This report is a submission to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel. It provides important evidence supporting the accelerated phase-out of the province’s coal-fired electricity generation.
The report investigates the state of Alberta’s air quality. It highlights what the cumulative health impacts of air pollution will be from 2015 to 2030, and Alberta’s coal-fired electricity sector’s contribution to this air pollution.
Between now and 2030, air pollution will be responsible for more than 4,500 premature deaths and nearly 16,000 hospital admissions in Alberta. The healthcare costs of treating those illnesses, along with lost productivity due to illness related absences from work, are projected to be more than $760 million. Alberta’s fleet of coal-fired power plants is not the only source of this air pollution, but reducing emissions generated by burning coal provides a number of climate and air-quality benefits. Many of these polluting plants are located near large communities because their placement was based on proximity to the coal supply, and the vulnerability of population centres to their emissions was not taken into account. The fact that there are three large plants very close to Edmonton is cause for significant concern.
The report also points out that as jurisdictions around the continent and globe move away from coal-powered electricity, Alberta is increasingly an outlier in its disproportionate dependence on this greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuel. Although there are a number of policies in place geared toward shortening the life of coal-fired power plants in the province, the perspective of the Independent Power Producers Society of Alberta is that a mere seven per cent of the coal-fired power plant capacity has to close by 2030. Much more must be done more quickly.
This paper makes it clear that an accelerated coal phase-out would make a significant contribution to Alberta’s reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and action on climate change, but it also shows that it would have significant health benefits. These would in turn deliver significant economic savings, both to Albertans and to the government-funded health-care sector.
‘Climate, Health, and Alberta’s Coal-Fired Power Plants’ is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
