You can understand that mayors and
councils of towns that rely on coal mining for economic activity are
concerned about the province's recently-announced program of carbon
taxes and the 15-year phase-out of coal fired electricity. That's
their job, their duty, to advocate for the interests of their
communities.
But it's something else for groups like
the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to declare the planned phase-out a
“war on coal” and the carbon tax as an attack on Alberta
families.
That's far too narrow a view. In the
big picture, the plans are meant to save the oilsands
industry by making it politically possible for new pipelines to be
built to carry our bitumen to new markets. Oh, and to reduce the
province's carbon footprint in the face of science declaring it would
be advisable to do so.
Communities whose economic lives
revolve around coal mining and coal power generation recently sent a
joint letter to the province outlining their concerns for their
towns' future.
They have every reason to do so. There
are many towns in Canada that in our history have withered and died
when the local mine closed, or the local industry was shut down. It's
not a pretty picture. One day, you're a vibrant community, the next,
the jobs disappear, people leave, homes get shuttered and local
businesses close, one by one.
But if you believe that Alberta needs
to do its part in reducing greenhouse gas pollution — and to be
seen by the world as doing its part — something's got to give.
It's totally ironic; according to
government figures, there is twice as much energy in Alberta's coal
reserves than there is in all our other non-renewable energy sources.
As fossil fuels go, coal is energy in it's densest form. You have to
burn a whole lot more “clean” natural gas to get the same energy
release as you get get from burning coal.
More, we know exactly where all the
reserves are located. Getting the coal out and turning it into
electricity results in cheaper power than you can get from pretty
much any other power source. In Alberta, anyway.
Until you put a price on the pollution
it causes.
By 2018, the current Alberta plan will
price carbon dioxide equivalents at $30 a tonne. That's on all the
carbon we consume — natural gas, auto fuels, electricity,
everything. What does that mean to us?
Well, groups like the CTF warn that's
going to be $900 a year on average for Alberta families by 2030, when
the last coal-fired plant is to be shut down.
The government puts the figure at just
under $500, to be reduced by rebates from the $3 billion per year the
government expects to receive from carbon taxes.
What's that mean in a city like Red
Deer?
Currently, the city is in the process
of creating its own greenhouse gas reduction plan. I was pleased to
be invited to help with the creation of that plan, representing that
part of Red Deer interested in more sustainable and active
transportation. A wide variety of representatives from government,
business, power regulators, and citizen groups are at
the table.
Here's a bit of what we know so far.
Every person in Red Deer is responsible for about 17.5 tonnes of
CO2-equivalent gas emissions per year. In 2010, the start-point for
the plan, that came to 1.77 mega-tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year,
most of which will remain in the atmosphere for many decades.
The goal, as set by the International
Protocol on Climate Change, is to reduce that number to 30 per cent
below what it was in 1990, which is the global goal required to avoid temperatures rising by more than the “tipping point” of
two degrees.
How can we possibly get there? By
everyone ditching their cars and biking or walking to work? Nope, not
even close.
The largest contributor to greenhouse
gas emissions in Alberta cities is not from our cars, but from our
buildings. That's because they're 55-per-cent powered by coal, and
almost all heated by natural gas.
There will be no approaching our share
of the GHG reductions, without switching away from coal-fired
electricity. In British Columbia, where there is so much hydro power,
the balance is much different. In Norway, where almost all
electricity is hydro, the government wants the entire country to
eventually run all its automobiles on electricity.
But Alberta needs a giant technology
switch from coal to renewables for electricity, or we will forever be
known as a “dirty” producer of energy, which will hurt growth in
our most valuable resource industry, the oilsands.
That's both the rock and the hard place
the province is in.
Robin Campbell a former Alberta energy
minister and former environment minister, is now president of the
Coal Association of Canada.
He says a significant portion of that
$3 billion in carbon taxes should be directed toward technologies to
reduce the emissions from burning coal. Good luck with that.
In a province that has always done the
easy thing when it comes to everything from energy production to
urban planning, the easiest thing is a technology switch to
renewables.
You can't get there without charging a
price for carbon emissions from everyone that creates them. Whining
about the short-term cost doesn't help, either.
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