BC Hydro rates could rise by 33 per cent over the next four years, according to figures released in Tuesday's provincial budget.

The Crown corporation has already asked the B.C. Utilities Commission to approve an increase in electricity rates of more than nine per cent this year.

If approved, the rate increase would add about $7 to the average customer's monthly bill starting in April.

The budget projected additional rate increases for the subsequent three years of six, 12 and six per cent, respectively.

BC Hydro says the increases are necessary so that it can upgrade its infrastructure, but critics say the government is taking utility in the wrong direction.

Melissa Davis, executive director of BC Citizens for Public Power, said the rate increases would mostly affect low-income British Columbians and people living in northern and remote communities.

"We've always had very affordable electricity in this province because of our Crown utility," said Davis.

She says she is concerned that under the government's green energy policy, ratepayers are effectively subsidizing private power development in the province by paying higher rates. That could ultimately lead to the privatization of electricity generation and distribution in B.C., Davis said.

"What's going to happen is what's happened in other jurisdictions where the electricity sector has been privatized, and that is an inflated market — an arbitrarily inflated market — that creates a situation of energy poverty," she said. "That's definitely something that we don't want to see in British Columbia."

BC Hydro is a provincially owned Crown corporation that supplies most of the electrical power in B.C. But the province's Liberal government has said that by 2020, half of B.C.'s new energy demand must be met through conservation and that much of the rest should come from private, independent power producers.