Monday, January 18, 2010

More on the Generator Issue

Global TV did a segment on their evening news hour about the diesel generator issue.  Their piece raised a few interesting issues:
- BC Hydro could not offer an explanation as to why VANOC needed so many diesel generators.
- The number of generators used in Vancouver is only half that used in Beijing even though the summer Olympics were much larger.  And VANOC is paying the generator supplier Aggrecko $30 million as opposed to the $40 million paid in Beijing.
- Generators are running 24 hours a day outside BC place stadium although it is still weeks to go before the games.

As I mentioned on the Global TV segment the generators produce 30 times the green house gas emissions of BC Hydro power.  Aggrecko claims to be supplying 34 MW of power. If all these generators are running for all 17 days of the games that would generate over 11,000 tonnnes of CO2e ghg emissions.  However, as we are seeing some, if not most, of the generators are running well before the games even start.  So we can expect that the total emissions will be much higher than the 2,000 tonnes that BC Hydro estimated.

The generators also produce other forms of pollution including diesel particulate and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Operation of diesel generators have been linked to increased cancer risks (see:
http://www.sbcapcd.org/generators.htm).


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