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Alberta’s suspension of talks on electricity purchases from B.C. — a response to B.C.’s threat to limit the volume of diluted bitumen Alberta may ship through the Kinder Morgan pipeline running to the West Coast — could inflict more pain on B.C.’s electricity users than may be obvious. That’s because B.C. is unique among Canadian provinces in not just exporting a lot of its electricity production but also in importing a lot of its requirements. Alberta could therefore ramp up pressure on B.C. by curtailing not just purchases but also sales of electricity to its neighbour.

National Energy Board and BC Hydro records show, for example, that in 2012, BC Hydro generated 57 terawatt-hours (TWh) of power, exported 11.1 TWh and imported 11 TWh. Thus, close to 20 per cent of BC Hydro’s production was exported and 20 per cent of B.C.’s needs were imported. By contrast, in that same year, Manitoba’s electricity exports were 30 per cent and imports only two per cent, which is more typical across Canada.

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Yet in both B.C. and Manitoba, external electricity trade has historically accounted for 20 to 25 per cent of total revenue. In Manitoba’s case, the external revenue comes from exporting generated electricity surplus. In B.C., there is no such surplus; imports are essentially equal to exports and generation output is right-sized to in-province needs. Instead, B.C.’s external electricity revenue comes from importing when prices are low, exporting when they are high and using water stored behind its dams to bridge the timing differences between market-price changes and the daily rise and fall of in-province electricity use.