March 28, 2025

By Bill Andrews and Tom Hackney

A lot has happened since we published our history of BCSEA’s twenty years of intervening at the BCUC in September 2024. Here are some highlights:

1. In February 2025, BC Hydro filed ten electricity purchase agreements resulting from Hydro’s 2024 Call for Power. BC Hydro disclosed an average levelized price of $74 per megawatt-hour for 5,000 GWh per year of “clean or renewable” electricity to BC Hydro’s grid (subject to project attrition). This average price is substantially lower than the average price for power under BC Hydro’s 2010 Clean Power Call, reflecting ongoing declines in the cost of new renewable generation. Nine projects are for on-shore wind generation, and one is for a utility scale photovoltaic solar project. The BCUC recently announced an abbreviated proceeding allowing letters of comment but no interventions. BCSEA intends to weigh in when the time comes. Meanwhile, the BC Government eliminated the environmental assessment process for onshore wind projects and moved permitting authority to the BC Energy Regulator. And, BC Hydro’s Site C electricity generation facility is on track for completion in the Fall of 2025 (see Site C Energy Project Nears Completion). Site C will provide 1,100 megawatts of capacity, and produce about 5,100 gigawatt hours of energy per year.
2. In late February 2025, the BCUC finally finished revising its guidelines for regulating the “public utilities” that provide thermal energy systems. Over BCSEA’s opposition, the BCUC imposed new complaint-based safety and reliability regulation on existing BC strata corporations that provide heating and/or cooling to their own strata unit owners exclusively. BCSEA said this was unnecessary and would discourage the use of small thermal energy systems to address the ongoing energy transition and the current housing shortage in BC. (See BCUC refuses to reconsider attempt to regulate strata corporations).
3. BCSEA participates on BC Hydro’s technical advisory committee for the 2025 long-term resource plan. BCSEA was gratified to see that in March of this year the BCUC denied a request by BC Hydro for a one-year delay of the October 2025 filing deadline. Hydro argued that its most-recent load forecasts do not “adequately capture” the potential uncertainty caused by recent events such as U.S. import tariffs, acceleration of U.S.-based natural resource industry projects, lower population growth estimates for B.C., and slackening support (our term) for GHG emissions reduction policies and investments (e.g., EV purchase incentives, carbon tax). However, the BCUC cited BC Hydro’s own argument in the 2021 IRP proceeding that “a more frequent and flexible approach to resource planning is an appropriate means of addressing uncertainty and changing circumstances.”
4. In March 2025, the BCUC approved BC Hydro’s application to flatten the two-tier Residential Inclining Block Rate over the next several years, to make a flat rate optionally available to residential customers immediately, and to charge customers in non-integrated areas the same rates as apply to grid-connected customers (see BC Hydro’s RIB Rate: Going, going, gone; and Flattening BC Hydro’s 2-tier Residential Rate by Degrees). The BCUC decision impacts some 1.97 million customers. BCSEA supported the application in its written argument in November 2024. BCSEA accepted that the two-tier rate no longer achieves incremental energy savings and that the step-two price is now considerably above BC Hydro’s long-run marginal cost of new electricity. BCSEA said a flat residential rate (mid-way between step one and step two) would support electrification (e.g., electric heat pumps) and decarbonization (e.g., EV home charging). The BCUC also approved changes to BC Hydro’s distribution extension policy to increase current ratepayers’ financial contribution toward reducing new customers’ costs of connecting to the BC Hydro system. BCSEA supported this electrification initiative.
5. In March 2025, the BCUC approved FortisBC Energy Inc.’s (FEI-gas) $50-million Okanagan Capacity Mitigation Project to truck LNG from the Lower Mainland to Kelowna, over BCSEA’s opposition. This followed the BCUC’s 2023 rejection of FEI’s $327-million gas pipeline project due to “a lack of certainty” that the pipeline was “fully required.” The BCUC did take up BCSEA’s recommendation and directed FEI to explore a number of innovative measures to mitigate future gas peak demand infrastructure projects in the Okanagan. (See BCSEA Opposes Growth of Gas Distribution System).
6. In March 2025, the BCUC approved Pacific Northern Gas’s 2024 long-term resource plan. BCSEA argued that the plan tilts inappropriately toward consideration of costs and rate impacts and undervalues demand-side measures and GHG reduction. While the BCUC approved the plan, it did say that PNG’s next long-term “will need to go further” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
7. In March 2025 (March was a busy month), the BCUC also approved 2025-2027 rate setting frameworks for FortisBC-gas and FortisBC-electricity. The approved terms and conditions were largely as requested by the utilities. However, the Panel did implement BCSEA’s recommendation that FEI report annually on its customers’ GHG emissions from using gas delivered by FEI (“Scope 3 emissions”). The Panel agreed with BCSEA that understanding Scope 3 emissions “provides valuable insight into FEI’s progress towards energy transition.”
8. BCSEA continues to intervene in two important BCUC proceedings that are ongoing: BC Hydro’s net metering program amendments (see Net Metering Gets an Overhaul), and FEI-gas’s long-debated Tilbury LNG Storage Expansion proposal (see Return of the Tilbury LNG Storage Expansion project).
9. New proceedings that BCSEA is intervening in include: Creative Energy’s long-term resources plan (see Downtown Vancouver steam heat system aims to decarbonize), and PNG’s 2025-2027 energy conservation funding application in which PNG seeks to stabilize its spending on demand-side measures.
10. BCSEA is participating in FEI’s stakeholder workshops on the gas distribution utility’s next long-term resource plan, due to be filed with the BCUC early in 2026. Major themes include: the speed and extent to which FEI’s service to customers will be decarbonized in the next twenty years, and the availability of “low carbon gas” to replace fossil natural gas. Similarly, BCSEA is participating in FBC’s stakeholder workshops on the electricity utility’s long-term resource plan, expected to be filed with the BCUC in early 2026. The big issue for FBC is the extent to which its future load will be increased by low-carbon electrification initiatives in its service area.
11. Last but not least, BCSEA wrote to the BCUC protesting the Commission’s badly reasoned rejection of BCSEA’s request to intervene in the proceeding regarding BC Hydro’s Fort Nelson Long-Term Resource Plan. In a sign of the BCUC’s recent ambivalence toward input from experienced participants, the BCUC rejected BCSEA’s request to intervene in the BC Hydro Fort Nelson Long-Term Resource Plan (see BCSEA Protests Restrictions on Interventions).

BCSEA’s overarching objectives at the BCUC are energy conservation and efficiency, reduced BC GHG emissions, and clean electricity generation. BCSEA also supports low-income customers, and First Nations’ rights and title.