Climate Action

Submitted by BVCAS member, Richard Daniel, May 1, 2023

Bow Valley Clean Air Society has been working for years to improve and protect the air quality for our communities.

Approximately a decade ago we broadened our focus to include reduction of regional contributions to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), in an effort to combat the serious threat of climate change. However, as we all know, climate change is not just a regional issue – it is global in its sources and in its impacts. Therefore, beginning in 2015 BVCAS joined with several other Alberta environmental organizations in a very impactful advocacy effort aimed at phasing out the province’s substantial reliance on coal fired power generation. We set a goal of complete phase-out by 2030 and were pleased that the Notley government adopted the target in its Climate Leadership Plan (November 2015). By the end of 2023 Alberta will have met the target seven years ahead of schedule!

The significance of this advocacy can be put into perspective only by remembering how large Alberta’s coal fired power industry was until recently: in 2014 Alberta generated 68 percent of its electricity from coal, burnt more than twice as much coal as all other provinces combined, and the industry accounted for almost as much greenhouse gas emissions as all of Alberta’s oilsands operations at the time. For every unit of coal-fired power replaced by renewable energy we expect to see a 100 per cent reduction in GHG emissions and, by most estimates, every unit of natural gas fired generation would reduce GHG emissions by about 50 per cent relative to coal.

And the transition from coal also had a positive impact on air quality downwind from the plants: data for 2011 indicated that one third of sulphur dioxide emissions, six per cent of fine particulate matter and 44 percent of mercury from man-made sources originated with these power plants.

BVCAS is proud to have been a part of this positive example of progressive and pragmatic environmental change.