The Windsor Star
June 7, 2010
Dave Battagello

Activists take aim at coal-fired power plants

Ontario continues to put health and lives at risk by failing to lower emission limits at its coal-fired electrical plants, environmentalists and health officials said Monday.

Windsor is at ground zero for the worst — sitting in a location downwind from the transboundary Ohio Valley pollutants and in the middle of Ontario's two largest coal burning plants — Nanticoke on the shores of Lake Erie and Lambton on the St. Clair River, they say.

The provincial government has said Ontario will shut down its coal-fired power plants at the end of 2014, but two weeks ago Ontario Power Generation, which operates the remaining coal plants, approved maximum limits of 11.5 megatonnes of emissions for the next four years.

Ontario Clean Alliance leader Jack Gibbons said this year's limits should have been cut 17 per cent lower to 9.8 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — the total of actual emissions released by plants in 2009. Even better, shutter the coal plants, he said.

Gibbons said there are plenty of other available alternative sources such as natural gas. There are a half-dozen gas plants across Ontario barely being used — including Windsor's Brighton Beach plant — that could easily meet electricity demand in Ontario without the use of coal, he said.

"You are facing more unneccesary deaths and asthma attacks by continuing the use of coal plants for another four years," he said. "It doesn't make sense because plants like Brighton Beach are nowhere near full capacity. We should be using them to save lives."

Gibbons wants Ontario's coal plants on standby and operated only in an emergency. The move would eliminate the equivalent of greenhouse gas of seven million cars, save billions in health care costs and prevent hundreds of deaths each year, he said.

In April, a joint report by the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario and Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment projected 250 deaths per year from Ontario coal plants for the years 2010 to 2014 and also called on the provincial government to close the coal plants this year.

"Windsor is in a very polluted part of the province," Gideon Forman, executive director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said Monday. "You have a lot of cancer and other illnesses.

"The most appalling part there is enough capacity without the coal plants. It's hugely frustrating. It's creating a huge amount of smog and greenhouse gases.

“Closing the plants now would be an enormous improvement for human health."

OPG said the emission limits established a couple of weeks ago by its board for the next four years are the same outlined in 2008, said spokesman Ted Gruetzner.

"(Gibbons) is saying there is an increase, but there has been no change in the targets," Gruetzner said.

It's not realistic to set the limits any lower because of system reliability, yet OPG has agreed to shut down two of four operating units at the Lambton plant and two of eight units at Nanticoke this fall, he said.

"We saw the system can afford to drop these units so we have done so," Gruetzner said. "We believe we are making the progress we need to make."

As of 1 p.m. Monday about 15 per cent of power being used in Ontario was coming from coal plants, according to website of the Independent Electricity System Operator, which provides up-to-the-minute data. The agency is responsible in determining power supply sources across the province.

"Ontario has made a lot of progress in reducing coal-fired emissions," said IESO spokesman Terry Young. "Last year, we were at the lowest in 45 years. Four units are being taken out of service this fall so there has been progress. But in terms of getting off coal right now, we are not there yet."

Gas is being used more frequently, but it depends on plant locations, availability and costs when IESO makes its decisions daily on what sources are to be used, Young said.

But one local environmentalist said too many lives are needlessly being lost and health harmed by coal plant emissions.

"Smog season is really deadly for people in the Great Lakes basin, so we have to get rid of the coal-fired power plants," said Derek Coronado of the Citizens Environment Alliance. Not only what coal plants are putting into the air hurting us, but also fallout into the Great Lakes watershed, he noted.