Coal is Alberta’s dirty little secret

Cheap and abundant, coal is among the filthiest of fossil fuels.

by Noel Keough

While the tarsands get all the press, Albertans have another energy demon to face down. Our province is endowed, or cursed — depending on your perspective — with some of the biggest coal deposits in North America. It’s a primary reason why we have some of the lowest electricity rates in the world. But as a recent Pembina Institute report details, there are high costs for that cheap power.

And it seems we are in the dark, at least figuratively, about this dirty little secret. Surveys found that only one-third of Albertans realize we get almost three-quarters of our electricity from coal.

Alberta’s five big coal power plants are among Canada’s 10 largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters. At 43 megatonnes, coal-generated GHGs are marginally smaller than the 47 megatonnes emitted by the tarsands. We produce more GHGs per kilowatt-hour of electricity than any other province. For example, our per capita electricity GHG emissions are about 35 times those of Quebec.

In part it is the hand we were dealt. Emissions from BC, Manitoba, Quebec and Newfoundland’s vast hydropower resources are a fraction of those emitted by burning coal. Yet other coal provinces are taking aggressive action, including Ontario, which is aiming to turn off coal by 2014.

While we may have “cheap” electricity, that artificially low price makes us energy hogs. Pembina refers to Alberta as Canada’s “energy efficiency laggard.” Why conserve when we pay so little?

Alberta is the only province without a renewable electricity policy. We allow the country’s best wind and solar resources to languish while others develop the energy technologies of the future.

Granted, TransAlta is Canada’s largest wind generator, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the company is foot-dragging on curbing GHG emissions from the burning of coal. TransAlta’s five largest Alberta facilities, generating about 4,100 megawatts, are all coal-fired. Its 11 wind facilities are its smallest plants, generating about 500 megawatts.

Today, coal is the fuel source for about 68 percent of Alberta’s electricity. A decade ago it was 75 percent. Right direction, woefully inadequate pace.

According to TransAlta’s vice-president for sustainable development, “we have one of the lowest [household] rates in the country. We might see a 20 to 30 percent increase in electricity rates if we were to phase out coal.”

The bottom line seems to be, well, the bottom line. The objective is to provide the lowest priced electricity for customers. Is $15 to $20 more on a monthly bill not a fair price for curbing the catastrophic buildup of carbon in the atmosphere, and all of the calamity that science is telling us awaits — calamity that we’ve already seen in superstorms like Sandy that hit New York?

Yet TransAlta seems completely satisfied, some might even say smug, about its business model, and not entirely forthcoming about its motives and actions. It claims to be playing by the rules, yet along with its industry partners the company actively sought to weaken draft regulations that would have been tougher on coal operations, resulting in a rewrite that allows old coal plants to operate longer and emit more carbon.

As with the Keystone XL pipeline, and the Kyoto protocol, government and industry trot out the excuse that whatever Canada does makes no difference. Meanwhile, individual Canadians are urged to do their part because every little bit counts.

It’s not like there is no upside to action. As energy researcher David Layzell says, coal emissions are the easiest to reduce, and phasing coal out won’t mean a reduction in royalties because we get almost none.

Relocating electricity generation closer to cities, and using natural gas as a transition fuel while we develop renewables, would allow us to greatly increase the energy bang for our buck. In what are called “combined heat and power” facilities, we could burn natural gas to generate electricity and then capture the waste heat generated in the process. It would be twice as efficient as an electricity-only remote coal facility.

Researcher Mishka Lysack suggests substituting a national grid project for a national pipeline project, enabling us to share electricity across the country, with hydro resources making up for times when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Our multiple time zones would allow us to move energy around as the suppertime peak moves across the country.

It seems clear that neither industry nor government is prepared to lead, so it is up to us, the public. There is work to be done. A good place to start is withdrawing coal’s social licence to operate. It’s time to extinguish the reign of King Coal. As Mark Jaccard, author of Sustainable Fossil Fuels and a coal train blockader, recently asked: “What did you do when there was still time to make a difference?”

© Copyright 2013 Noel Keough, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca