B.C.'s approach to cutting emissions isn't working

B.C.'s approach to cutting emissions isn't working
Matt Price, Times Colonist, 03-Aug-2006

Coal-fired plants can be clean, says minister
Richard Neufeld, Times Colonist, 06-Aug-2006

Minister misrepresenting the issue
Tom Hackney, BC Sustainable Energy Association, 07-Aug-2006

B.C.'s approach to cutting emissions isn't working

The day the B.C. government announced it wanted to twin the Port Mann Bridge, it bent its credibility on its stated desire to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.

But on the day it announced it wants to buy electricity from B.C.'s first ever coal-fired power plants, that credibility just plain broke.

This is the summer that Al Gore made his comeback with his movie The Inconvenient Truth, popularizing the fact that the scientific debate about global warming is now over. Indeed, so far this summer has seen heat waves and resulting deaths in California and Europe.

B.C. has been struggling with the mountain pine beetle for some years now due to the lack of cold winters and we'll likely see more vicious forest fires. B.C.'s glaciers are melting and our rivers are drying up. It's here. It's now.

You can forgive B.C. citizens for thinking that our leaders were up to the task of safeguarding our children from the increasing dangers of global warming. After all, former prime minister Jean Chretien joined most of the international community (except, notably, George W. Bush) in supporting the Kyoto Protocol -- the first baby step on the solutions pathway.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been busy erasing efforts by our federal government to reduce emissions as he cosies up to Bush on this and other issues.

Well, at least we can count on our provincial leaders, right? On May 16, in the legislature, Premier Gordon Campbell committed to beating Oregon's efforts on greenhouse-gas reductions. Its target is to reduce emissions to 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 75 per cent below them by 2050.

But, unlike B.C.'s balanced-budget targets, our emissions targets -- the ones that have to do with the future of the human race -- aren't actually binding. This is why we still have Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Richard Neufeld promoting coal-fired power plants and giving subsidies to the massively profitable oil and gas industry. It's why Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon is getting away with 1960s-style blacktop politics, building more highways to attract more cars to produce more emissions.

By 2004, the latest year for which there are measurements, B.C. had increased its greenhouse-gas emissions by almost 30 per cent since 1990. The province had the second highest increase in emissions among provinces in 2004.

The B.C. government says that one of its five great goals is to have the world's best environmental management, bar none. What would it have to do to achieve that goal? There is no greater challenge facing us today than global warming.

Scientists tell us that either we get it right over the next two decades, or we probably commit our children to feedback loops that play havoc with human life-support systems around the planet.

To have the best environmental management, bar none, B.C. must have binding greenhouse-gas reduction targets. This means that all B.C. ministries would execute their work in a manner that shifts B.C. toward a sustainable energy economy, evaluating and approving each new project based on whether it will increase or reduce emissions.

B.C.'s current voluntary approach to reducing emissions simply isn't working. It is giving us emission-intensive urban sprawl promoted by proposed projects like the Port Mann twinning and it is giving us B.C.'s first-ever coal-fired power plants at a time when other jurisdictions are phasing their coal plants out. It is increasing emissions.

When governments actually want to achieve something they set mandatory targets and meet them. We don't give convicted criminals the option of going to jail and we don't give motorists the option of stopping at red lights. That we absolutely need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions means that we need to make reduction targets binding on all government actions. Anything else is a recipe for failure.

B.C. still has time to be a leader on global warming. We have the natural capital in our rivers, our tides and in our wind. We have the intellectual capital in our institutions like the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. We have the business capital in companies like Ballard, B.C. Hydro and VanCity.

But the bottom line is this: Do we have the political capital to make it so? Shall our leaders continue to take us into danger, or is there the will to create a different kind of future and a different kind of economy? The answer to those questions are emerging as the only ones that really matter, the basis upon which we will either flourish or founder in the world.

- Matt Price is the co-ordinator of the Conservation Voters of B.C.
(http://www.conservationvoters.ca/)

TOP

Coal-fired plants can be clean, says minister

Re: "B.C.'s approach to cutting emissions isn't working," Aug. 3.

I take exception to the view expressed by Matt Price of the Conservation Voters of B.C.

In the recent call for power results we saw two projects that included an element of coal-fired electricity, one of several sources of power provided for in B.C.'s energy plan. Vastly improved technology is making coal a viable source for energy production.

There is no reason why we shouldn't be using this abundant resource, provided it can be done right.

Under the Environmental Assessment Act, all electricity generation projects 50 MW or greater, as well as any designated reviewable by the minister of environment, must obtain an Environmental Assessment Certificate to ensure that environmental impacts are identified and mitigated. The assessment process examines major projects for potentially adverse environmental, economic, social, health and heritage effects.

Years ago, the widespread use of coal in inefficient burners caused unacceptable levels of sulphur dioxide and particulate matter to be released into the atmosphere.

But it's not like that today. Advanced coal technology includes new processes for combusting or converting coal into a usable energy form. EPCOR's 450-MW Genesee 3 plant, located just outside Edmonton, is an example of how new technology is helping coal-fired plants produce much-needed energy while reducing emissions.

This plant features high-temperature and high pressure combustion, low NOx burners to reduce nitrogen oxides and an SO2 scrubber to reduce emissions of sulphur dioxide.

Coal-fired electricity projects have the potential to help us fill the growing demand for energy while meeting stringent air emissions standards. British Columbia has adopted new air quality emission guidelines which are among the highest standards in North America. These set emission limits for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and mercury.

We have great coal resources in B.C., and utilizing them with care now will help us meet the energy needs of tomorrow.

Richard Neufeld,
Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.

TOP

Minister misrepresenting the issue

The Minister is misrepresenting the issue in commenting at length on air emissions and virtually ignoring GHG emissions. The fact is that the new coal burning technologies still don't address GHG emissions, and they are unlikely to -- despite hopeful p.r. to the contrary -- because of the inherent difficulties of capturing the huge quantities of CO2 (coal is mostly carbon, and most of those carbon atoms would end up as CO2, i.e. a greater mass than the coal itself).

BC has no GHG emissions standards, and the environmental review process is completely impotent, witness the last two GHG assessments, for ICP and VIGP, both of which have GHG "plans" that call for no action to address the emissions. The ICP "plan" went so far as to say that someone else than the proponent would have to pick up the tab for any GHG offsets.

Tom Hackney, Director
BC Sustainable Energy Association
(250) 381-4463
thackney@shaw.ca
www.bcsea.org

TOP