CANADA SET TO LOCK HORNS WITH U.S. OVER COAL
OTTAWA • Climate change talks in Germany are headed for a collision course on coal this week — and Canada is right in the middle of it.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna arrives in Bonn, Germany, to attend the second week of COP23, the annual United Nations climate change talks that two years ago led to the Paris climate change accord.
This year, the parties to Paris are hammering out rules for how that accord will be implemented, how carbon will be counted and how countries will be held accountable for their emissions cuts.
McKenna and her British counterpart, Claire Perry, minister of state for climate change and industry, want the conversation to focus on getting rid of coal as a power source, which is responsible for more than 40 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
McKenna and Perry are hosting a joint event Nov. 16 to launch a campaign calling for other countries to declare a plan not to build any more unabated coalfired plants and eliminate existing ones. Unabated plants are those that have no carbon capture or storage technology to keep emissions from ending up in the atmosphere.
About 10 per cent of electricity in Canada comes from coal, and 40 per cent of the electricity around the world is generated by coal-fired power plants.
A year ago, Canada committed to eliminating coal as a source of power by 2030. Britain has committed to getting rid of it by 2025.
Since Canada and the U.K. first announced their coal phase-out campaign last month, Italy and the Netherlands added themselves to the list of countries aiming to get rid of coal. France had already set a 2025 coal-phase out target.
But their anti-coal initiative is in direct contrast with the United States, which is kicking off the week with an event promoting all the ways fossil fuels like coal can be part of the narrative of combating climate change.
“I anticipate it will be a big story this week,” said Catherine Abreu, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, who has been in Bonn since the talks began Nov. 6.
Last month, Scott Pruitt, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, declared the “war on coal is over” as he tore up the U.S. Clean Power Plan, a legacy of president Barack Obama that required states to cut emissions based on energy consumption and offered incentives to foster renewable power and energy efficiency.