Research released by the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health on the health effects of coal-fired power plants was reviewed prior to publication by TransAlta, one of Alberta’s largest utility providers and coal producers, documents released to The Narwhal under the Freedom of Information Act reveal.

More than 550 pages of emails and documents exchanged between TransAlta executives and University of Alberta researcher Warren Kindzierski show the company was heavily involved in assigning, reviewing and publicizing research that would promote the coal industry as the government moved forward with a province-wide coal phase-out.

The correspondence between Kindzierski and TransAlta show the researcher sought input from company executives on draft versions of his research, asking how the company would like to proceed based on his findings. Kindzierski also accompanied TransAlta executives to meetings with government officials where Kindzierski presented slides reviewed in advance by the company.

The documents also show Kindzierski offered pointers for TransAlta communications personnel to consider during the development of company messaging.

In one email to TransAlta, Kindzierski tells officials they will “not be disappointed” in his findings.

“These emails show a pretty close relationship between TransAlta and Dr. Kindzierski, and in some cases show that Dr. Kindzierski was aware of the outcome that TransAlta wanted from his research, which could facilitate bias in his research,” Andrew Read, a professional engineer and former senior analyst with the Pembina Institute who is now working with the city Edmonton’s environmental strategies team, told The Narwhal upon reviewing a portion of the documents.

“What would have happened if the research didn’t align with TransAlta’s interests? Would we have ever seen the publication then?”

TransAlta paid University of Alberta $54,000 for research on health impacts of coal

A previous Freedom of Information request found TransAlta is a regular funder of Kindzierski’s research at the University of Alberta. Those documents revealed TransAlta provided the University of Alberta $54,000 in exchange for research on the health impacts of coal-fired power plants near Edmonton.

The findings of that initial information request prompted The Narwhal to file a secondary request, asking for communications between Kindzierski and TransAlta during the time the research was undertaken.

TransAlta owns and operates Canada’s largest surface strip coal mine, the Highvale Mine. The 12,600-hectare coal mine, managed by TransAlta’s wholly-owned subsidiary Sunhills Mining, produces 13 million tonnes of thermal grade coal each year, which is used to power three of TransAlta’s power stations.

In September 2015 a national air quality study found Alberta had some of the worst air quality levels in Canada due to coal power plants, oil and gas development and vehicle use.

The new tranche of documents show that in light of that study, on September 10, 2015, Oliver Bussler, director of sustainable development at TransAlta, told Kindzierski his research would be “very timely” and asked, “since you are a recognized expert in this area, I was wondering if you have heard what the Environment Ministry may have planned to address the cause of air pollution.”

Kindzierski responded to Bussler’s email saying, “ ‘far-fetched’ would be a good way to characterize the lack of understanding of this issue.”

In April of 2015 the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), a public health and environmental advocacy group, released a study that showed that, according to government of Alberta figures, levels of harmful air pollution in Edmonton exceeded those of Toronto, a major metropolis with five times the population.

The study showed that during several winter days between 2010 and 2012, levels of particulate matter in Edmonton exceeded legal limits. Fine particulate matter, according to Alberta Environment, measures 2.5 microns or less in diameter. Red blood cells are 5 microns in diameter and the width of an average human hair is roughly 75 microns.

Because of its small size, fine particulate matter, referred to as PM2.5, can accumulate in the respiratory system and dissolve into the bloodstream, leading to chronic health effects and breathing problems.

A broad mix of emissions come from the burning of coal in addition to PM 2.5: SOx, NOx, mercury, cadmium, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzenes. These pollutants have significant effects on respiratory and cardiovascular health and some are cancer-causing agents.

Kindzierski has published several studies showing pollutants in the Alberta airshed come from a mix of sources and not just coal. He has used his research to argue coal is being unfairly targeted and that harmful impacts associated with burning coal are overblown.

According to public disclosure records, Kindzierski made $194,670.22 in salary and benefits at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health in 2016. He made $189,603.06 in 2015.

TransAlta provided at least another $175,000 to the University of Alberta between 2013 and 2015 through additional sponsorship arrangements that are not transparent to the public, raising concerns about the movement of industry funds through public institutions.

‘Remove the slides’

In a series of e-mails between Kindzierski and Bussler the two discussed a presentation Kindzierski would make to Alberta government officials regarding his research.

Kindzierski provided Bussler with a draft version of a presentation, which Bussler said he would review and “provide feedback.”

Kindzierski offered to remove material in his presentation related to the CAPE study: “We can possibly remove the slides related to 2010/CAPE claim.”

Bussler replied: “I have no concerns with including the slides related to 2010/CAPE claim. Since the CAPE claims are on everyone’s’ minds [sic], I think it would be best to address them upfront.”

The documents show Kindzierski made alterations in his presentation in advance of a series of meetings with government officials.

“We have reorganized the presentation, putting the majority of the technical details in the appendix,” Kindzierski wrote to Bussler on September 12, 2015.

“The presentation looks good from my perspective,” Bussler replied. “Since my colleagues are more familiar with the policy maker audience to whom you will be presenting, I’m going to see if they have any final comments on the materials.”

In another e-mail Bussler noted: “It is not my intention to suggest what you should say. The study is very much your work and independent. I do however think it is important how we decided [sic] to relay the information should consider the audience.”

A spokesperson for the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health said as an independent researcher hired by TransAlta, Kindzierski “was obligated to present his findings to TransAlta for preview prior to publication.”

“At the University of Alberta, we value intellectual integrity, freedom of inquiry and expression, and the equality and dignity of all persons as the foundation of ethical conduct in research, teaching, learning, and service,” the spokesperson said.

“It is our position that Kindzierski has acted according to these values and conducted his research and communication of that research, ethically and responsibly.”

Kindzierski declined to provide further comment, saying “all the comments I would have, they were provided by the university officially.”

Read said universities need to take claims of bias in research very seriously.

“It’s critical to resolve and make clear to the public they are providing independent research that can be relied on legitimately,” he said.

Industry-funded research concluded coal-fired power plants safe for health of local residents

Kindzierski’s research, published on TransAlta’s website in the spring of 2016 and bearing the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health insignia, concluded coal-fired power plants near the city of Edmonton do not negatively impact the health of local residents.

In a previous interview Kindzierski said the study had been accepted for publication at three peer-reviewed “high-quality impact journals.”

However, in an e-mail to Don Wharton, TransAlta’s vice-president of policy and sustainability, Kindzierski writes the study accepted for publication is not the one published on TransAlta’s website.

“Our study being published is actually different than what we did last fall; but the news from your perspective is just as good,” Kindzierski wrote to Wharton.

In the same exchange Kindzierski asks Wharton to extend TransAlta’s funding contract for two months. “This allows me to continue funding the research assistant on your contract,” he wrote.

Additional emails exchanged between Kindzierski and Wharton show Kindzierski actively solicited feedback from the company on draft versions of his research.

In an email dated October 15, 2015, Kindzierski provided Wharton with a copy of the draft report. Two days later Kindzierski sent a revised version of the report to Wharton and followed up after a week, asking if company representatives had any response.

“Don, I hope things are going well,” Kindzierski wrote on October 28, 2015. “I would like to check with you about any feedback from the draft report we provided with you [sic]11 days ago and finalizing the report.”

On November 3, Kindzierski wrote Wharton again: “I am just checking again about whether you have any feedback on our report.”

In November 2015 Alberta announced a plan to eliminate the province’s 18 coal-fired power plants by 2030. Alberta uses more coal for power production than all other Canadian provinces combined.

Wharton responded on November 19, saying he had discussed Kindzierski’s findings with the mayors of more than 30 municipalities in Alberta who had expressed concern over the province’s plan to shutter coal plants.

“We have had a request from the mayors…to see the report as soon as it is available,” Wharton wrote to Kindzierski. “You may have noticed that these same mayors have been in the media lately expressing concern about the spectre of accelerated coal plant closures and the effects on their communities.”

In a submission to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel TransAlta referred to Kindzierski’s research as “commissioned independent work through the University of Alberta” that was done “in response to continued unsubstantiated claims that coal-fired generation was a major contributor to Edmonton’s air quality events, and a rationale for the need to accelerate the retirement of coal units.”

Read, now with the City of Edmonton, said it’s clear TransAlta used Kindzierski’s research to lobby municipalities.

“This wouldn’t be a problem if we knew with certainty the research was unbiased,” Read said. “The real worry I see with this specific case is one of disregarding certain perspectives arbitrarily because of whatever interests that individual might have.”

From a public interest perspective, Read added, air quality issues in Alberta are of high concern.

Kindzierski’s research raises questions about the primacy of the public interest in work bearing the University of Public Health’s branding.

Joe Vipond, a physician and board member of CAPE, said he believes Kindzierski’s research was funded explicitly to find evidence there is no effect of burning coal in Edmonton’s airsheds.

“TransAlta, I would surmise, did not fund Kindzierski’s modeling in some altruistic effort to understand the effects of TransAlta’s own coal plants on Edmonton’s airshed,” Vipond said.

“He has even gone so far as to suggest that instead of air pollution being harmful to human health, it is neutral, or even possibly beneficial. This would be analogous to me, as a physician, to stating smoking is good for you.”  

Last year Vipond launched a complaint against Kindzierski with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) for violating his professional code of conduct as outlined in the Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act. The Narwhal has learned the investigation into Kindzierski has been ongoing for over 12 months and relates to complaints made by at least one additional individual.

Vipond said he finds it disturbing Kindzierski participated in TransAlta’s presentations to government as a representative of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health.

“It nauseates me to think our institutions have been corrupted in such a manner.”

Sloan d’Entremont, professional engineer and investigator with APEGA, said the organization’s policy is not to comment on ongoing investigations.

”Due to confidentiality reasons, APEGA Investigations is not able to discuss anything related to complaints that are submitted to the Investigations Department,” she said.

Kindzierski TransAlta Correspondence Excerpts by The Narwhal on Scribd

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The University of Alberta and TransAlta, a major Alberta utility company and coal producer, struck an agreement for the company to pay the university $54,000 to research the health impacts of coal-fired power plants near Edmonton, according to documents obtained by DeSmog Canada.

When TransAlta published the research — a study entitled Investigation of Fine Particulate Matter Characteristics and Sources in Edmonton, Alberta — on its website last spring the company initially stated it had sponsored the work, co-authored by Warren Kindzierski and fellow University of Alberta professor Aynul Bari.

But that sponsorship disclaimer was abruptly scrubbed from the company’s website.

Documents released to DeSmog Canada through Freedom of Information legislation show TransAlta did indeed enter into a sponsorship agreement with the University of Alberta that provided Kindzierski, as principle investigator, $54,000 to conduct the research.

TransAlta says that although it did provide the funds to the university, the university did not use the funds to support Kindzierski’s research.

“They kept our funds but did not use them towards the study, they redirected them elsewhere,” Stacy Hatcher, spokesperson for TransAlta, told DeSmog Canada.

Hatcher said because TransAlta did provide the funds to the university “we erred on the side of being completely transparent and stating up front that we had paid for it as that had been the offer.”

“It was a mistake on our part not to circle back and correct the news story once we learned the university did not accept the funding,” she added.

The undocumented movement of industry money on university campuses is nothing new.

Private sponsorship agreements, gifts, grants and donations have all been used as ways to financially support research, resulting in what some critics have identified as a problematic purchase of academic credibility by corporations.

In this instance, the question comes down to whether and how private funds are influencing public conversations about coal-fired power generation in Alberta.

Industry-Friendly Study Used to Fight Coal Phase-Out

The study, made available to the public on TransAlta’s site in late 2015, bears the branding of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health and concludes the high number of coal-fired power plants near the city of Edmonton doesn’t negatively impact the health of local residents.

The research has been used by TransAlta to push for an alternative to the Alberta government’s plan to phase-out coal by 2030 (which is no small feat: Alberta uses more coal for power production than all other Canadian provinces combined).

In its submission to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel TransAlta referred to the research as “commissioned independent work through the University of Alberta” that was done “in response to continued unsubstantiated claims that coal-fired generation was a major contributor to Edmonton’s air quality events, and a rationale for the need to accelerate the retirement of coal units.”

“You will see that the research shows minimal airshed impacts from operation of coal-fired generation to the west,” the submission read.

The research has also been used by vocal coal advocates, such as Robin Campbell, president of the Canadian Association of Coal, to argue against a coal phase-out.

TransAlta owns and operates Canada’s largest surface strip coal mine, the Highvale Mine. The 12,600 hectare coal mine, managed by TransAlta’s wholly-owned subsidiary Sunhills Mining, produces 13 million tonnes of thermal grade coal each year which is used to power three of TransAlta’s power stations. Since 2006, TransAlta stopped mining operations at two additional coal mines and as a result now purchases coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

TransAlta (burns coal and) paid U of A to conduct a health study (about coal). But there’s no connection, OK? https://t.co/SimArg2eOH #ableg

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 8, 2016

Corporate Sponsorship Agreements Commonplace

Sponsorship agreements between the University of Alberta and TransAlta are commonplace, Hatcher said: “TransAlta has a relationship with the university, and we have provided non-directed funding in the past for research and academic projects.”

Documents released to DeSmog Canada confirm this, showing TransAlta provided at least another $175,000 to the university between 2013 and 2015 through additional sponsorship arrangements.

However, the retroactive decision to ‘redirect’ the Kindzierski study funds raises questions about transparency and accountability.

The university’s Research Services Office, which appears as a signatory on the TransAlta sponsorship agreement, said it could not provide comment or release information regarding sponsorships.

A woman at the Research Services Office said simply, “We would not release any information to you of any kind” and recommended all inquiries be directed to the principle investigator: Kindzierski.

“No funds were expended [on that study],” Kindzierski told DeSmog Canada. “They were used after the study was done to support a post doctorate RA (research assistant) on other research activities.”

“Are you familiar with soft dollar funded positions? Why don’t you go ahead and learn about that?” Kindzierski said during a phone interview.

‘Soft money’ positions at universities are those funded by grants, awards and other forms of sponsorship that are usually impermanent and must be regularly sought after through application processes. Alternately, ‘hard money’ positions usually refer to tenure-track positions that are funded by tuition, endowments, government funding and philanthropy.

“All faculties, all programs, all departments at all universities have soft dollar funded positions, totally above board and everything,” he added.

Kindzierski said the research, which was published online without going through a full peer-reviewed process, has since been peer-reviewed, accepted and published at three “high-quality impact journals.”

When asked which journals the research appeared in, he responded, “I can name them but I have no desire to give them to you.”

“Go search. That’s good homework for you.”

“You’re no different than a reporter that is too lazy to find this stuff themselves,” Kindzierski said during the interview.

A similar paper by Kindzierski recently appeared in the journal Environmental Pollution, a peer-reviewed publication, but DeSmog Canada was unable to find the exact study in question published anywhere other than TransAlta’s website.

Documentation released to DeSmog Canada via Freedom of Information shows Kindzierski sent TransAlta a proposal of the study before research was undertaken. Records show this proposal was sent to Don Wharton, TransAlta’s vice president of policy and sustainable development, at TransAlta’s request in May 2015. The sponsorship agreement was signed in July 2015. The contents of the study proposal, sent from Kindzierski to Wharton, were redacted in the released documents.

Coal Pollution Still Dangerous to Health, Physician Says

Critics have called the independence of the study into question, saying TransAlta’s planned sponsorship could have introduced bias in the research questions pursued.

“I think after they published it they realized [there were going to be] a lot of people making a stink that there was a conflict of interest,” Joe Vipond, physician with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), told DeSmog Canada.

“The optics were quite bad as far as bias is concerned in funding the study and that’s why they moved to make the money trail less obvious.”

Vipond is concerned about the way the study has been used to influence public debate about coal-fired power plants.

“It really distorts the conversation,” he said.

“I work in the medical field… and there is so much evidence of how funding and bias impacts conclusions in the scientific literature in health.”

But, he added, the average person isn’t taught to look as critically at this kind of literature as health professionals are.

“I think it’s very hard. People underestimate the power of money.”

He added that working in the medical field also exposes him to evidence that coal pollution affects respiratory health.

The Kindzierski study goes to great lengths to say pollution in the Edmonton airshed isn’t due to coal-fired power plants, Vipond said.

Recently Vipond co-authored a report, Breathing in the Benefits, released by the Pembina Institute, the Asthma Society, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Lung Association, that estimated the phase-out of coal by 2030 in Alberta would avoid approximately 600 premature deaths, 500 emergency room visits, 80,000 asthma episodes, two million days of respiratory difficulty for individuals and nearly $3 billion in health benefits.

A previous report from the same group of organizations, A Costly Diagnosis: Subsidizing Coal Power with Albertans’ Health, found pollution from coal combustion affects respiratory and cardiovascular health as well as the central nervous system. The report says exposure to these pollutants can result in chronic respiratory illness and premature death.

“There is such a broad mix of emissions that come from coal: SOx, NOx, particulate matter 2.5 and mercury,” Vipond said.

“Then there’s a whole host of others like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzenes. That mix comes out of the stack and there is a lot of evidence for how [those pollutants] pollute lungs and the evidence on the impacts to cardiovascular health is even better.”

Particulate matter 2.5 is so fine, Vipond said, it gets into your lungs and can dissolve immediately into the bloodstream.

Andrew Read, environmental policy analyst with the Pembina Institute and contributor to the Breathing in the Benefits report, told DeSmog Canada there are no safe levels of particulate matter 2.5.

“Particulate matter doesn’t have a lower threshold where health impacts aren’t identified,” he said. “There is no argument that burning coal for electricity does not have substantial health impacts.”

Read added that reality should influence how we think about the future of coal-fired power.

Source: Pembina Institute

“The fact that there is no safe level of exposure to pollutants that are emitted by coal electricity is really important to consider,” he said. “If we expect to grow the economy and add industry to the province we have to remove some of these sources of emissions.”

The Kindzierski study produced for TransAlta “was really a political piece,” Read said.

“That’s the main frustration with the Kindzierski study — he could have added to the conversation or contributed in a way that added to the discussion but didn’t.”

Vipond said a presentation by Kindzierski to the Air and Waste Management Association found the short-term presence of particulate matter in the atmosphere resulted in fewer hospital visits for heart attacks.

“The conclusion was breathing coal-fired pollution is good for your health,” Vipond said.

“My feeling on the matter is that people who already have an agenda then go to find evidence that goes to back up that agenda. I think that’s true of humanity: it’s what we do.”

Vipond published a rebuttal of the Kindzierski study, saying there were major flaws in the methodology, including using limited air quality inputs and wind pattern information.

“I was annoyed [Kindzierski’s study] was out there and annoyed no one was challenging it.”

Research Shows Industry Funding Influences Academic Research

While industry funding doesn’t necessarily influence scientific research, a broad survey of research shows that it often does, according to Garry Gray, assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria.

“If we just look at the outcomes [of research] — and that’s where we should focus — if we look at meta-analyses of funding, we see this in many areas over and over again, the source of funding does matter,” Gray told DeSmog Canada.

Gray spent three years as a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard’s Law School studying unethical behaviour in public interest institutions and conducting interviews with researchers in the field of public health and medicine.

His research (which he presents cogently in this TEDx talk) found that, yes, where research money comes from does indeed influence research outcomes.

“There is definitely a funding effect bias that takes place in research, especially when you can show where the funding sources are coming from.”

Gray’s research found that in often minor and subtle ways, researchers found ways to make their findings palatable to their funders.

“It doesn’t mean people were doing unethical research,” Gray said, “it means they were maybe framing their questions in certain ways or asking question A and not question B.”

Gray added universities are trying to better manage the problem of conflict of interest funding, but said they stop short of actually eliminating those funding relationships.

“I think there are a lot of problems today around research funding relationships,” he said.

Many of those ethical problems are not fully resolved by simply asking researchers to sign conflict of interest disclosure forms, he added.

There is often little transparency in how universities accept funding, Gray said, adding that can complicate the issue of public trust.

“Trust is definitely at stake,” he said. “There is this idea that universities are independent and this idea they are, for the most part, serving the public good. So there is this more implicit trust that we have for a project that comes out of the university.”

Yet with increasing amounts of private funds on university campuses, researchers may not be asking “the tougher questions” that are likely to benefit the general public.

“The question is, if we continue to shift funding models, who is going to ask those questions that are not going to be of interest to companies and industry and those types of funders?”

Laurie Adkin, associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of political science, told DeSmog Canada there are a lot of concerns about universities’ increasing reliance on corporate funds.

“It has been rather difficult to document the amount of corporate funding for individual researchers and their projects,” Adkins, who is a researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, said.

“Partly because that information isn’t published anywhere and partly because it is difficult to record unless there is some sort of public announcement made.”

A request for comment from Samantha Pearson, director of corporate and foundation relations at the University of Alberta, went unanswered.

As a part of her research Adkin maps funding of energy-related research at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary.

There is a significant amount of funding from the fossil fuel industry but also from the federal government at the University of Alberta, Adkin said, adding “a lot of that funding has been going into social licence research or prolonging the life of fossil fuels rather than going into renewable energies.”

“Of course in Alberta the University of Alberta has, at least under its previous president, billed itself as a flagship university for fossil fuel research,” she said.

The University of Alberta used to report industry funding but has since merged that category with funding from public institutions in its annual reporting, so there is no easy way to decipher where funding is coming from.

“You don’t know what faculty is getting what share or what research is getting funded,” she said.

Adkin said the question of the appropriateness of this practice is never raised.

“This is viewed as the model for what everyone should be doing.”

University of Alberta TransAlta Sponsorship Agreement for Kindzierski Coal Study FOI 2016 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Update: This piece was updated Thursday, November 10 at 11:46 a.m. to reflect TransAlta’s use of Kindzierski’s research to push for an alternative to Alberta’s Climate Change Plan, not to explicitly argue against the coal phase-out.

With files from Michael Fisher. 

Image: Emissions from a coal-fired power plant chimney in Germany. Photo: Patrick via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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.