With the Paris 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, just wrapping up there has been a lot of reporting from various media sources over the last few weeks about the climate change proposals and associated announcement of various government initiatives.
Alberta Coal
Although not totally new, one of the discussions highlighted is about the increased efforts by Canada (particularly the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta) to eliminate coal based power generation.
It is hard to argue this is not a really noble cause, coal is dirty and proven to cause respiratory related diseases. Well documented are among them Coal Miners pneumoconiosis (CWP) and Silicosis. Also the burning of coal produces a whole list of harmful air pollutants (much worse than say oil/natural gas production).
Economy versus Environment
For me, the big issue in this discussion is the economic effects. While harmful, both to mine and also when burned; Remember, coal is plentiful, relatively easy to extract (when measured against it’s competitor fuels).
Given coal supply is pretty steady and generally exceeds demand, it is a cost effective solution to power creation (more so than other alternatives like hydro, nuclear, wind, etc). Although, the economic benefit does depend on a number of factors, key to this is the geographic ready availability of alternate fuels or power sources like rivers, wind, etc,. relative to population and demand for power.
Current State
The real conundrum though is about the current economic activities relative to extraction and utilization of coal. Using coal has a huge historical base with a well built up infrastructure (albeit continuing to shrink over time). The speed at which the contraction of coal based economies occurs can have a very significant impact. That is, whole small towns in the Canadian Provinces of BC and Alberta depend on this to survive and would basically become decimated.
Plan, be respectful, do it right
Unlike other areas of Canada, like Cape Breton, where shrinking demand and availability of coal supplies has resulted in huge unemployment and poverty; The governments of Alberta and British Columbia must create plans that mitigate this impact on their citizens and replacement economic activities need to be in place before the hammer drops.
Do we need to send this message to social government like the current one in Alberta? Rhetorical question on my part, we should not need to.