October 12, 2005
Coal-Fired reality check for Ontario Government
' Lifted sixteen tons of number nine coal,
the straw boss said "Well bless my soul".
You lift sixteen tons and what do get?
Another day older and deeper in debt. – Merle Travis
The economics of energy supply and demand have driven much of the world to again look at coal for future energy needs. The mega-economics of China, India and the United States now require the construction of hundreds of new coal-generating stations for electricity.
Here in Ontario much of our coal comes from West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the Powder River Basin (PRB) in Wyoming.
The use of mainly PRB coal at Nanticoke has helped to ensure that sulphur dioxide emission rates per unit of energy are the lowest in the plant’s history. At Lambton, 95 per cent of sulphur dioxide emissions are removed by massive scrubbers which I had the chance to get a first-hand look at from the inside-out in September. The combination of scrubbers and SCR’s at Lambton has also been proven to remove 95 per cent of mercury emissions. And the Harris government’s $250 million investment into Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) units at Lambton and Nanticoke has already made a huge improvement in reducing nitric oxide emissions by 80 per cent on the units to which they are attached.
The Lambton tour also gave me a rooftop view of three Detroit Edison coal plants just across the river – plants that will continue to billow into our airshed while we look to import energy from our neighbours to compensate for the “made-by-McGuinty coal closure”.
Rising natural gas prices, combined with a record breaking demand for energy in the province, makes it clear that any further attempts to fulfill McGuinty’s misguided coal closure mandate and eliminate made-in-Ontario power production is a step in the wrong direction.
PC Leader John Tory has called for “financial analysis and environmental analysis” into clean-coal technology - and showing real leadership by maintaining domestic power production while reducing the impact on the environment.
Last week Energy Probe did an environmental ranking of North America’s coal plants.
Less than a month after saying he, “admired the Premier's decision to close Ontario's four remaining coal-fired generation plans rather than gambling with "cleaner" coal,” Executive Director of Energy Probe, Tom Adams, now has evidence to change his position.
The Energy Probe report indicates that two of Ontario's coal-fired power generation units (at Lambton) are among the cleanest in North America – while the others are nowhere near the worst.
The report by the energy and environmental watchdog ranks 403 coal-fired generating stations according to how much pollution they produce per unit of power. Unit 4 at the Lambton generating station, south of Sarnia in southern Ontario, ranks as fourth cleanest among 403 coal generation units in Canada, the United States and Mexico - Lambton's Unit 3 ranks ninth in the report. None of the Lambton units nor three other remaining coal-fired stations in the province -- Thunder Bay, Atikokan units and our Nanticoke facility -- are low in the rankings of worst coal polluters.
The findings have prompted Adams to point out that, “from an environmental point of view, it makes no sense to shut them [coal-fired generators] down and import large amounts of dirtier coal-fired power from the U.S.”
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