Here in Canada, it's easy to forget the evils of coal

In Canada, it’s easy to forget how damaging coal is to air quality and the climate. Despite our growing exports, almost all of our own coal-fired power plants have been replaced by hydroelectricity, gas and renewables. When there are no fires, our air is generally clear. 

Step outdoors in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, where I happened to visit last month, and your eyes immediately sting and your throat gets so scratchy, you wonder if you are coming down with something and should have masked on the plane. Ulaanbaatar is a modest city of 1.5 million with an air pollution problem so severe there are Reddit threads debating whether it is the world’s worst. 

The primary culprit is coal, which is burned to produce 70 per cent of Mongolia’s power. Coal is plentiful in Mongolia and it is fed into generation plants whose stacks loom large on the skyline. Mountains ringing Ulaanbaatar trap the pollution, covering the city in a grey-brown haze. On the day we arrived, the air was so bad, it brought back memories of visiting Mexico City in the 1980s when the pollution was so thick birds reportedly dropped dead from the sky.

Coal pollution is deleterious to human health; it contributes to increased rates of childhood asthma, heart and lung disease and some cancers. It is also a climate catastrophe. Coal is the most carbon intensive of all fossil fuels and is responsible for about a third of the world’s carbon emissions, causing global heating.

But coal is not Mongolia’s only problem. Ulaanbaatar is a classic case of a city that has come into some money, creating a middle class that can afford to drive while making minimal investment in public transit. The streets are jammed with gas and diesel vehicles. Hour-long gridlock is routine, and on one day where people from across the country were flooding into the capital for a festival, we crept forward only inches at a time for three hours until the van we were in overheated and we were forced to stop for an early dinner. 

There are buses, but not enough of them to get people where they need to go. Apart from that, there is no public transit. There were painted bike lanes in spots and a few very brave cyclists. But to my eye, riding a bike in Ulaanbaatar looked like a fast route to an early death.

Not surprisingly, air pollution is a topic of conversation in Mongolia. One young man I met told me he loves Ulaanbaatar in the summer because the air is actually better. Come winter, people on the outskirts living in gers (yurts) burn coal for heat and inversions conspire further to trap the pollution. My heart broke a bit for all of them as I thought about the fresh Vancouver air I am privileged to breathe.

The glaring juxtaposition between Ulaanbaatar and my own home got me thinking a lot about coal and Canada’s contribution to its worldwide supply. When my colleague Cloe Logan dug into the numbers, she found that Canada produced 47.3 million tonnes of coal, 41 per cent of which was thermal, the type burned in power plants for electricity. 

Some is used here at home in coal-fired power plants in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Alberta, to its credit, powered down its last remaining plant this summer, two years ahead of schedule. 

Although Canada is pushing hard to end the use of coal to generate electricity here at home, we still have a thriving export business in metallurgical coal (the kind used to make steel) and thermal coal to other countries. 

Weaning entire countries off coal is not simple and it would be misguided to blame Mongolia’s coal use for climate change. It’s a tiny nation, contributing only about .07 per cent to the world’s total carbon emissions, and some of the outer reaches of the country still have no electricity at all. (Although large-scale renewable energy is rare, many gers are kitted out with solar panels for charging phones.) Canada’s share of emissions clocks higher at 1.5 per cent, and both pale in comparison to China at 31 per cent and the United States at 13.5 per cent.

But as I coughed and put eye drops in my scratchy eyes on an Ulaanbaatar summer day, it impressed upon me how important it is to end our planet’s remaining dependence on coal. Removing even this single fossil fuel from the equation would improve human health in places where its particulates muddy the air and would go far to reducing a huge chunk of global carbon pollution. 

It will take time to transition away from metallurgical coal in some industries, such as steel manufacturing, where cost-effective alternatives are still scarce. But there are plenty of replacements for coal-generated electricity, starting with wind and solar, which are inexpensive and quick to install. Thermal or possibly nuclear energy can also be an option in places where easier, cleaner alternatives won’t suffice.

So let’s start by ending our dependence on thermal coal. Canada recognizes its responsibility on that front. In 2021, the Liberals promised to work toward banning thermal coal exports by 2030. Yet in 2022, one year after writing that goal into Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault’s mandate letter, our 2022 coal exports hit an eight-year high. Let’s hope the trend reverses when the 2023 numbers come out. Everyone will breathe easier when that day comes.