Canada’s parliamentary environment watchdog is being urged to investigate whether years of alleged negligence by federal officials have allowed pollution from coal mines to wipe out species of fish and poison drinking water in B.C.’s Elk Valley.

The calls for the new federal investigation follow repeated pleas from U.S. government officials based on two decades of scientific evidence about how selenium and other pollutants have flowed into cross-border waterways from Teck Resources coal mines.

A team from the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre compiled the evidence in a report sent to the federal environment commissioner, Jerry De Marco, who works in the office of the federal auditor general, Karen Hogan.

“We submit that no issue of sustainable development could be more significant than the government’s longstanding failure to use the Fisheries Act and other federal powers to address catastrophic coal mine pollution in the Elk Valley,” the report says.

“This regulatory failure has directly contributed to one of the most serious and permanent environmental disasters in Canadian history.” 

Law students Jesse Langelier, Russell Chiong and Ellen Campbell drafted the report under the supervision of the centre’s legal director Calvin Sandborn and sent it on behalf of conservation group, Wildsight.

It was not immediately clear how soon the commissioner would be able to review the report. Investigations in the commissioner’s office often take months of preparations before getting underway and years to complete.

There is a growing urgency to find out why the federal and provincial governments have not cracked down on pollution from the mines because several new coal mine proposals for the Elk Valley are in different stages of review by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office, Sandborn said.

The report also questioned whether Canada was violating its international obligations under the Boundary Waters Treaty, signed in 1909. 

“The governments of Montana, Idaho and the United States have long complained about Canada’s remarkable failure to control the pollution now poisoning American waters and fish downstream from the Elk Valley coal mines,” said the centre’s report. “Those governments are now desperately attempting more definitive action to prompt Canada to address its international obligations — and to stop polluting its neighbour.”

The B.C. Environmental Assessment Office told The Narwhal in an email that the process to assess three new coal mines will look at water quality, the effects on fish, “cumulative effects from existing and proposed projects” and mitigation of adverse effects.

But, if approved, the new mines could increase pollution from the mountains of waste rock that leach selenium, calcite and other pollutants, the report warned.

“Such ongoing expansion will likely lock in higher long-term pollution levels for generations to come,” says the University of Victoria report.

The centre’s report singled out officials from two federal departments, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, alleging that their officials failed to wield their powers under existing environmental laws and instead deferred to the B.C. government. This despite a blistering 2016 report from then provincial auditor general Carol Bellringer who noted that, after 20 years of tracking dramatic annual increases of selenium in the watershed around the mines, the province took no substantive action.

Bellringer’s report said provincial compliance and enforcement of mining rules were deficient and “inadequate to protect the province from significant environmental risks.” But, five years later, Elk Valley provincial mine pollution discharge permits continue to set levels that far exceed B.C.’s Water Quality Guidelines for aquatic species, wildlife and drinking water.

The province, together with the Ktunaxa Nation Council and other agencies, has come up with the Elk Valley Water Quality Plan, which, the province says, “provides a long-term strategy to stabilize and reduce concentrations of mine constituents in the watershed.” Under the Environmental Management Act, Teck must meet B.C. selenium water quality guidelines in Lake Koocanusa, which straddles the border, according to a ministry statement.

But those measures are grossly inadequate, says the University of Victoria report, pointing to increasing selenium levels and Canada’s refusal to at least match selenium standards across the border in the United States.

Senators from the U.S. want the Elk Valley pollution problem referred to the International Joint Commission and say Canada appears to be violating the Boundary Waters Treaty. In a surprising twist, Canadian commissioners have also been accused by their U.S. counterparts of suppressing scientific information on the Elk Valley selenium discharges.

When asked about its environmental oversight of Teck, a spokesperson for the B.C. Environment Ministry said Teck has recently been subject to “strengthened investigations and compliance requirements” and, over several years, has been fined $720,000 for environmental violations.

More notably, in March, after the federal government finally took action over the persistent pollution, Teck was fined $60 million for violations that occurred in 2012. However, as part of the plea bargain, the Crown dropped approved charges for pollution that occurred from 2009-2011 and from 2013-2019.

“A question arises: were charges long withheld as part of some agreement with the company and the province to clean up the selenium problems?” the report asks.

“If so, just where is that effective cleanup?”

Teck told The Narwhal in a statement that  the company has made significant progress in implementing the Elk Valley Water Quality Plan and water treatment facilities now in operation are removing almost all selenium, with more plants planned.

“We expect to have capacity to treat up to 54 million litres of water per day later this year — nearly three times our 2020 treatment capacity,” said spokesperson Dale Steeves.

“We have spent more than $1 billion so far to implement the Elk Valley Water Quality plan. Between now and 2024 we plan to invest up to a further $655 million in work to protect the watershed,” he said.

However, the Environmental Law Centre report says the water treatment plants have not lived up to company promises, some of the proposed plants are based on unproven technology and there is no plan to treat the water in perpetuity.

“Worse, there continues to be an enormous shortfall — over $500 million in company security/bonding to protect taxpayers from liability,” it says.

The history of concerns about pollution from the coal mines stretches back to 1995 when studies first indicated that selenium leaching from waste surrounding the coal mines was harming fish in waterways such as the Upper Fording River.

Westslope cutthroat trout, a species of special concern under Canada’s Species At Risk Act, are now on the verge of extirpation. As the trout are a sentinel species, it is an indication that the entire Elk Valley watershed is in deep trouble, says the Environmental Law Centre report.

“The population is likely doomed, yet this outcome was long predicted,” it says 

Adult population counts of the fish fell from 1,573 in 2017 to 104 in 2019, according to a recent report released by Teck.

However, despite studies showing selenium causes deformities and reproductive problems in fish, Teck spokesman Steeves said preliminary findings of a team of independent experts, put together by the company, indicate selenium was not a primary contributor to the decline.

“Teck is working collaboratively with government and Ktunaxa Nation Council to develop a westslope cutthroat trout recovery plan,” he said.

The Ktunaxa Nation, in a community impact statement made during the recent Fisheries Act Teck prosecution, said the pollution is alienating Ktunaxa people from their culture.

“Knowing that the fish habitat is impacted by these polluted waters leads to concern for the safety of the fish as well as for Ktunaxa consuming them. The result is an alienation of our people from our lands, waters and cultural practices,” it says.

The pollution also affects drinking water and seven wells have been found to have selenium levels that exceed guidelines. Teck is providing bottled water to those who rely on the wells and the company paid for a new well for the District of Sparwood after selenium levels exceeded drinking water guidelines.

But many British Columbians remain unaware of the crisis in the rivers and lakes around the Elk Valley because, unlike an oil spill or melting glaciers, selenium is an invisible crisis, said Randal Macnair, Wildsight’s Elk Valley conservation coordinator.

“The water in the Elk Valley flows through and looks great, but the selenium levels keep marching up. Sparwood had to replace a well, people are on bottled water, but it’s out-of-sight out-of-mind and that’s why reports like this are so important,” Macnair said.

Sandborn agrees that most people are unaware that a Canadian company is poisoning fish and polluting rivers that run into the United States and are usually shocked to discover that the government is taking so little action.

One of the big questions is why the law is not being enforced, Sandborn said.

“There are powerful forces at play. There’s a lot of money and jobs at play and there is a lack of taking into account the values that are being destroyed. It’s very short-term thinking,” he said.

Decisions on whether to conduct audits or inquiries into whether government programs are effective are made by the Office of the Auditor General and one consideration is the significance of the issue, the office told The Narwhal in an email.

Reports from the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development go to a parliamentary committee and “it is through the committee hearings process that Parliament holds government to account,” it said.

Environment and Climate Change Canada did not respond to questions before deadline.

Updated at 10 p.m. PT on July 16, 2021, to remove an incorrect reference that the Environmental Law Centre report referred to pollution resulting in the elimination of insect populations and to clarify that the report was recommending that Canada should at least match U.S. selenium standards.

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Dickson Wood is sitting on his back deck listening to a pair of nesting redwing blackbirds chatter in the nearby reeds. He’s pretty sure there are babies in the nest. “They get a little bit more aggressive when the eggs start to hatch,” he says with a chuckle.

It’s peaceful scenes like this one that are reminiscent of his younger days spent exploring the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in and around Clearwater County, west of Red Deer, Alta.

Sixty years ago, when he first started coming to his family’s cottage, the region was what he described as “wilderness territory” — an area with boundless opportunities to hike, fish and camp.

“Over the years I’ve seen it evolve, frankly sadly,” he tells The Narwhal.

Forestry, oil and gas activity and coal exploration have turned much of the region from what Wood describes as a “pristine” forested area to one chopped up by seismic lines, cutblocks, well pads and boreholes.

On a recent helicopter flight over Clearwater County, The Narwhal got a bird’s eye view of the area, which includes exploration for the Ram River Coal Corporation’s Aries Mine and Valory Resources’ Blackstone project.

Projects like these had many Albertans up in arms over the last year, after the United Conservative Party government announced in May 2020 it had rescinded the longstanding coal policy which prohibited most coal mining in areas like these (known in the policy as category 2 lands).

Alberta’s coal policy — in place since 1976 — allowed for exploration, but getting approval to build an actual coal mine was much more arduous. That changed when the coal policy was rescinded, sparking backlash: ranchers upset over deteriorated water quality, tourism operators concerned about destruction of remaining wilderness and concern over what Wood described as “disingenuous” communication of its plans.

The government dialled back its efforts to open up the eastern slopes to open-pit coal mining, and also eventually paused exploration.

“We admit we didn’t get this one right,” Energy Minister Sonya Savage said at a press conference in February announcing the government’s course-reversal.

But residents and advocates are concerned that many Albertans may view the issue as settled, and for those The Narwhal spoke to, the eastern slopes are far from free of future threats from coal mining.

“Everyone’s let their guard down,” Travis Boschman, a wildlife photographer in Red Deer, told The Narwhal. “I’m happy that [exploration] is stopped for now but I don’t have a lot of faith that it’s going to stop forever.”

This leaves some advocating for not just a reprieve from industrial activity, but a conscious effort to protect the region from the cumulative impacts of numerous industries.

“There are certain areas where it’s a non-starter and the eastern slopes just has to be one of those,” Wood said.

Coal exploration quietly chugged along in recent years

Clearwater County was blanketed in coal leases following the government’s announcement that it would rescind the coal policy.

Coal leases soon covered nearly 10 per cent of the county’s area, according to data from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. The area of coal leases more than quadrupled after the government’s announcement that the coal policy would be rescinded, according to the group. Then, facing pressure, the government paused the sale of new leases in category 2 lands in January.

That didn’t stop companies holding existing leases from pursuing exploration, though not all coal leases had active exploration activity.

Then, facing more backlash, the government announced another pause in April on all existing and new exploration on Category 2 lands. At the time, Energy Minister Sonya Savage directed the Alberta Energy Regulator to pause all approvals for coal exploration programs until December 2021. (Tonya Zelinsky, a spokesperson for the Alberta Energy Regulator, told The Narwhal by email that “beyond that date, regular processes would resume unless otherwise directed by the Government of Alberta.”)

But coal exploration in the area had quietly proceeded before the pause, with roots many decades in the past.

The Blackstone project, near the Clearwater River, saw early exploration dating back to the 1970s, and was first mapped by the Geologic Survey of Canada in 1945, according to a 2020 investor presentation from the company.

By 2020, the company had drilled 110 boreholes, drilling a total distance of 17,600 metres. In its 2020 investor presentation, the company noted it had plans to further its exploration program by adding another 20,000 metres of drilling, as well as 100 kilometres of seismic lines.

Boreholes, also known as drill holes, are drilled to assess a coal resource, and though they often represent a small footprint on land — some are 15 centimetres in diameter — they can reach down hundreds of metres below the earth’s surface.

To drill a borehole, companies must transport a drilling rig, often mounted on a skid, through the forest to the proposed site, resulting in visible disturbances on the landscape in the form of removed trees and, oftentimes, new access roads.

To the north, the Aries Ram River coal project has also been drilling bore holes for decades. Between 1970 and 2013, 608 drill holes were completed, for a total drilling distance of more than 63,000 metres, according to a 2017 technical report completed for the company.

Representatives of Ram Coal and Valory Resources did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for an interview.

All this activity has chugged along relatively quietly, leading advocates to wonder what the landscape looked like as a result.

A bird’s eye view

Fields of dandelions bowed their heads in the wind as a helicopter alighted on a recent flight over the coal exploration area for Ram Coal and Valory Resources.

The flight was arranged by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society to take its own videographers as well as three journalists up for a birds-eye view of coal exploration activity.

Cumulative impacts highlight the need for land use planning: advocates

The long list of industries active on the eastern slopes has long been a concern for residents and conservation advocates.

“The environment doesn’t operate on the basis of single projects; it’s the cumulative impacts that are a concern,” Wood said.

Recognition of the cumulative impacts of industrial activity in a region has slowly been gaining traction in Alberta, and the province has gradually been introducing what it calls regional plans. (The Alberta government did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for an interview about regional planning.)

The province is divided into seven regions, two of which — the South Saskatchewan and the Lower Athabasca — have seen the implementation of completed regional plans, which are legally binding documents that replace older versions from the 1980s, according to Christopher Smith, parks coordinator with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

Updated regional plans, he said, attempt “to manage land more on a holistic level and on a landscape level, in order to address cumulative effects.”

The South Saskatchewan regional plan, for example, “uses a cumulative effects management approach to balance economic development opportunities and social and environmental considerations.”

Without a master document like a regional plan, Smith said, “there’s just too many layers for any one particular ministry to be able to fully address within their portfolio.”

But regional planning has stalled in recent years.

“Land-use planning at the landscape level has been a tough sell in Alberta for decades,” Ian Urquhart, the executive director of the Alberta Wilderness Association, told The Narwhal. “Serious cumulative effects management always has been a dream — or an illusion — when it comes to managing lands and natural resources in Alberta.”

Consultation for a North Saskatchewan regional plan, which includes the Aries and Blackstone project areas, began in 2014 but a plan has not yet been completed. “Snails progress at faster paces than regional development in Alberta,” Urquhart said. “This government doesn’t, in my opinion, want anything to do with serious consideration of cumulative effects.”

Without a regional plan, critics fear cumulative impacts won’t properly be addressed.

“No one ministry can deal with the cumulative effects if there’s impacts being felt from other activities outside of their jurisdiction.”

Chris Smith, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society

“The government can’t keep dragging their feet on this regional planning, because in the meantime, we’re creating patchwork policies that are trying to plug the gaps,” Smith said.

“That’s what the regional planning was meant to address — these reactive piecemeal plans to address issues as they cropped up.” Instead, he said, these issues could be addressed by the frameworks created by a regional plan: data could be gathered, baselines established and big-picture impacts better accounted for.

“What it was really meant to do was to bring all these siloed ministries together to deal with these problems holistically,” he said. “No one ministry can deal with the cumulative effects if there’s impacts being felt from other activities outside of their jurisdiction.”

In neighbouring B.C. the Blueberry River First Nations just won a precedent-setting decision that marks the first cumulative impacts Aboriginal Rights case in Canada. In her ruling, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Emily Burke wrote “the province’s mechanisms for assessing and taking into account cumulative effects are lacking and have contributed to the breach of its obligations under Treaty 8.”

Minister putting ‘cart before the horse’: advocate

Speaking at a news conference in April, Savage made it clear that the province’s efforts to update the coal policy were going to happen before any broader, landscape-level planning.

“These consultations are about coal policy, it’s not about the broader land-use planning initiatives,” she said. “It’s about coal. … Let’s get the coal policy and vision done first.”

That leaves advocates concerned about whether the whole picture of industrial activity has been fully considered.

“The Minister is putting the cart before the horse here,” Urquhart told The Narwhal. “You want land-use planning: you want to have an idea of where you think coal fits in on the land, if it fits in at all.”

“You don’t go ahead and look at developing a coal policy before you’ve made those basic land use decisions.”

Urquhart and others are concerned the UCP government has prioritized industrial development, including coal, over other priorities.

“This government has operated in a way that just wants to open the door for industrial use of the land,” he said. “Any serious consideration of cumulative effects just doesn’t just work in that sort of world.”

‘Needs to be a balance’

It’s not just the cumulative effects of industry on the landscape of Clearwater County’s mountain slopes that are a concern. Advocates also worry about the individual impacts of any potential coal mines.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society is concerned the Blackstone and Aries projects, should either move forward, would impact habitat for bull trout and grizzly bears, both threatened species in Alberta and federally designated species at risk. The society says the Aries project, at its closest point, would be within one kilometre of the Ram River.

It’s a concern echoed by others concerned about the future of the region.

“One of the concerns, like with the Aries project, is contaminants can get into the groundwater, and ultimately end up in the Ram River, either by surface runoff or groundwater,” Vance Buchwald, a retired fisheries biologist, told The Narwhal. “And the lower Ram has one of the best bull trout populations in central Alberta.”

“Overall, provincially, we are losing the battle for bull trout,” he said. “All of these insults to the landscape are not helping.”

“There needs to be a balance,” Buchwald said of the multiple uses of the landscape. “I’m not convinced that we’re at the right balance.”

For advocates and long-time lovers of the land along the eastern slopes in Clearwater County, the loss of more wilderness to industrial activity remains a looming threat.

“There’s places where we used to hike into the backcountry and camp … it was a 30 or 40 kilometre hike in any direction to get to a road,” Boschman, the photographer in Red Deer, told The Narwhal.

“Fast forward to now and it’s all logging roads and clear cuts. That sort of land barely exists up there anymore — those big vast chunks of wilderness.”

Amber Bracken’s photos were shot for The Narwhal and The Canadian Press.

Updated July 10, 2021, at 9:30 a.m. MT: This article was updated to clarify that both grizzly bears and bull trout are federal designated species at risk and listed as threatened in Alberta.

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“We’re going down to zero.” 

That’s what Thomas Hörnfeldt, vice president of sustainable business at the Swedish-based steel-maker SSAB, told The Narwhal of his company’s carbon emissions. 

Hörnfeldt spoke to me on a video call from his office in Stockholm, a virtual backdrop of a picturesque Swedish canal flickering behind his office chair. He proudly displays a small piece of what he described as SSAB’s first fossil-fuel-free steel on his desk. 

The company made that sample, no coal needed, a year ago in the basement of a technical university in Stockholm. It’s an early step in SSAB’s commitment to completely eliminate carbon pollution from its steel manufacturing plants.

SSAB, which produces approximately 8.8 million tonnes of steel every year at its production plants in Sweden, Finland and the United States, has invested in technology that uses clean hydrogen in place of metallurgical coal.

Metallurgical coal has long been used to manufacture steel, one of the most ubiquitous materials on the planet. Coal is conventionally used for heating and in chemical reactions to create iron, the essential ingredient needed to make steel. But as the world grapples with the climate crisis, the steel industry’s centuries-old reliance on coal — and its enormous carbon footprint — is being called into question.

According to the World Steel Association, the industry is responsible for between seven and nine per cent of the global emissions created from the burning of fossil fuels. 

With the Paris Agreement setting out global goals to dramatically reduce carbon pollution and limit warming to less than two degrees by 2050, the steel sector is, for many, next up in the push to rethink age-old industries.

“It’s a 2,000-year-old technology that just keeps getting refined,” Chris Bataille, an adjunct professor in energy economics at Simon Fraser University, told The Narwhal. And, he said, the next shift for steel manufacturing may well be away from using coal.

That’s exactly what SSAB is doing. The company announced its plans in 2016, along with two partners. The resulting joint venture, Hybrit, also includes an iron ore supplier (LKAB) and an electricity supplier (Vattenfall) — bringing the major components of steel-making together under one umbrella to use hydrogen instead of coal. 

“This concept has been known in the past and it has been done on a small scale,” Hörnfeldt said. “Nobody has really done this in an industrial environment. And that is what we’re testing right now.”

The first pilot plant launched last summer. The company plans to start shutting down its coal-reliant furnaces in a matter of years.

The plans in Sweden are taking root just as the Alberta government faces widespread backlash for its push to open up the province’s iconic Rocky Mountains and eastern slopes to open-pit mining for steel-making coal.

In Sweden, steel-making giant SSAB has announced plans to eliminate its need for metallurgical coal in its plants by 2045. The company uses hydrogen — produced using clean-energy powered electrolysis — in place of coal, dramatically reducing carbon pollution. With the first fossil-fuel-free steel produced last year, the company now has its sights set on bringing it to market in 2026. Photo: SSAB

‘The world is looking for steel-making coal’: Alberta energy minister

The Alberta government began its fraught push for coal nearly a year ago, when the province’s United Conservative Party government announced it had done away with a 1976 policy that prevented open-pit coal mining in much of the Rocky Mountains. New mines in the region would produce metallurgical coal, used for steel-making. Backlash ensued.

But even as the government back-pedalled, it has maintained its commitment to the idea that there is a prosperous future in the metallurgical coal industry.

“There is a tremendous resource of metallurgical coal in Alberta and the world is looking for steel-making coal,” Energy Minister Sonya Savage said in a press conference in February as she defended her government’s push to expand mining opportunities.

Metallurgical coal mines, Savage added, “can help Alberta businesses meet increasing global demand for steel and provide good-paying jobs for hard-working Albertans.” 

Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage has defended her government’s attempt to open up the Rocky Mountain region to metallurgical coal mining, saying “ the world is looking for steel-making coal.” While global demand for steel is expected to increase in coming years, the industry is increasingly looking at ways to move away from coal in favour of technologies that produce far less carbon pollution. Photo: Government of Alberta / Flickr

The International Energy Agency has projected global demand for steel will increase by more than a third by 2050. Steel will, in part, help build new infrastructure such as wind turbines, electric vehicles and high-speed trains in the cleaner, greener global economy envisioned to facilitate the push to net-zero.

As the Energy Transition Hub, a German and Australian partnership, pointed out in a November 2019 report, “new metal [is] central to the zero-carbon transition. Renewable energy, and related technologies such as batteries, rely on steel … and a host of other metals.”

And while the Alberta government says this will mean a boom for the coal industry, not everyone agrees.

Blake Shaffer, assistant professor of economics at the University of Calgary, told The Narwhal  in February the expansion of metallurgical-coal mining in Alberta is an example of the province “chasing the next thing that’s going to die.”

“Rather than staking some economic bets on the growth of metallurgical coal … why don’t we become the leader in green steel-making?” he asked.

While Alberta may be slow to consider his pitch, other parts of the world are moving full-steam ahead.

Metallurgical coal mining, like at this Teck Resources-owned open-pit mine in B.C.’s Elk Valley, has flourished in B.C. and new mines are also currently being proposed in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains. If approved, the Grassy Mountain Mine — unaffected by the government’s “pause” on new projects in parts of the region — could produce as much as 4.5 million tonnes of processed coal per year for 25 years. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

Coal is the main contributor to the carbon pollution produced with steel

The steel industry is the world’s largest industrial consumer of coal, according to the International Energy Agency.

Steel is an alloy —  a mixture of iron and other metals. Pure iron is hard to find naturally, and coal has long been essential in obtaining it.

The process is technical, but here’s the gist: essentially, coal is heated to super-high temperatures (more than 1,000 degrees celsius) to make a carbon-dense substance called coke. The coke is combined with iron ore — iron and oxygen — in what’s known as a blast furnace. 

Steel-making has conventionally relied on metallurgical coal, which is rich in carbon, in the production of pure iron, essential in steel. The coal is used for heating, but also for a chemical reaction in which a carbon-dense substance called coke, derived from coal, reacts with iron ore to leave pure iron. In the process, carbon combines with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide emissions. The resulting carbon pollution is greater than in any other heavy industry. Photo: Shutterstock

That first part is fairly simple: it’s basic heating. “The heating part is only 20 per cent,” Bataille explained. “It’s the chemical reaction of stripping the oxygen off the iron ore that’s 80 per cent of the work.”

And that’s the part you might need to reach back to high school chemistry class to understand.

In the blast furnace, the coke reacts with the oxygen and “strips it off” the iron ore, leaving melted pure iron, a main ingredient of steel, explained Bataille. It’s a simple chemical reaction that is essential to getting pure iron.

“Then we can combine it with nickel and zinc and chromium and what have you,” Bataille said. “And that’s steel.” That finished product remains one of the world’s most ubiquitous and important building materials, used in nearly every building, vehicle, machine, plane, ship, public transit system and bridge on the planet. 

The problem is this: according to the International Energy Agency, the steel and iron industry produces more carbon pollution than any other heavy industry. 

“If we’re going to actually hit somewhere between 1.5 and 2 degrees, blast furnaces have to be shut down,” Bataille said. 

And SSAB plans to do exactly that.

SSAB plans ‘fossil-free steel’

SSAB has said it aims to be the “first steel company in the world to bring fossil-free steel to the market” in 2026. 

The company added it will be “practically fossil free by 2045.”

“To be perfectly frank, we made this schedule a couple of years ago, and a lot of things have happened,” Hörnfeldt, the vice president of sustainable business, told The Narwhal. “Personally, I believe that this is going to happen much faster.”

“Within the foreseeable time frame, we are going to close down all our blast furnace operations.”

The plan is to use green hydrogen and clean electricity in place of coal in the manufacturing process (more on that later). 

The company has said its goal is to reduce Sweden’s carbon pollution by 10 per cent and Finland’s by seven per cent. 

Hörnfeldt said the first of the company’s four blast furnaces will be shuttered in four years at the latest.

Companies like SSAB have developed plans to eliminate coal from their steel plants. In place of coke, derived from coal, the company plans to use clean hydrogen. Like carbon, hydrogen can also strip oxygen from iron ore to make the pure iron needed in steel-making. But in this reaction, the resulting “emission” is H20. Photo: SSAB

Scrap metal, natural gas also options to reduce coal demand

SSAB and Hybrit are not the only ones looking at ways to decarbonize steel, and hydrogen is not the only proposed technology.

One possibility involves the increased use of recycled steel. According to the World Steel Association, an industry group, steel can be recycled indefinitely, without a reduction in quality.

Since so much of the demand for coal comes from making pure iron, using recycled steel can cut down on emissions. A technology called an electric blast furnace — powered by electricity — can transform scrap steel anew again. 

With clean electricity, the technology can dramatically reduce emissions. According to the World Steel Association, approximately 28 per cent of global steel is produced using electric arc furnaces, though not all of them would solely rely on scrap steel. 

Turning scrap metal into new steel in an electric arc furnace requires electricity, which represents a further opportunity to decarbonize.

SSAB’s steel production in the United States is scrap-based, Hörnfeldt noted, adding that the company plans to switch one of its two U.S. plants to clean electricity next year.

But not all demand for steel can be satisfied with scrap. According to the Energy Transition Hub, “recycled metal is likely to supply much less than half of global demand between now and 2050. … The remainder of metal demand will be met using virgin materials.”

Steel is a durable metal that can be recycled indefinitely, meaning many companies can reduce their carbon pollution by used scrap steel in place of virgin materials. Scrap steel, though helpful in reducing the carbon pollution of the industry, is not expected to be able to fulfill the entirety of the demand for steel in coming decades. Photo: Shutterstock

To decarbonize virgin steel manufacturing, some players in the industry have turned to another idea, involving replacing coal with natural gas.  

“There is a technology called Midrex,” Bataille explained. Back to high school chemistry again: instead of using coking coal, natural gas is used to “rip the oxygen off the iron ore, leaving elemental iron.” Then that iron, produced without coal, can be put into an electric arc furnace, powered by clean energy.

“This is an established technology,” he added. “And it’s much lower [in carbon emissions]. And there are these plants running all over the world.”

But the idea generating the most excitement — thought by advocates to be potentially among the greenest — involves using just hydrogen, like SSAB. Midrex boasts on its webpage that its plants are also poised to pivot to hydrogen.

In that process, hydrogen will strip away the oxygen from iron oxide. The byproducts? The pure iron needed for steel-making and good old H20.

“Consensus is growing that the best way to make steel without fossil fuels is with renewable hydrogen,” concluded the 2019 report from the Energy Transition Hub.

Emissions associated with hydrogen dependent on the way it’s produced

Hydrogen is already being used around the world, but current hydrogen production is geared more for other industrial uses, like refining oil or manufacturing fertilizer.

And clean hydrogen is not currently produced at the scale that would be needed for it to replace metallurgical coal.

Most of the hydrogen produced today is made using fossil fuels, without carbon capture technology. When that’s the case, emissions are lower than using coal, but still nowhere near net-zero. 

To truly get to zero-emission hydrogen, the industry would need to move to hydrogen produced from water through electrolysis and powered by clean energy. That’s what’s known as green hydrogen. 

Hörnfeldt told The Narwhal his company is building a facility to make its own green hydrogen, and Hybrit recently announced it is also building a pilot project that will store green hydrogen 30 metres below the earth’s surface in a rocky cavern.

He added that Sweden’s “virtually CO2-free power grid” — the country relies heavily on nuclear, hydro and wind power — makes the use of green hydrogen easier. 

But for other parts of the world, such as Alberta, there is a middle ground, and that’s what’s called blue hydrogen. It’s still generated from fossil fuels, but with a robust carbon capture and storage plan in place. 

In the Edmonton region, advocates say hydrogen production could catapult Alberta into a leading role in a net-zero economy. Alanna Hnatiw, mayor of Sturgeon County and chair of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association, said a major investment in hydrogen could “insulate the market here away from the winds of the global economy.” The region is the subject of plans for a “hydrogen hub” that produces hydrogen from fossil fuels and captures the resulting carbon. Photo: Sturgeon County

According to a recent report from Clean Energy Canada, a climate and clean energy program at Simon Fraser University that works to accelerate an energy transition, Canada is “among a small group of countries with the most potential for producing and exporting clean hydrogen, which could prove particularly useful in decarbonizing industries like steel.” 

It’s something that some Albertans are very excited about.

A grand vision for the province was unveiled last year, with the launch of the Industrial Heartland Hydrogen Task Force. The task force officially launched a so-called hydrogen hub or node in the Edmonton area in April, with the goal of producing blue hydrogen for use locally and for export. 

Advocates are adamant that hydrogen, regardless of whether it’s blue or green, represents a way of making steel that dramatically reduces the carbon footprint of the steel industry. Others worry that blue hydrogen represents a prolonging of the province’s dependance on fossil fuels.

Either way, as more steel-making companies using hydrogen-based methods enter the market, the demand for hydrogen could rise globally.

Steel manufacturers, automotive companies push for green steel

ArcelorMittal, which describes itself as the largest steel manufacturer in Europe, the Americas and Africa, recently announced plans for what it calls the “first industrial scale production” of iron produced entirely with hydrogen, to be deployed at its Hamburg plant, with an annual production of 100,000 tonnes of steel. 

To start, ArcelorMittal, which produced nearly 90 million tonnes of crude steel in 2019, will rely on hydrogen generated from fossil fuels, but the company will switch to green hydrogen as it becomes available and economical. Using hydrogen instead of coal, it has said, is “part of our Europe-wide ambition to be carbon neutral by 2050.”

Then there’s the American startup, Boston Metal. It got its start at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and boasts that it is working toward “a world with no pollution from metals production.” 

The company uses a process called molten oxide electrolysis, which skips coal and can make steel straight from iron ore using electricity alone. NASA was an early partner, and is exploring the idea of using the process to produce metals from “lunar resources” for “lunar in-space manufacturing.”

The production of pure iron is responsible for the lion’s share of carbon pollution in the conventional steel-making process. SSAB has predicted its coal-free plants — which produce pure iron, seen here, using hydrogen instead of coal — will reduce Sweden’s carbon pollution by 10 per cent and Finland’s by seven per cent. Photo: SSAB

Here on earth, some companies are starting to demand greener options for their materials. German car manufacturer BMW, which processes half a million tonnes of steel annually in its European plants, has made plans to invest in lower-emission steel. 

“We have set ourselves the goal of continuously reducing CO2 emissions in the steel supply chain,” the company has said in a press release, noting it is “already working with suppliers who use only green power for the steel they produce for us.”

That could mean increased demand for steel from companies like SSAB, which recently announced plans to partner with Volvo on fossil-free trucks. “We can see that the automotive industry in general is really interested in this for the simple reason that we are on the pathway of eliminating tailpipe emissions from passenger cars,” Hörnfeldt said.

“And when you get rid of the tailpipe emissions, then the major environmental impact on the vehicle comes from materials that are used in that vehicle.”

In other words: steel.

Questions about cost competitiveness

There remains a lingering question surrounding the push to manufacture steel using hydrogen. How much will it cost?

Using clean hydrogen is “going to be somewhere between 20 and 40 per cent more expensive than using coal,” Bataille said. 

“We firmly believe that this is going to be a competitive technology over time,” Hörnfeldt said, noting a 2018 SSAB analysis estimated fossil-fuel-free steel would be 20 to 30 per cent more expensive than conventional steel.

“But that gap will close,” he said, explaining the price of fossil-fuel-free steel will go down as the cost of emissions increases. “Coking coal will become more expensive and green energy will become less expensive.”

“All of these things have already happened,” he said.

“The higher the cost of carbon, or carbon price, the more economical these technologies become.”

According to a 2020 report from McKinsey, conventional steel-making companies face economic risks in the near future. The institute cites findings that companies may lose value if carbon pricing outpaces their ability to decarbonize.

Governments, of course, have huge impacts on the feasibility of any form of clean technologies, in the form of carbon pricing.

“What is economical depends on what kind of incentives are available,” Amit Kumar, professor of mechanical engineering and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada industrial chair at the University of Alberta, previously told The Narwhal. “The higher the cost of carbon, or carbon price, the more economical these technologies become.”

Companies that require steel, like in automobile manufacturing, have begun to signal they are looking for lower-carbon alternatives, adding an additional incentive for steel-making companies and potentially driving down costs as demand rises. Photo: Shutterstock

Alberta still eyeing new coal developments as consultation begins

Following months of backlash to the government’s plans to rescind the 1976 coal policy, Energy Minister Sonya Savage announced in March that the province will begin consultation on a new coal policy. 

That hasn’t stopped the pushback, nor has it paused progress on some metallurgical coal mines proposed in the province, such as the Grassy Mountain and Tent Mountain projects. In neighbouring B.C., new metallurgical coal mines are also moving their way through approval processes.

As industry and advocates alike call for the decarbonization of steel, one of the world’s most emission-intensive industries, there are increasing concerns that governments are putting their eggs in the wrong basket.

For Bataille, the energy economics professor, the writing is on the wall. Coal, he said, is a “resource that’s going to be probably going out of business within a generation.”

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Teck Coal was ordered to pay a record $60 million fine this year for polluting waterways in the Elk Valley, but despite the penalty, contaminants continue to leach from piles of waste rock at the company’s mines — and the clock is ticking on new federal regulations that observers say are long overdue.

“Leadership is desperately needed in this watershed from the Canadian federal government,” said Erin Sexton, a University of Montana biologist.

The Elk Valley may have “one of the worst selenium contamination issues, I would say, even globally,” she said. And yet, “over the last decade and a half, there’s been a notable lack of regulatory response in this watershed to the water quality issues.”

New regulations are on the way,  but there is concern they won’t be strong enough to address the legacy of pollution from more than a century of coal mining in the Elk Valley.

The coal mining operations fall within the territory of the Ktunaxa Nation, which in March called for there to be “an appropriate and achievable plan in place to ensure that Teck Coal Limited meets water quality limits and addresses impacts to wuʔu (the water) and ʔa·kxamis ̓qapi qapsin (All Living Things).”

With several new coal projects proposed in the region, including a Teck mine expansion, experts say swift and strong measures are needed to ensure the region’s pollution problems don’t get worse.

If the federal government’s draft regulations are any indication, Sexton said, the changes could be “a lot too little and a lot too late.”

Her comments come in the lead up to a bilateral Canada-U.S. meeting this week focused on cross-border water issues. Transboundary mining will be on the agenda in the gathering between Global Affairs Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Selenium pollution a persistent challenge in the Elk Valley

Selenium, which leaches from the mines’ waste rock piles, is toxic to aquatic life at elevated levels. Species of mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies — food for fish — have already been lost, Sexton said. In fish, selenium poisoning can cause deformities and reproductive failure. It’s a pressing concern for the westslope cutthroat trout, which is listed as a species of concern under the Species at Risk Act.

Teck has so far invested roughly $1 billion in water treatment facilities and other measures to address water pollution in the Elk Valley. Currently, selenium is removed from up to 27.5 million litres of water a day at two treatment facilities, spokesperson Chris Stannell said in a statement to The Narwhal. 

With additional treatment facilities being constructed, the company is aiming to be able to treat more than 54 million litres of water a day by the end of this year and expects to see “significant reductions in selenium and nitrate concentrations throughout the watershed as a result,” Stannell said.

Westslope cutthroat trout is listed as a species of concern under the Species at Risk Act. In fish, selenium poisoning can cause deformities and reproductive failure. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

But data from monitoring stations in both the Elk River and Lake Koocanusa, a reservoir that crosses the Canada-U.S. border, shows selenium concentrations have increased despite these efforts, according to Lars Sander-Green, a mining analyst with the Kootenay-based conservation organization Wildsight.

“More mining is more waste rock and more waste rock is more water pollution,” Sander-Green said. 

“Teck is planning and has built some small treatment plants but so far they’ve been increasing mining faster than they’ve been bringing treatment into place,” he said. 

At this point, Sander-Green said he estimates that Teck is able to remove about 10 per cent of the total selenium pollution that flows downstream of its mines. 

Teck did not answer questions about what percentage of its mining wastewater is treated to remove selenium.

Federal oversight of coal mining ‘desperately needed’ in Elk Valley

Teck’s coal mines are subject to the Fisheries Act, which prohibits the release of a “deleterious substance” in fish-bearing water. The company’s recent $60 million fine, for example, stemmed from an investigation that found “deposits of waste rock from the company’s operations had leached deleterious substances, selenium and calcite, into the upper Fording River and its tributaries,” according to an Environment and Climate Change Canada summary of the case.

However, there’s been a longstanding gap when it comes to how coal mining is governed under the Fisheries Act because there aren’t any regulations specific to the coal industry.

“There are regulations for paper mills, for example, or metal mines, but not for coal mining,” Dan Cheater, a lawyer with Ecojustice, said.

Regulations governing effluent from metal mines have been in place for more than four decades and updated twice in the intervening years. But it wasn’t until 2017 that Environment and Climate Change Canada began working on regulations for coal mining effluent — despite its responsibility to protect fish and fish habitat under the Fisheries Act and the federal government’s commitments under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 to not pollute transboundary waterways. 

(Pollution from the Elk Valley coal mines has long been a source of contention between Canada and the U.S. as contaminants from Teck’s mines eventually flow into Lake Koocanusa, a reservoir that straddles the B.C.-Montana border.)

In a statement, Stannell said: “Teck supports the development of regulations that are informed by a science-based approach, protective of aquatic life, and considerate of available treatment technologies.”

Those with long-standing conservation concerns, including Sexton, welcome the prospect of new regulations.

“I am 100 per cent in support of federal oversight in this watershed, I think it’s desperately needed,” she said.

“Not only are we well beyond what’s considered protective of fish and aquatic life in this watershed, we’re actually looking at expanding those impacts with the Fording River mine expansion and the three new coal mines that are proposed in the Elk Valley.” 

As for Cheater, he said he’s “hopeful that with these regulations, we’ll start seeing some progress.”

University of Montana biologist Erin Sexton takes a water sample in the Koocanusa Reservoir as part of an independent water testing program. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

Draft coal mining effluent regulations have been watered down

But there is reason to be wary.

“One thing that we’ve seen as new materials are being released by the federal government is there is a watering down of what the regulations were originally set to do that I think is disappointing,” Cheater said. 

Initially, Cheater said, the proposal included the ability to adjust contaminant limits based on fish health and concentrations in fish tissue samples. That was subsequently changed to a “strict limit” that applied to new mines and expansions.

“Now we’re seeing an exception carved out for the Elk Valley specifically,” he said.

Sander-Green called it “a Teck-sized hole in the regulations — there’s a whole set of regulations, that’s just for Teck, that’s much, much weaker, allows a lot more pollution than it would for a mine in Alberta or Nova Scotia.”

An Environment and Climate Change technical briefing document from February 2020 shows the federal department proposed a “two-pronged approach” to the regulations: a general approach that applies to new and existing mines and an alternative approach that applies only to the existing coal mines in the Elk Valley.

The draft general regulations as proposed early last year would apply limits to the concentrations of selenium, nitrate and suspended solids in mine effluent from final discharge points, with slightly weaker standards for existing mines.

Selenium levels by the numbers

Regulations for selenium pollution vary widely in the U.S. and Canada. Teck has been given plenty of latitude by the B.C. government to exceed provincial standards, prompting observers to call for stringent new federal rules.

0.8

The parts per billion limit recently adopted by U.S. agencies for Lake Koocanusa, where average selenium levels are about one part per billion.

2

B.C.’s general water quality guidelines currently recommend selenium levels be kept within two parts per billion to protect aquatic life.

63

Teck’s provincial permit allows selenium levels in rivers and creeks downstream of the company’s mines to far exceed the provincial water quality guideline. For instance, one of its Fording River order stations has a limit of 63 parts per billion.

Provincial regulations not enough to protect fish from coal mine pollution

Teck’s coal mines are already regulated by a provincial permit, which sets limits on how much of a contaminant, such as selenium, the mines can release into the environment — but Sander-Green said the limits are too high and Teck has too often failed to meet them. 

For example, B.C. government inspection records for one of Teck’s Fording River order stations, where water quality is regularly monitored, show average selenium levels in March 2020 measured 65.7 parts per billion and averaged 67.9 parts per billion in December. That’s higher than the allowable permit threshold of 63 parts per billion.

The company is also required to ensure selenium concentrations at one of its Fording River compliance points, where mine effluent is monitored, do not exceed a monthly average of 90 parts per billion. But inspection records show average selenium concentrations were 112 parts per billion in October 2020, 102.5 parts per billion in November, and 124 parts per billion in December.

The company could face new administrative penalties from the province for failing to meet the requirements of its permit, but according to Stannell those exceedances were unusual occurrences. 

“In 2020, water quality at order stations met permit limits 99 per cent of the time and at compliance points 93 per cent of the time,” he said. “We expect to further improve on this performance as additional water treatment comes online this year.”

An aerial view of a Rocky Mountain coal mine in B.C.’s Elk Valley near the B.C.-Alberta border. Photo: Callum Gunn

Observers say draft federal regulations aren’t strong enough to address Elk Valley pollution woes

Under the draft federal regulations, Teck’s existing mines would be required to meet baseline pollution limits set two and three years after the regulations are enacted. The company would then be required to reduce concentrations of selenium in the environment relative to that baseline in subsequent years. 

For instance, based on the February 2020 draft, the company would have to reduce monthly average selenium concentrations at federal compliance points by 36 per cent from the baseline, or to 40 parts per billion, whichever is lower, 16 years after the regulations are enacted.

Existing mines subject to the general regulations, meanwhile, would be required to meet a monthly average selenium limit of 10 parts per billion for effluent that is collected and released at specific outflow locations. New mines would face a limit of 5 parts per billion.

Four companies are proposing new coal mines in the Kootenay Rockies. Conservationists fear increased pollution in the region if they are approved. Map: Carol Linnitt

Sander-Green worries that “the proposed regulations would create a perverse incentive for Teck to do less to control their pollution in the coming years.” 

“It’s actually in Teck’s interest to keep pollution levels as high as possible until three years after these regulations come into force, because their pollution limits for the rest of the life of the mine would be based on pollution levels in the years after the regulations come into force,” he explained in an email to The Narwhal.

While the February 2020 draft regulations would eventually set a minimum requirement that monthly selenium averages don’t exceed 40 parts per billion, Sexton noted that’s still 20 times higher than the selenium concentration that’s considered protective of aquatic life.

In a statement to The Narwhal, Samantha Bayard, a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada said “the proposed regulatory rules for existing coal mines in B.C.’s Elk Valley take into account the unique circumstances in the region.”

Coal mining in the area has “resulted in vast mine waste rock piles that often overprint water bodies, which make it impractical for existing mines to collect all of the mine effluent and apply the same effluent quality standards that can be achieved by newer facilities,” she said.

But Sexton argued the existing Elk Valley mines “should be held to the highest standard because according to the science this is the watershed that’s most at risk.”

Experts are increasingly worried by the high levels of selenium found in rivers near B.C.’s scenic Elk Valley, which is a great risk to aquatic life. The province has yet to finalize specific selenium pollution limits. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

At this point, selenium levels in the Elk and Fording rivers are “orders of magnitude” higher than what is safe for fish and other aquatic life, she said.

The Narwhal asked Environment and Climate Change Canada when the regulations would be finalized. In a statement, Bayard said that “given the importance of these regulations, we are taking the time to get them right. This will include extensive consultations with industry, Indigenous groups, environmental non-governmental organizations, and provinces.”

The timeline is a concern for Sander-Green, who noted any new coal mines built in the next few years may only be subject to the weaker standards for existing mines. According to the February 2020 technical briefing document, the draft regulations define new mines as mines that start operating three years after the regulations are enacted.

Sander-Green said any further delay is unreasonable. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t have had these regulations in place years ago,” he said.

‘Short-term solutions to long-term problems’

Even with new regulations forthcoming, there are concerns on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border about the long-term implications of continued coal mining in the Elk Valley.

While Teck is making considerable investments in water treatment, Sander-Green is concerned it won’t be a viable solution over the course of the decades or centuries to come. 

“What these regulations should be doing is banning perpetual water treatment and prohibiting mines that will leave behind toxic pollution problems that will last beyond the lifetime of the mine,” he said.

It’s a concern Sexton — who called the water treatment facilities “short-term solutions to very, very long-term problems”— shares.

Robert Sisson, a U.S. commissioner on the International Joint Commission (IJC), recognizes the major investments Teck has made in water treatment facilities, including saturated rock fill technology. 

But “I’d like to make sure that we’re also discussing Plan B and Plan C, in the event [the saturated rock fill technology] does not work as intended or it’s just simply not enough to do the job that we need to protect the waters,” he told The Narwhal in an interview.

Sisson said a bi-national watershed body that brings all interested groups and experts together could be helpful for finding a solution to the long-term pollution challenges in the Elk Valley.

“The IJC would be a good option, but there are others out there,” he said.

Under the Boundary Waters Treaty, the International Joint Commission has the power to investigate and recommend solutions to transboundary water disputes referred to it by the U.S. and Canadian governments.

The commission has alerted both governments to the selenium issues in the Elk Valley watershed, but has so far not been asked to intervene in the situation.

In the meantime, selenium and other contaminants continue to leach from piles of waste rock at the mines. 

With new projects and mine expansions being proposed, Sexton said she wants to see a moratorium on any new or expanded mines in the Elk Valley until the existing pollution problems are addressed.

“We have clear evidence now that this watershed is in trouble,” she said. So, “the first thing you do is try to stop the bleeding.” 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.