Organization
The electricity sector in Canada is organized along provincial and territorial lines as part of their jurisdiction over natural resources. All provinces and territories have set up utilities boards and regulate transmission and distribution rates.
The liberalization process of the 1990s changed some parameters such as the unbundling of generation, transmission and distribution functions of incumbent utilities in order to foster a competitive wholesale market or, as in the cases of large exporters like Quebec and British Columbia, to comply with Order 888 of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other U.S. market rules. Most provincial governments still maintain a strong financial stake as operators in the electrical markets.
In a majority of provinces and territories, utilities are vertically integrated Crown corporations operating as regulated monopolies. This is by and large the case in New Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Nunavut. A second model involves a Crown corporation as a large generator or in transmission, alongside an investor-owned distributor, as in Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and, to a lesser degree, Prince Edward Island. Nova Scotia has granted a virtual monopoly to Nova Scotia Power, when it divested its investments in the sector in 1992. However, there remain half a dozen small public electric distributors - the Municipal Electric Utilities of Nova Scotia who have the right to buy power from other parties, or generate their own. NS has a feed-in tariff program to encourage smaller generators.
Two provinces, Ontario and Alberta, have deregulated their electric industry to different degrees over the last decade. Both provinces operate electricity markets, but there are significant differences between the two systems. the Ontario market is an hybrid, with the Ontario Power Authority "contracting for supply, integrated system planning, and regulated pricing for much of Ontario's generation and load". In Alberta, the generation business is competitive, while transmission and distribution are rate-regulated.
A number of municipalities operate local distribution systems. Some of them, such as EPCOR in Edmonton, are also significant players in the power generation business, under their name or through their control of publicly traded companies.
The federal government, through the National Energy Board, issues permits for inter-provincial and international power lines. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has jurisdiction over nuclear safety. Ottawa and the provinces share jurisdiction over environmental issues such as air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Also, major hydroelectric developments trigger federal environmental assessment processes, as the Government of Canada has the power to regulate waterways and fisheries.
Energy-intensive businesses, such as the aluminium smelting and pulp and paper industries have made significant investments over time in power generation. One such company is Rio Tinto Alcan, which owns and operates 7 hydroelectric generating stations in Quebec and British Columbia, with a combined installed capacity of 3,300 MW.
In recent years, partial or complete deregulation of the wholesale generation business have created a number of Independent Power Producers, who build and operate power plants and sell over the long term, through power purchase agreements — with terms of up to 35 years — and in day-ahead and hour-ahead transactions, where such markets exist.
Read more about this topic: Electricity Sector In Canada
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“I would wish that the women of our country could embrace ... [the responsibilities] of citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country. It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity, ... [ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)