Isnt there a clear answer to the question of should UNBC have an engineering program?

Maybe not just an engineering program but a program with a focus on green energy?

A program that can leverage the areas soon to be "garbage" quality fibre from standing beetle kill? A program that ties in to the green university. A program that uses the state of the art bio and, hopefully soon to be built, bio-char?

Is this perhaps something that Prince George can develop to help brighten the currently dim future prospects?

Can they go without a grant? I could go off grid with a grant. So called green energy is low density and will not amount to more than a niche supply of electricity and be very expensive. Most of the worlds supply of bulk power is thermal, coal and nuclear, with nuclear getting more and more important as time goes on.

We should be building nuclear here and will eventually, why wait. New fourth generation nuclear is extremely safe and leaves very little waste. Then there is the up and coming Thorium reactors which will be a game changer.

"The project is expensive says Iwama, “The overall cost of the bio-energy energy project is $30 million in terms of capital costs."

Insanity. And they hope that Natural Resources Canada (aka the Taxpayer) picks up half the tab. If they want to do this project, they should fundraise the whole cost.

All power generated in BC from Government projects like Williston Lake, etc; should be given to Universitys, schools, hospitals, and Government buildings at cost, or just over costs.

We the taxpayer have already paid for the production and transmission of this power, and should not be paying it again to BC Hydro through Government owned facilities. This is nothing more than Government double dipping, with the taxpayer picking up the tab.

Once the power to Government facilities is covered, we should then be looking a cheap power to industry in BC, and to home owners. Then last (but not least) we shuld look at exporting power to the Americans.

Cheap power was the idea behind the Peace River dam, and Columbia River, and supposedly Site C. But the question is cheap for who?? The Americans I would say. They seem to get the power, and produce the attendent jobs and we get nothing.

UNBC had better get out of the power business and get into the educating business. They should spend more time on figuring out how they can keep this University running with a continuing decline in enrolments. Seems they always have grandiose ideas, that are funded by taxpayers.

We already have the **cheapest** power in the world, the problem is the Government and BC Hydro are selling it off, and robbing us. A huge cut in Government spending and a huge downsize of Government itself would put us in a position to supply this power at reasonable rates, and this in turn would drive the economy.

A good example is the new ingot plant at Kitimat, in the billions of dollars. If it was not for cheap power,(Kemano 1) this plant would have never gone ahead.

Iwama is apparently fulfilling his mandate as leader of the uni. Big ideas (good) and the potential for Mr. Iwama to have another legacy project to preserve his fame (bad, is this about pride?) after all, he is the one "who brought the bio energy project online at unbc"
I think that the pie in the sky dream of bio char research being conducted here in PG is a non starter, after all, the technology already exists.
As others have said, stick to the matters at hand, education, and the people's hydro-electric power should be the first choice for any public facility.
metalman.

The government takes dividends from Hydro, that is a tax and we also pay a tax on that tax. The government keeps contracting out big projects to outside of province interests who do not pay their fair share of taxes and imported workers who fly in and out also not paying fair share of taxes in this province while taking our resources and using our facilities. So in the end the resident taxpayer keeps getting dinged. Hello Christy, knock knock anyone home!

Oh another thing this project which will not amount to much costing 30 million and 15 million already spent on the just installed trendy power project. Who is in control of university spending? Everyone is always quick to dump on teachers but the universities seem to get a pass. Why is that? Someone help me out here.

Going off grid, does that mean taking down the hydro lines? I doubt it. So how is that of grid?

Fact - governments Fed and Prov are in deficits which means any extra money they spend - is borrowed money. Probably lowest interest rate they can obtain is about 3%. So 30 million is 1.8 million. UNBC's total utility bill last year, per their audited financial statements 3.0 million. So maximum net savings is 1.2 million, and will this plant run on it's own, or will it need people, materials, repairs etc. I'm thinking 1.2 million won't cover the cost of raw fibre and maintenance etc. So we'll be 30 million in debt, paying at least 1.8 million in interest, and will probably end up backwards by the time operation expenses of the plant are taken into consideration. But at least we'll be able to brag we have an off the grid university surrounded by streets that aren't plowed often enough, and potholes filled long after the damage to cars are done. When will governments ever get their priorities straight?

Whenever UNBC has a power surplus while running that bio-char plant it will feed the extra power into the grid and get paid for it. Of course it wouldn't be able to do that if somebody would have the bright idea to take down the hydro lines.

So did I get this right. We the taxpayers will build the new plant, borrow the money, hire people to run it, and generate power to run the University. Then if the UNBC generator has a surplus they will sell it to Hydro and we will pay them for it. (We own Hydro). The surplus power will be sold to the Americans at a higher price, and Hydro will ask us to burn candles, to save electricity.

Sounds like the madness continues.