Canada moves to phase out coal power

Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice told his country’s largest electricity producers this week that they will have to phase out coal plants within the next 10 to 15 years, CTV News reports.

Canada plans to shut down the nation’s coal power plants in order to achieve a goal of 90 percent reliance on clean energy sources by 2020.

But the environment minister is quietly shifting that goal to “low emitting sources,” which would include natural gas as well as nuclear, hydroelectric and renewables such as wind and solar. Natural gas power plants emit roughly half the carbon dioxide as coal-burning ones, and the fuel is expected to be abundant for the next several decades as the industry develops massive shale gas deposits.

Canada has 21 operating coal plants – with Ontario planning to close its four by 2014; while the U.S. has some 650 coal-burning plants that provide more than half the country’s electricity.

“If Ontario can phase out coal in 10 to 15 years, how can Michigan leaders be so dead set on preventing our state from competing with our nearest neighbor?” Anne Woiwode, director of the Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club wrote in the online environmental forum Enviro-Mich.

Late last year the state of Michigan granted an air permit for a new 830 megawatt coal-fired power plant to be built by Consumers Energy at its Karn/Weadock complex near Bay City.