Coal is making a comeback in energy-hungry British Columbia

By Tom Fletcher
Parksville Qualicum News
07-Mar-2006

B.C. Hydro’s latest financial report estimates the Crown-owned power company will earn a net income of $294 million this fiscal year, down $44 million from their last estimate.

Along with higher operating and financing costs, the decrease is a result of having to buy more electricity from outside the province, said Alister Cowan, B.C. Hydro’s chief financial officer.

The recent B.C. budget noted a substantial increase in B.C. Hydro debt. Finance Minister Carole Taylor was quick to clarify that is not a hint of things to come in the utility’s much-anticipated energy plan. The extra costs are instead a hint of how old the hydroelectric system is, including major generator upgrades at the Mica and Peace Canyon dams.

Terasen Gas customers will be relieved by news their natural gas bills are coming down again, after a winter of record-high commodity prices passed on to them. But as with gasoline prices, low is relative. Two years ago it would have been difficult to imagine pulling up to the pump to find the price is only 87 cents a litre.

Then there’s coal. Activity is picking up again in the established coal mining areas around Tumbler Ridge and in the Kootenays, but that’s not the only place. Ranchers near Quesnel were surprised to find out that West Hawk Development Corp. had acquired mineral rights to coal deposits there, not to mine for export but to fuel a coal gasification plant.

The company has met resistance from local landowners, who saw their petition against the project brought to the legislature last week by Cariboo North MLA Bob Simpson. West Hawk appears to be backing away from that site, but it has also acquired rights to coal properties near Prince George, Smithers and Dease Lake. (link)

It’s difficult to think of coal as being green, but with available technology it can be, writes SFU professor Mark Jaccard in his new book, Sustainable Fossil Fuels. Jaccard, a former chairman of the B.C. Utilities Commission, has caused a stir with the conclusion that the world has enough coal to last some 2,000 years.

His book describes a new process that can produce electrical power, as well as feed a plant that makes synthetic gasoline and diesel fuel.

West Hawk’s proposal for the Quesnel area would produce 8,600 barrels per day of zero-sulphur green diesel fuel, 1,600 barrels per day of naphtha and 250 megawatts of green electrical power per day for 30 years.

Jaccard describes technology that’s not new, but used in a new way in the age of global climate change. The gasification plant could capture carbon dioxide, making the operation effectively emission-free. What does one do with captured carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas? One use for it is in the oil industry.

“Since 2000,” Jaccard writes, “a plant in North Dakota has been shipping carbon dioxide to Saskatchewan for injection into an aging oilfield to increase its yield by 30 per cent.”

Copyright 2006 Parksville Qualicum News