Coal plan undermined?

Photo: The Canadian Press

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna

Canada's drive to shut down all of its coal-fired power plants by 2030 could be undermined by provincial side-deals like the one currently being negotiated with Nova Scotia, critics say.

"A 2030 date, overall for Canada, is achievable and ambitious — it strikes that sweet spot," Erin Flanagan, federal program director at the Pembina Institute, said Tuesday.

"We don't want to see any policy slippage during the negotiations ... We want to make sure that each of the provinces is held to the same standard and they are doing everything they can to facilitate that coal-to-clean process."

Flanagan, in Bonn, Germany, for the 2017 United Nations climate change talks, said federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is winning kudos for her high-profile bid to lobby other countries and states to commit to a 2030 deadline.

But Flanagan said Canada has plenty of work to do before it reaches that target.

Since the federal and provincial governments share responsibility for energy and the environment, the provinces have the option of implementing the new federal rule through so-called equivalency agreements, which are aimed at achieving equivalent environmental outcomes.

Nova Scotia is pushing for an exemption that could see the province using coal-fired plants well beyond 2030. Last November, Ottawa and the province agreed to that idea in principle, with the federal government recognizing that Nova Scotia has already met Canada's target of a 30-per-cent reduction in greenhouse emissions from 2005 levels.

While it's true Nova Scotia has had great success in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, Flanagan said she is concerned the exemption may prompt other provinces to backslide.

Speaking in Manila on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called coal the "dirtiest of all fossil fuels," adding that reducing its use was one of the greatest challenges to meeting climate change targets.

The use of coal-fired generating plants in Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia accounts for 10 per cent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions. Ontario has already shut down all of its coal-fired plants, and Alberta has committed to doing the same by 2030, though the plan in that province is to mainly use another fossil fuel: natural gas.

Green party Leader Elizabeth May said the issue has been complicated by Nova Scotia's March decision to approve the opening of the Donkin underground coal mine in Cape Breton.

The province has three coal-fired power plants — two of them in Cape Breton.