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Canada will shutter its coal-fired power plants by 2030 as part of its strategy to cut greenhouse gas emission under the Paris climate accord, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna announced on Nov. 21.
The plants, located in four provinces, produce about 10 percent of Canadaโs total CO2 emissions, and closing them will remove the equivalent in emissions of 1.3 million cars from roads, or five megatons of greenhouse gas emissions, she told a press conference.
โAs part of our governmentโs vision for a clean growth economy, we will be accelerating the transition from traditional coal power to clean energy by 2030,โ she said.
With an abundance of hydroelectric power, as well as nuclear, solar and wind power, 80 percent of Canadaโs electricity production emits no air pollution.
McKenna said she aims to ramp that up to 90 percent by 2030. Citing National Energy Board figures, she noted that wind power-generating capacity increased twenty-fold in the past decade while solar capacity rose 125 percent.
The minister, however, added that carbon capture would be an acceptable substitute to closing a plant if Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan province wished to continue burning coal.
Saskatchewan has resisted strong climate action, which it says would harm its vast agricultural and burgeoning oil sectors.
It is testing the worldโs first large-scale carbon capture and storage, built into a SaskPower coal-fired plant in the Canadian prairies.
Ottawa economics professor and energy policy expert Jean-Thomas Bernard, however, said efforts to capture and store coal have proven to be costly — Can$1.4 billion for the SaskPower Boundary Dam pilot project to produce 115 megawatts of electricity.
โWeโve been talking about clean coal for 20 years and itโs not yet realized commercially so there must be major difficulties with the technology,โ he opined.
โCoal is a relatively small partโ of Canadaโs energy mix, he added.
Most of the coal plants in Canada are โquite oldโ and could be replaced with clean alternatives at โvery reasonable costs,โ he told AFP.
McKenna also set a new more ambitious goal of reducing total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels.
Environmental activists and opposition parties had until now criticized the Liberal government for having kept the previous administrationโs GHG emissions reduction target of 30 percent by 2030.
The move to accelerate weaning Canada off coal comes as Austria, Britain, Denmark, France and the Netherlands do the same.
It could, however, put Canada on a divergent path from the United States, its neighbor and largest trading partner.
Last yearโs Paris Agreement set a goal of limiting average global warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by cutting greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Countries including the United States have pledged to curb emissions under the deal by moving to renewable energy sources.
But U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to โcancelโ the pact and boost oil, gas and coal, dismissing climate change as a โhoaxโ perpetrated by China.
