Canada’s coal exports rise in 2023 despite federal government’s goals

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OTTAWA — Canadian exports of thermal coal elevated one other seven per cent final 12 months, reaching the very best stage in nearly a decade.

The increase in exports of the form of coal burned to make electrical energy comes as Canada leads a cost to finish using coal as a supply of energy worldwide.

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would cease

Statistics printed this month by the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert present 19.5 million tonnes of thermal coal had been exported by way of their terminals final 12 months.

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That’s up from just a little greater than 18 million tonnes in 2022 and is sort of twice the quantity Canada exported in 2015 when the Liberals took energy.

Fraser Thomson, a workers lawyer at Ecojustice, says he thinks some corporations know their days of transport thermal coal are numbered and try to get out as a lot as they will earlier than they get reduce off.

Coal is taken into account the dirtiest gasoline for making electrical energy on the subject of greenhouse gasoline emissions and air air pollution. It produces nearly twice the quantity of carbon dioxide when burned as pure gasoline to make the identical quantity of vitality.

World coal use expanded in 2022, partly because the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a spike in gasoline costs. The Worldwide Vitality Company stated in its most up-to-date forecast that it believes thermal coal demand could have peaked in 2023.

China accounts for greater than half the world’s use of thermal coal, and India nearly 15 per cent.

Atmosphere Minister Steven Guilbeault stated final month he expects to announce a plan to part out coal exports later this 12 months.

NDP MP Laurel Collins acquired bored with ready for Guilbeault to behave and in February launched a non-public member’s invoice to drive the top of coal exports. The invoice has not but been debated.

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Canada and the UK additionally launched the worldwide Powering Previous Coal Alliance seven years in the past to encourage all international locations to chop again on using coal as a supply of energy.

Dramatic lower in use of coal as vitality supply inside Canada

Canada’s home use of coal energy has fallen dramatically, helped by Ontario’s determination to shut all its coal energy vegetation. The final one in that province closed in 2014.

Alberta’s final two coal vegetation are transitioning to pure gasoline this 12 months.

Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are the one different provinces with vital reliance on coal, however laws require them to shut them, transition them to gasoline, or equip them with emissions seize know-how by 2030.

Regardless of all that, Thomson stated Canada continues to ship coal abroad.

“What occurred when the Liberals introduced within the efficient ban on burning coal domestically, the concept was that the coal mines that had been supplying these vegetation could be shuttered and finally that business would transition,” he stated.

“What we’ve seen since that point is home manufacturing of coal has skyrocketed threefold, and the federal government appears to not be doing something about it regardless of guarantees to sort out it.”

Nearly all the thermal coal Canada produces comes from coal mines in Alberta and is exported, primarily to Asia, from ports in B.C.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed March 29, 2024.

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