Coal Fire Plant Phase Out

Ontario’s last coal-burning power plants will close by the end of this year, Premier Dalton McGuinty is expected to announce Thursday.

The closure is either one year earlier than scheduled, or six years late, depending on your perspective.

The current deadline for closing the coal plants is Dec. 31, 2014 — which makes the new deadline a year early. But the McGuinty government had ridden into office in 2003 promising to close the coal plants by the end of 2007.... Read more »

From our friends at Ontario Clean Air Alliance:

Another coal plant has bitten the dust in Ontario.  A few days ago, the Atikokan Generating Station, located about 200 kilometres west of Thunder Bay, burned its last piece of coal.  While it may be a long way from smoggy southern Ontario, the Atikokan plant was still a big polluter: dumping mercury and acid-rain generating fallout over the beautiful lakes, rivers and forests of the province’s northwest.  And, of course, it was a major source of greenhouse gas emissions that affect us all. ... Read more »

This is a joint post with Andrew S. Kanter, MD MPH, the president of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Coal kills. Don't take it from us; that's what International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde told a Washington, D.C., audience recently, noting that coal pollution is responsible for 70,000 premature deaths each year in India alone. Shockingly, that is only the tip of the iceberg. Even in developed countries like the United States, coal burning is responsible for approximately 13,200 deaths, 9,700 hospitalizations, and more than 20,000 heart attacks annually.
... Read more »

From India Environment Post:

Cheap Coal is Really, Really Dead... Read more »

At the recent Toronto Enviro Alliance comedy fundraiser, the annual EcoBunk Awards, I uncomfortably chuckled at the ludicrous Ethical Oil advertisements. Maybe you've seen them. It is an exceptionally well-funded ad campaign about why Canada NEEDS to keep producing Tar Sands oil for the world. In one they pose the elegantly flying maple leaf flag next to a woman in the process of being stoned.

Michael Bloomberg braved the sweltering temperatures on a hot July morning, mounted a platform in front of the coal-fired GenOn power station in Alexandria, Virginia, and announced to those gathered that his charity, Bloomberg Philanthropies, was giving $50 million to the US Sierra Club to aid its Beyond Coal Campaign.

Mr.Bloomberg is just one of many people who now grasp the disastrous implications of mining and burning coal. In his speech to the people who had gathered on that hot July morning in Alexandria, Virginia, he said we must "fight climate change and bring about our clean energy future." By offering $50 million to this cause, he said, "I am doing my part to move our country Beyond Coal. Are you with me?"... Read more »

Under attack for soaring hydro bills, the Ontario government struck back Friday by announcing the shutdown of four more coal-fired energy generating units.

Speaking from the Ontario Lung Association headquarters in Toronto, Energy Minister Brad Duguid said two of eight coal-fired units at the Nanticoke station and two of four at the Lambton plant have closed. Shutting them down is the pollution-clearing equivalent of removing up to 2 million cars from the road.

Read the whole story here