By: Thomas Hall
North America’s largest coal-fired power plant, and biggest producer of greenhouse gasses, is burning no more.
Nanticoke generating station was once a critical piece of Ontario’s power supply. Since the late 1970s its eight massive boilers produced thousands of megawatts of power and consumed countless tonnes of coal.
Jack Gibbons, from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, said they began their campaign to rid Ontario of coal power 17 years ago and the closure of Nanticoke is a significant win for the campaign.
“It was Ontario’s number one smog polluter and Canada’s number one greenhouse gas emitter,” Gibbons said. “It was also Ontario’s number one source of airborne mercury emissions, which is a potent neurotoxin.
In 2009 Ontario Power Generation began to phase out the plant, closing four of its boilers. In January 2014 its last fire burned out, almost a year ahead of schedule.
But the closure of Nanticoke wasn’t with out its opponents. It was one of the biggest employers in the region.
Craig Manley is the general manager of planning and economic development for Haldimand County where Nanticoke sits on the edge of Lake Erie. The area directly affected by the shutdown.
He said the closure was gradual, a few boilers at a time, which helped to mitigate the impact.
Note: The most recent data set is from 2012.
“As a major employer, it was an important part of our tax base,” Manley said. “And certainly we don’t see the degree of impact at this stage of the game, but we do anticipate that there will be a reduced revenue stream to the municipality.”
Only a handful of employees remain out of the 600 or so that worked at Nanticoke, said Manley. Their job is to keep Nanticoke from falling into ruin case Ontario Power Generation, which owns the plant, decides they need to convert some of the boilers to gas or biomass burners.
Something Manley said Haldimand County wants to see happen.
“We’ve always taken the perspective that there’s been a lot of public sector investment in both the facility and the transition network that leads into the province,” Manley said. “And we feel there are opportunities in the long term to reposition that for natural gas or biomass or combination thereof.”
But Gibbons from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance would rather see the plant torn down.
“It’s an old plant with old boilers and if they were to burn biomass it would be a very inefficient use of biomass,” Gibbons said.
Ontario Power Generation’s director of corporate relations and communication, Bill McKinlay, said there is a chance some of the boilers could be converted.
“It depends on the need for the electricity in the future,” McKinlay said. “It’s a decision that would be made by the Ontario power authority. But what converting to gas offers is very quick ramp rates, so you can bring a station on quickly to meet peak demand and then pull it back.”
McKinlay says that 95 per cent of Ontario’s energy comes from sources that do not emit greenhouse gas, including nuclear power.
Gibbons says he’s looking forward to the end of the 17-year struggle to end coal-fired power in the province.
“Ontario is virtually coal free. There’s still the Thunder Bay coal plant, which is going to be converted to biomass later this year,” Gibbons said. “But southern Ontario is coal free and all of Ontario will be coal free by the end of this year.”