Nova Scotia's Power Plants
My column this week (to be published Thursday) will look at how the Nova Scotia government deals with, or rather, doesn't deal with our coal problem. Anticipating that, I'll give some background material here over the next few days to round out the discussion. First up, the dimensions of the problem:
Nova Scotia has five major power plants. Four of those, providing about 78 percent of our electricity, are coal-fired. (The fifth is the Tufts Cove plant in Dartmouth, which can run on either heavy fuel oil or natural gas. I've discussed Tufts Cove here and here.)
Greenhouse gas-wise, coal plants are the dirtiest way to make electricity. Which is why the four plants in Nova Scotia account for nearly half of the entire province's GHG emissions. That is, those four plants put out as much GHG as do every person, industry and government in Nova Scotia combined. (That's not completely fair, I realize: the plants are generating power for our use. My point here is to discuss the magnitude of the problem. I'll get into alternatives in coming days.)
The folks at PollutionWatch.org have compiled data from Environment Canada to give us the breakdown of our plants, as follows (figures are from 2005, in CO2 equivalent):
| Plant | Greenhouse Gas Emissions |
| Lingan Generating Station | 4,442,966 million tonnes |
| Trenton Generating Station | 2,028,040 million tonnes |
| Point Aconi Generating Station | 1,882,861 million tonnes |
| Point Tupper Generating Station | 1,008,099 million tonnes |
| Total | 9,361,966 million tonnes |
That 9.4 million tonnes compares to about 24 million tonnes in 2005 for the entire province, or 40 percent of the total. (That's just what's coming out of the stacks, and doesn't include transportation-related emissions, or heat loss through transmission over the grid, so I'm comfortable calling it "nearly half.")
So there's the challenge: Nova Scotia has agred to an 85 percent cut in GHG emissions, but the coal plants are responsible for 40- 50 percent of existing emissions. Obviously, we can't continue to operate these plants and meet the target.
Clearly, it's going to take a lot of work, a lot of education of the public, and a lot of money to get these plants shut down. But none of our political leaders in Nova Scotia are discussing this problem at all.
They are failing us.
I'll discuss the proposed global moratorium on coal plants next post.
|
