recently
through the appeal of the BCUC Commissioners’ decision
to approve the plant, the result of which will be announced
on Monday April 11th. We also engaged ourselves politically,
as many members wrote letters to the BCUC and the BC Liberal
government, and spoke at meetings, including the formal BCUC
Public Meeting that was held in Nanaimo. As one of our members
has said of this issue “I don’t hear no lady
singin’ yet.” For all of this work, we would
like to thank Tom Hackney, for giving us the leadership that
was needed.
9. We’re Reaching Out
The ninth area of work that I’d like to report on is
our College Outreach Initiative, which was undertaken in
a sterling effort by Randyn Seibold, and the team of 17 members
he recruited as volunteers. As a result of their efforts,
staff and students in almost every college and university
in BC who might be expected to have an interest in sustainable
energy have been told about our existence, laying the groundwork
for a second approach to be made this September, and for
the publication of a Sustainable Energy Education Directory
of BC.
10. We’ve Remained Positive and Upbeat!
Finally, we have retained a positive, humorous spirit while
going about all these tasks, and remembered to enjoy ourselves,
according to the Fifth Law of Sustainability.
I want to thank Morgan McDonald, and to give a special thankyou
and appreciation to our retiring Board members Zev Fisher,
Johnnie Thiessen, Holly Vivian, Andrea Wilmot, Nitya Harris,
Mike Boyd, and Kees Schaddelee, for their multiple work,
efforts, and participation.
And on that note, I would like to begin a new BCSEA annual
tradition, which I am calling the President’s Privilege,
since I could not, by definition, discuss it with the full
Board.
It consists of two honours, given to members.
The first goes to Tom Hackney, who as well as sharing in
the many tasks that we have all undertaken, accepted the
huge task to guide our Sustainable Energy Policy paper to
its imminent launch, while simultaneously remaining fast
on the heels of the proposed Duke Point Power Plant, dogging
it all the way. For this I would like to grant him with our
second Members Award of Honour. (A gift of the book The sacred
Balance, by David Suzuki, also suitably inscribed.)
The second goes to Randy Seibold, who tested our patience
with his constant enthusiasm and persistence with new ideas,
while enrolling himself in a full electricians’ training,
so that he can go on to become a sustainable energy practitioner.
Randyn has not been a board member, but he happily took on
the task of making the College Outreach Project work, and
made a great success of it. For this, I would like to grant
him our first Members Award of Honour. (A gift of the book
Gaviotas: A Village To Reinvent the World, by Alan Weisman,
suitably inscribed).
And finally, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed
to our first year being what it was. We’ve got a long
way to go, but it’s been an excellent start!
Guy Dauncey, President
April 8, 2005
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