Dear Editor:
The purpose of city energy as offered by the Lonsdale Energy Corp. is to provide financial sustainability and environmental responsibility - as noted by Coun. Pam Bookham in the Jan. 1 article by Anne Watson. Mayor Darrell Mussatto is quoted as observing: "if it's a white elephant, then there is a huge market for white elephants as every energy utility around the world would like to buy and own the LEC.
"The rationale for city energy must be to provide the consumer with the energy services they require, with competitive energy rates and energy conservation while reducing green house gas emissions. On all four counts, the Lonsdale Energy Corp. fails the consumer service test.
The LEC has centralized the production of thermal heating by burning natural gas and distributing the energy to consumers through a capital-intensive public infrastructure. The high infrastructure cost drives up the cost of energy to the consumer beyond the cost that can be achieved within an individual project with today's innovative technology and locks in the energy solution, ignoring tomorrow's creative solutions.
The LEC is becoming the largest carbon emitter on the North Shore and the city system does not generate any savings in energy consumption within individual buildings. The reality is that the corporation discourages the application of individual metering and resource conservation because the rate structure depends on a fixed demandbased billing component. Individual metering and user-pay reduces consumption by 15 to 30 per cent.Alternate energy sources for this city system that reduce carbon emissions are a pipe dream that would (if ever possible) bring further excessive capital investment and resultant energy rate increases. In essence, the excessive energy charges will become a further form of residential taxation.
Residential consumers are not being provided with energy services that reflect their demand for personal comfort and control over their living spaces. The LEC does not provide cooling, and consumers are having to pay for such comfort over and above the costs of heat.
Consumers are being legislated to use a monopoly service that no taxpayer wants, that contributes nothing to the reduction in carbon emissions, discourages personal conservation, has higher rates and fails to provide the consumer with the comfort desired in their homes. The white elephant is a white elephant.
Roger Bayley
North Vancouver
