While I was out on that afternoon drive on September 1st, exploring a couple of old service stations, I also made a stop at the Genessee Power Plant. There was a viewpoint overlooking the plant and I stopped in there to check things out. They had a huge Komatsu dump truck parked there that once hauled coal from the nearby mine, to the generating plant.
The coal mines are still operating, and it seems that this power plant is one of the last ones in the province to be switched over from coal to natural gas.
I question the logic of that decision. It seems that our coal burning plants here in Alberta were among the cleanest in the world. Interpretive panels at the viewpoint spoke of fabric filters that captured 98% of the particulate matter in the emissions. Natural gas is of course cleaner, but not all that much. And this decision has dramatically increased the cost of natural gas for consumers, for whom there are no other viable options for home heating. It also dramatically increased the cost of electricity.
On top of all that, coal is still being mined in many parts of Canada. Now it is mostly being shipped to China, where it is burnt with virtually no emissions standards. I guess its OK to pee in the pool, as long as it's at the other end. I'm not anti-environmental, and am not a climate change denier.... but it seems to me these decisions could have been made with a little more common sense.
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