Coal plan remains vulnerable

CRITICS SAY AMBITIOUS CANADIAN COAL PLAN STILL HAS HOLES

Canada’s drive to shut down all of its coalfired power plants by 2030 could be undermined by provincial side-deals like the one currently being negotiated with Nova Scotia, critics say.

“A 2030 date, overall for Canada, is achievable and ambitious — it strikes that sweet spot,” Erin Flanagan, federal program director at the Pembina Institute, said Tuesday.

“We don’t want to see any policy slippage during the negotiations ... We want to make sure that each of the provinces is held to the same standard and they are doing everything they can to facilitate that coal-to-clean process.”

Flanagan, in Bonn, Germany, for the 2017 United Nations climate change talks, said federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is winning kudos for her high-profile bid to lobby other countries and states to commit to a 2030 deadline.

But Flanagan said Canada has plenty of work to do before it reaches that target.

Since the federal and provincial governments share responsibility for energy and the environment, the provinces have the option of implementing the new federal rule through so-called equivalency agreements, which are aimed at achieving equivalent environmental outcomes.

Nova Scotia is pushing for an exemption that could see the province using coal-fired plants well beyond 2030. Last November, Ottawa and the province agreed to that idea in principle, with the federal government recognizing that Nova Scotia has already met Canada’s target of a 30-percent reduction in greenhouse emissions from 2005 levels.

As well, Nova Scotia is on track to generate 40 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 — an ambitious goal set in 2010 when almost 90 per cent of its electricity was generated by fossil fuels.

However, the province has previously projected that coal would continue to play some part in its energy mix until 2042. Premier Stephen McNeil has said the longer transition away from coal will help reduce the “sticker shock” for electricity consumers.

While it’s true Nova Scotia has had great success in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, Flanagan said she is concerned the exemption may prompt other provinces to backslide.

“It might be tempting for a jurisdiction like Saskatchewan to say, ‘Hey, (Nova Scotia) is keeping their coal on the grid until 2040,’” she said.

“It’s quite important for us to ask questions about how they will be using this tool. It’s likely to have big-time implications.”