Ecuador court gives green light for Silvercorp, Salazar’s El Domo project
The ruling removes the last major obstacle for the $250 million project, located 150 km northeast of Guayaquil.
The Canadian province of Ontario may soon become the first place in North America to snuff out coal-fired electricity generation for good, as it is set to introduce next week legislation aimed to ban the burning of coal and the building of new such plants.
If the proposed Ending Coal for Cleaner Air Act is approved, it would means that no Ontario generating station will ever burn coal again, once this kind of facilities stop operating by the end of 2014, the government said in a press release.
The plan has been in the works for quite a while. The Liberals first promised to close the coal plants in 2007, then pushed back the timetable to 2009 and again to 2014.
In January this year, Chris Bentley —who was then Ontario’s minister of energy— vowed he would make coal account for less than 1% of the province energy supply by 2014.
He also said the province’s largest coal-fired electricity plants, Nanticoke and Lambton, would be shut by the end the year. And the province will likely deliver— it is finishing the conversion of Nanticoke to run on biomass.
Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, is an established net exporter of electricity. Last year alone it sold 10 TWh that had in excess, which is about enough to power Hawaii, according to Clean Technica.
Ontario’s government says its elimination of coal-fired electricity is the single largest greenhouse gas reduction initiative so far in North America.
The World Coal Association (WCA), which groups the globe’s coal companies, has warned the world can’t abandon the black combustible as it generates about 41% of world electricity and is likely to overtake oil as the main source of energy by 2020.
Image from WikiMedia Commons
12 Comments
Guest
@MINING.com spelling mistake second paragraph “it would means that no Ontario generating station will eve burn coal again”
Silver T. Rader
Canada dismissed the cheap, safe conversion to Liquid fluoride thorium reactor that could have provided low cost conversion. Other countries around the world are moving to this proven technology for good reasons.
Canada’s liberals must care more about selling bonds so bankers and contractors can profit. It is a shame that the ecosystem didn’t get priority over the profits.
Biomass raises doubts that it is truly carbon neutral, as the gas released into the atmosphere through the burning of carbon material is only steadily reabsorbed by plants over time. In immediate terms there are significant climatological draw-backs, potentially even more so fossil fuel, if employed on a large scale. The mono-culture crops involved have almost always lead to de-forestation. It almost always leads to less food production for the general ecosystem.
US guy
Now if we can put Canada out of business with their dirty tar sands we can tally back at their economy!
CharlieB
Easy to do when the name of your major power producer is Ontario Hydro. What is their position on SO2 emissions at Sudbury I wonder.
Guest
Vale is putting a billion dollars into SO2 capture technology at the Super Stack. If you folks out there know of a better way to process nickel, please pass it along to us instead of bashing the industry that helps make the components for the computer you’re using.
Silver T. Rader
It will still release more cancer causing radioactivity (found naturally in coal) than a full uranium plant. One compound reduction does not make a sound economic case.
Plinko
Who wages “war” on coal?
LAMB
Ontario should be very cautious about BANNING coal-fired electrical generating plants. Wind-generated electricity is too expensive and fraught with difficult side-effects for Humans and Animals. Unfortunately, all the tree-hugging do-gooders in Toronto think it is the answer – UNTIL THEY HAVE TO PAY THE ELECTRICAL BILL. So, Ontario continues down the Wind Turbine road – BLINDLY.
SO, WHERE WILL industry GET REASONABLY PRICED ELECTRIC POWER FOR the FUTURE? Ontario’s manufacturing industry may be moving to venues where electrical power is less expensive – like QUEBEC.
bob ashworth
CO2 as well as all other normal atmospheric gases cools the earth, They don’t warm it. CFC destruction of stratospheric ozone caused the stratosphere to cool some 1.5C as the earth warmed some 0.6C from 1966 to 2002. The Montreal Protocol had CFC production facilities in developed nations shut down in 2000. In 2002 the earth started a slight cooling trend that has continued to the present. In 2100 the ozone in the stratosphere should be back to normal, before the age of CFCs.
I am an old chemical engineer and hate what the nefarious ones are trying to do to coal, for no good reason, just to line their own pockets from completely non-green technologies, the nefarious ones call “green”. Wake up Canadians and Americans.
Thestarv
The government never has the peoples best interest at heart. There is money behind this somewhere.
Tom Adams
Ontario electricity consumers bought swamp land in Florida, a truck load of pixie dust, and whole herd of unicorns. http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/11/20/ontarios-cost-cancer-started-with-coal/
Guest from Ontario
I was at Nanticoke when the Government of Ontario sent a company to take down the smoke stacks for 1 to 4 generators, while they were still running! Does any one realize that Nanticoke Generating Station puts out the same amont of power as Bruce Nuclear GS. This from the same government that has hundreds of solar farms that they’ve contracted that are still not hooked up to the power grid after 2 to 3 years.
Do you realize that because wind power isn’t constant that it takes the equivilant of 1800 windmills to equal the output of ONE nuclear generator.
Coal is by far the cheapest way of producing power. A coal plant can be cycled from 5% generation to 100% in less than 1 hour. When there is a spike in demand coal plants are the ones that are brought up to fill the gap in power.
Lastly I would like to make a comment one how Ontario is a ” net exporter of electricity”, if the Ontario Government hadn’t made it so easy for foreign interest to come in and buy our manufacturing and then shut them down and move them off shore we would need Nanticoke and Lampton running at full potential like they were in the 70’s and 80’s.
As a Canadian, and a former power worker I’m beginning to be ashamed at calling myself a Canadian! As I look around this beautiful country, ( I have lived and /or worked in every Province and Territory) all I see is one big for sale sign.