Alberta’s decision to phase out coal-fired power by 2030 represents a big shift (coal currently generates just over half of Alberta’s electricity), so it’s not exactly surprising that the phase-out has led to a fair bit of debate.

Throw in a complex lawsuit, threats of increasing power prices and a resurgence of the “clean coal” myth, and it becomes nearly impossible to figure out what’s actually going on.

Often missed in the conversation is the fact that 12 of the 18 coal-fired power plants in Alberta would have had to shut down by 2030 anyway under federal regulations introduced by former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Quite a lot of other facts are getting lost in the noise as well, so DeSmog Canada delved into the research to come up with these six handy facts.

Fact #1: Electricity Bills Aren’t Going to Skyrocket Because of the Coal Phase-Out

First things first: in late November, the Alberta NDP introduced a cap on default power prices at 6.8 cents per kWh, beginning in June 2017 and running until June 2021. (For reference, default rates are currently between 4.1 and 4.4 cents/kWh, depending on location.)

So yes, rates may increase a little, but there’s simply no way that retail prices can triple, or even double, as some have been suggesting.

Secondly, there are different elements of electricity bills: the cost of electricity and transmission or distribution costs.

Alberta has been anticipating an increase to the cost of electricity since 2014 (before the NDP was elected) because of improvements to the province’s transmission system and unsustainably low prices in recent years — and not as a result of the coal phase-out.

“Those cost increases are independent of coal phase-out,” Binnu Jeyakumar, program director of the Pembina Institute’s electricity program, told DeSmog Canada.

Many critics of the phase-out point to Ontario — which has seen a doubling in retail prices — as an example of what might happen.

But Jeyakumar notes the main reasons for the drastic price increase in Ontario were the payments for deferred grid infrastructure investments, and the costs associated with the refurbishment of nuclear plants.

“Those are massive, massive capital investments that we’re not looking at in Alberta,” she says.

Plus, the price of renewables has dropped significantly since the Ontario experience, and the process by which Alberta is procuring power is “much more competitive,” says Jeyakumar.

Fact #2: Coal Jobs Were Already Threatened by Shoddy Economics

Many small towns have expressed serious fears that the phase-out will kill hundreds of jobs.

In 2016, coal town Grande Cache, asked the provincial municipal affairs minister to consider dissolving the town after losing 750 — about one-third — of its jobs.

For Grande Cache, like many other coal-reliant towns, the issue of low coal prices had become existential.

Here’s the thing: this is not a new issue.

Coal prices — for both thermal and metallurgical coal — have plummeted in recent years as jurisdictions all over the world shift away from coal. Renewables have increased in viability, economic growth has slowed and natural gas prices have dropped, all factors in the collapse of coal that pre-date the announcement of Alberta’s climate plan.

“Planned coal phase-out — with the introduction of renewables and energy efficiency — is actually better for labour because it allows you to plan for support for your workers,” Jeyakumar says.

“The alternative is you have these coal plants that could come offline just purely based on economic reasons. It’s the coal plant’s owner and operator who’s making that decision. That gives the workers and province less time to plan for how they’re going to transition these workers into the new economy, or how they’re going to compensate those workers.”

Of course, such a reality don’t necessarily make the decline of coal towns any easier.

But many new jobs will be created in the transition to the “30 by ’30” target, which will see 30 per cent of electricity generated by wind, solar, geothermal and biomass by 2030 (which itself will replace two-thirds of the lost generation from coal). There will also be an increase in job opportunities as predicted by Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who stated in 2015 that “we need an army of carpenters, electricians and contractors going out to plug leaky buildings.”

These new jobs will exceed those lost through the coal phase-out. Pembina has calculated that there are 3,150 jobs directly associated with coal in Alberta. But between 12,600 to 35,000 jobs will be created between now and 2030, thanks to the province’s renewable energy program.

Alberta has committed $195 million to help coal and Indigenous communities with the transition to renewable energy. And on January 9, it was announced that Alberta Labour would be conducting a “Coal Communities Survey” to identify worker skills to help the department plan the transition. The government has also formed an Advisory Panel on Coal Communities.

Fact #3: Billions of Dollars Will Be Saved in Healthcare Costs (And Fewer People Will Be Sick)

The coal phase-out isn’t just about cutting greenhouse gases. It’s also about reducing air pollutants, including sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter, ozone, cadmium, mercury and lead. These can lead to serious respiratory and heart diseases.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment estimates that coal leads to 107 premature deaths, 80 hospital visits and 4,862 asthma-related sick days in Alberta every year, costing the province around $300 million.

Over the next 20 years “the phase-out can get us up to $3 billion in healthcare savings for the province,” Jeyakumar says. “If you look at the whole balance sheet — you add up the health cost savings and the potential for labour transferring from renewables and energy efficiency — the province actually comes out way ahead than it would be without the coal phase-out.”

Fact #4: Yes, Coal Companies Will Be Compensated, but Out of Carbon Tax Revenues

There’s been plenty of debate about whether the six coal units that are being shut down before schedule should receive compensation from the province.

A 2015 publication from Pembina concluded that four of the six units would receive a “fair return on capital” by 2030, undermining the case for compensation.

It argued that “investors in merchant units built after 2001 were well aware the long-term operations of these facilities would be subject to change of law related to climate policy,” but it might still be helpful to pay off the owners of the two most recently constructed units — Capital Power and TransAlta’s Genesee 3 (2005) and Keephills 3 (2011) — to maintain an attractive investment climate.

“As a matter of law, I think it’s crystal clear the province didn’t have to pay a cent,” agrees Nigel Bankes, chair of natural resources law at the University of Calgary, in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “It’s just new regulation. No one is entitled, unless specific commitments have been made, to a particular environmental regime to continue from the time they made an investment.”

Alberta’s government did indeed decide to provide “transition payments” for the six coal units that would otherwise operate past 2030, representing “approximate economic disruption to their capital investments.”

In late November Alberta announced it will pay Capital Power, TransAlta and ATCO a total of $97 million per year beginning in 2017, totalling $1.36 billion by 2030.

All money for the “transition payments” will be diverted from revenues from Alberta’s carbon tax on large emitters (the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation, to be replaced in 2018 by the Carbon Competitiveness Regulation). In other words, none of it will come from general revenues.

“It does seem to me the province struck a reasonable balance on this,” Bankes says.

Six Handy Facts About #Alberta’s Coal Phase-Out https://t.co/7yptHiHmLb #ableg #yyc #yeg

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 17, 2017

Fact #5: ‘Clean Coal’ Was Never a Viable Option

The previous federal regulations introduced in 2012 would have required 12 of the 18 coal-fired power plants in Alberta to shut down by 2030. The six remaining would be forced to close in later decades, with one as late as 2061.

That is, unless coal-fired units could reduce their emissions to 420 tonnes of carbon dioxide per gigawatt hour (gWh), or about as efficient as natural gas. The only way to do that is via carbon capture and storage (CCS), which either requires an extremely high carbon price or government investments to justify.

The retrofitting of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant with CCS technology is an example of how expensive this can get. The revamp cost of $1.47 billion effectively doubled the cost of power from $0.06 per kilowatt hour (kWh) to $0.12 per kWh from the facility.

Plus, since its opening, Boundary Dam has been plagued with issues, including frequent shutdowns, a massive leaking storage tank, cost overruns and equipment failures in August and November; the latter, a compressor failure, resulted in only 49 per cent of potential volume capture (the monthly target is 65 per cent).

In Alberta’s plan, there’s no entertaining the notion of CCS, which would likely require billions in payouts to coal companies and a long-term increase in power bills.

Rather, the government has acknowledged there are far more economically and environmentally viable options, and introduced clear policy direction to see them come to fruition. The province has stated that “where it is economically viable,” coal-fired power stations will be converted to natural gas power plants.

Jeyakumar says the best and cheapest alternatives to coal remains renewables (two to three times cheaper) and energy efficiency (up to six times cheaper).

Fact #6: Alberta’s Approach Guarantees Phase-Out is Permanent

By far the most controversial element related to the coal phase-out has been the province’s lawsuit filed in regards to “Power Purchase Agreements,” or PPAs.

The story is a confusing one, but here are the basics: Alberta deregulated its electricity system in 2000, which allowed for power purchase agreements to be signed directly between electricity generators and buyers. A public balancing pool was created to handle the PPAs that weren’t sold off. All was well.

Except there was a small and little-known clause that was introduced by the Energy and Utilities Board only five days prior to the auctioning of the PPAs. In short, the clause ensured that buyers had the ability to transfer the PPA back to the public balancing pool if any government decision was deemed to make the agreement “more unprofitable” (rather than just “unprofitable,” as the original wording had allowed for).

That clause remained dormant for more than 14 years but now, with the introduction of Alberta’s economy-wide carbon tax, the clause is being used by four PPA buyers to terminate contracts — a move that has the potential to cost the province $2 billion by 2020.

The details are confidential, but Bankes says they’re going to “split the difference,” with the Alberta government reimbursing the companies for the estimated cost of the carbon price, while the companies pay an “anticipated calculated cost associated with the market risk” that accounts for the lower electricity prices.

The province has negotiated a confidential settlement with all but one company: Enmax, the city of Calgary’s utility company.

What this whole process has ensured, interestingly, is that no government in the future can bring back these phased-out coal-fired power plants, because the contracts have been absorbed by the balancing pool and subsequently terminated.

The good news is ten megatonnes of annual emissions will be permanently cut, Alberta’s air will be cleaner and the province will be one step closer to a building an electricity system for the 21st century.

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    Decision makers need information to help them make decisions. And those decisions can be best evaluated when all the facts are in. But who supplies “the facts,” and how can we trust that they are unbiased?

The traditional role of government scientists has been to provide those “facts”; as a former government scientist, it was part of my job to provide unbiased advice to decision makers in forming policy. This has become more difficult given recent legislative changes and budget cuts, as well as a shift in emphasis away from basic science and towards advancing the intellectual property interests of private industry.

These changes have made both the “doing” of government science and the communication of scientific findings from government scientists to the public far more challenging than they need to be.

Objectivity is the cornerstone of scientific investigation. Scientists seek answers to how the world works by co

nducting experiments, making observations and careful measurements without any “agenda.”

When we publish our research, it is vetted by our peers, who review it critically to determine if they could reach the same conclusions based on our approach and analysis. It’s even becoming more and more common for scientists to make their data and analysis freely available allowing anyone to examine it and see if they can draw the same conclusions.

It would seem that this objectivity matters to Canadians when it comes to making decisions. In a recent “National Survey on Energy Literacy,” Alberta Oil magazine reported that more than 50 per cent of those surveyed trusted the academic community to provide “credible and trustworthy information” about topics on oil sands development, clean energy in Canada and carbon emissions.

Less than 20 per cent of respondents said they would trust either the federal or provincial government to provide “credible and trustworthy information” on these same issues.

While the academic community is larger than just scientists, all academics are subject to the scrutiny of their peers. It’s that scrutiny that helps advance our knowledge; through debate, we can see the flaws in our understanding, and the research questions change direction as required. The goal is truth, not pushing forward an ideology.

Even though there’s a lack of trust in government, there are still credible and trustworthy people in government departments—the scientists. The scientists who work in government are subject to the same scrutiny as those in academia; they publish in academic journals, sit on graduate committees and supervise graduate students in academic departments across the country. They are objective scientists, just like their peers working at universities. They possess the same level of credibility.

So why are government scientists trusted to provide “credible and trustworthy information” to their peers, but not to the general public? Too often we hear about government scientists being denied permission to speak to media about their research—Kristi Miller and Max Bothwell are two prominent examples.

Miller, a researcher at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, was barred from speaking to the press about her findings that a virus may have contributed to the decline of B.C. salmon in 2009. The prominent journal Science published her groundbreaking study in January 2011.

Despite media interest in her work, the Privy Council Office (PCO) turned down interview requests. According to documents obtained by Postmedia News under the Access to Information Act, the PCO also vetoed a press release about the study, stating that it “was not very good, focused on salmon dying and not on the new science aspect.”

Bothwell, also a scientist at Environment Canada, is an expert on the pervasive algae didymo. In May 2014, after the journal BioScience published an article that Bothwell co-authored, a Canadian Press reporter asked for an interview with him — and that’s when 16 public affairs people from different government agencies got involved, sending more than 110 pages of emails about getting approved responses for the questions. In the end, the interview did not happen.

According to media reports, Bothwell’s study may have been considered politically sensitive because it links didymo growth to global climate change factors.

These issues around limiting communication are systemic and well ingrained in the public service. In October 2014, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada reported that 90 per cent of federal scientists feel they cannot speak freely about their work, and nearly as many (86 per cent) fear reprimand for doing so.

This fear further serves the suppression of communication to the public through self-censorship; why try to promote your work when you think doing so will hinder your career?

Trust in academics comes from the perception of providing information without bias. But even more so than academics, government scientists are keenly aware of ensuring their work is presented in a bias-free fashion. While academics may emphasize the perceived importance of their scientific work to some particular policy issue, as public servants, government scientists cannot because the science they do is only part of the formation of policy.

Whether the science supports a given policy or doesn’t, neither the work nor the scientist who conducted it can be seen as having a particular “angle.” This would call into question how that science is evaluated by the decision makers.

Given this keen need for careful consideration, you would think that government departments would be quick to promote government science and the work of its scientists.

You’d also think that they would provide the funding necessary to investigate pressing issues, and help ensure that work is conducted in a timely fashion to provide the information as it’s needed, rather than cut internationally renowned programs. It seems obvious that promoting the work of government scientists, and allowing them to become part of the public conversation, would promote the role of objective government-led science in providing Canadians with “credible and trustworthy information.”

Instead, the opposite seems very much the case, in my experience. Simple tasks like hiring summer students or travelling to a conference require form after form. These, in turn, must be approved by managers, then directors, then deputy ministers, far up the bureaucratic chain of command. It’s unreasonable and illogical. Internal research funds are limited and/or highly directed, and seeking external funding becomes more challenging with every additional level of internal approval required.

Perhaps most important, and in spite of the growing mountain of paperwork and approvals that seems to directly counteract one’s ability to dedicate time to actually conducting science, excellent, top-calibre work is published by Canadian government scientists every day.

However, this work goes largely unpromoted by the very departments that employ them, it is frequently left without comment by the scientists who conducted the studies, and all too often, it remains unnoticed by Canadians.

The Canadian public values credible and trustworthy information, and it doesn’t currently believe that our governments are in a position to provide it. A critical means of restoring the public’s trust in government is to provide more transparency into how decisions are made and how various pieces of information are weighed in the decision-making process. Some departments have mechanisms to do exactly this (e.g., the Canadian Science Advice Secretariat within Fisheries and Oceans Canada).

But transparency and accessibility in the eyes of the public are just as important in helping to restore that trust. Denying government scientists the ability to comment on their own work only makes it look like there’s something to hide, and it suggests that there is neither trust in the scientists who conducted the study to speak objectively, nor in the public to hear what the study has to say from the person most qualified to discuss it.

Having a well-informed public is a critical component to a functioning democracy, as a society of decision makers. To consider that the public does not trust its own government as a credible source of information should be of great concern to everyone. Any relationship counsellor will tell you that trust is a two-way street.

Maybe if the Canadian government showed some trust in its scientists, that might help restore the public’s trust in the government.

Michael Rennie (@not_klaatu) is an assistant professor at Lakehead University. He was a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in the Central and Arctic Region from 2010 to 2014.

This piece originally appeared in Canadian Journalists for Free Expression's 2014-15 Review of Free Expression in Canada.

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