King Coal at the Crossroads

Audio slide show

Like some fantastical machine out of a Star Wars movie, a massive power shovel backs slowly away from the hill it has been chewing at. In the teeth of a bucket big enough to scoop up a house, the driver gingerly snags a jury-rigged wire ball attached to a power cord the size of a fire hose and lifts it so that it doesn’t get crushed under the tracks. Huge dump trucks capable of carrying 400-tonne loads begin to form a line during the delay. The shovel turns and rumbles back to the face of loose rock and soil, and the excavation continues.

No, this is not an oilsands mine, let alone some space fantasy. Photographer Ian Jackson and I are being treated to an exclusive tour of the Highvale Coal Mine, located just 70 kilometres west of Edmonton. Owned by power producer TransAlta Corporation, Highvale is the largest open-pit coal mine in Canada, 13,000 hectares in area. Flanking the southern shore of Lake Wabamun, it is a dusty, 25-kilometre drive from one end to the other. Its six active pits supply two thermal power plants, Sundance and Keephills, which together generate about a third of Alberta’s electricity. Together they also represent the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. In 2006 they emitted a combined 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Wherein lies the conundrum: is coal part of the solution for a world running out of affordable energy or an environmental catastrophe in the making?

Coal is Alberta’s and the world’s most abundant fossil fuel, and the world’s fastest-growing energy source on a per-capita basis. China alone is building coal-fired electrical plants at a rate in excess of one a week. Coal mining is a big business and economic driver in Alberta, too. Eleven of the province’s 15 mines of any size are coal mines. Highvale alone employs about 500 workers, 600 more work at the two power plants and a further 1,200 are in the process of building Keephills 3, an advanced coal thermal plant that TransAlta and Capital Power Corporation are building next to the existing Keephills facility in time for a 2011 startup.

And yet coal is under fire. It is the largest contributor to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, running smack against the worldwide effort to curb CO2 emissions. In the United States, 97 proposed coal-burning power plants have been denied regulatory approval since 2001. President Barack Obama has identified his country’s dependence on coal-fired electricity as a stumbling block to action on climate change. Other critics, including Gary Holden, CEO of Calgary power utility Enmax Corporation, make the case against coal one of simple efficiency: by the time you mine it, burn it, convert it into electricity and transmit it to urban users, 77% of the energy contained in a lump of coal is lost, Holden explained in a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce last year.

Faced with the likelihood of increased costs of doing business associated with new emissions-control regulations, companies and investors are hedging their bets. Ontario Power Generation, for example, has embarked on an effort to reduce its coal-fired generation by 40%; it closed one power plant in 2005 and plans to close four more generating units at two stations next year. The Ontario government has vowed to make the province coal-free by 2014.

TransAlta itself is shifting its portfolio of assets towards renewable power, most recently with its bid to take over Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. Last year it purchased 400,000 tonnes worth of carbon offsets from Emission Credits International Corporation, an intermediary for Alberta farmers using no-till methods.

At the same time, the company is trying to clean up its coal generation. Keephills 3 will be, like the Genesee 3 project not far away (and another Capital Power/TransAlta joint venture), a “supercritical” plant that burns the coal at a much higher temperature than older plants, simultaneously increasing fuel efficiency and lowering emissions intensity by 18%. For a variety of reasons, the giant power shovels and draglines at Highvale are powered by electricity rather than diesel, making them oddly quiet as they go about their earthmoving work.

The power plants around Lake Wabamun also offer a promising site for carbon capture and storage (CCS), whereby the carbon dioxide produced at the plant, instead of being released into the atmosphere as it is now, would get piped and pumped into depleted oil reservoirs or salt caverns deep underground. (The area is conveniently located atop the Pembina Cardium oilfield, the largest in Canada, which is still producing oil after half a century.) In 2008 TransAlta announced Project Pioneer, which received commitments from the provincial and federal governments last October for $779 million in funding. Slated to be operational by 2013, Pioneer promises to sequester a million tonnes of CO2 per year from Keephills 3, more than any CCS project yet in operation. TransAlta signed an agreement last year with Alstom to test the European power giant’s chilled ammonia storage process at Pioneer and is partnering with the University of Calgary’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE) to assess the suitability of potential sequestration sites in the Wabamun area.

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