Bell tolls for coal

Toronto Sun
September 4, 2009
Jonathan Jenkins
 

Bell tolls for coal
4 units slated to be closed by '10

Ontario will do in part by 2010 what it once promised to do entirely by 2007 -- shut down four of the province's coal-burning power and smog producing power units. 

"We are as a jurisdiction determined to eliminate coal-fired generation from our energy supply mix," Energy Minister George Smitherman said yesterday at Ontario Power Generation HQ, a smudgy haze visible in the 19th-floor view behind him.

Two units at Lambton Generating Station near Sarnia and two more at Nanticoke in Haldimand County will close by October 2010, Smitherman and OPG president Tom Mitchell said.

That would leave two units at Lambton, six at Nanticoke, two in Thunder Bay and one in Atikokan as the only remaining coal-fired plants.

"As an asthmatic and as a former health minister I have come to understand that this is not just a matter of the energy supply mix, it's a matter of extraordinary urgency," Smitherman said, noting the closure will come four years ahead of the government's goal for shutting all coal generation in the province.

Jack Gibbons, with the Clean Air Alliance, said with the recession and manufacturing crisis driving down electrical demand and supply increasing, Ontario could and should close its remaining coal generation by 2011.

"Ontario now has the ability to achieve virtually a complete coal phase-out today," Gibbons said.

But any decrease is a good decrease, said Dr. Suzanne Strasberg, president of the Ontario Medical Association, noting smog contributes to 9,500 premature deaths in the province each year.