Canada to introduce new coal-fired generation emissions standard

• 12 years ago (2012-09-08)
• David Flin

North America 1021

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Peter Kent, Canada’s federal Environment Minister, said that the country plans to start applying a new performance standard of 420 mt of CO2/GWh to its coal-fired power plants in 2015. He said that the standard is expected to reduce the generation sector’s cumulative emissions by 214 million mt over a 21 year period, and that the standard would bring coal-fired stations into line with natural gas and renewable energy resources.

However, according to P J Partington, a policy analyst at the environmental think-tank the Pembina Institute, various exemptions for existing coal-fired plants and a 10-year exemption for coal-fired generators planning to implement carbon capture storage means that just 16 percent of Canada’s coal capacity will be subject to the performance standard in 2020. He said that many of these exemptions come from the government’s use of transition measures in a redefinition of the useful life of a coal-fired generating plant as 50 years after a facility’s first commercial power production.