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For the first time in decades, Alberta's electricity grid has gone without coal power (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by Grappling7155@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[-] villasv@lemmy.ca 39 points 1 year ago

The phaseout is now years ahead of schedule, in large part due to natural gas taking over much of the generation. Many coal plants were either replaced by gas plants or converted to burn natural gas instead. Electricity generated from natural gas puts out roughly half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as compared with coal.

Ok, so fossil fuel is still the primary driver. But well, incremental improvements do matter. Zeroing out coal this year is a great milestone.

The share from renewables is growing too, even if a bit slowly.

[-] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 year ago

Too bad the Alberta gov has put a moratorium on new clean energy.

[-] TheRaven@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 year ago

So bizarre. Apart from snow, Alberta also has so much wind and sun. USE IT!

[-] GrymEdm@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I agree. Danielle Smith, the former oil and gas lobbyist who is now Premier, does not. Alberta elected Conservatives out of habit and hatred (homophobia, homeless, etc) and shot clean energy in the foot by doing so.

[-] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

But that might destabilize the ~~bribery~~ power grid!

[-] villasv@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago

The moratorium already gave way to a ridiculously restrictive ruling but at least it's not outright block so while it's still sad, it's not entirely hopeless - which sums up Alberta politics as always.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

Coal is so friggin dirty it's not even the same league. The world should have done away with in the 70s.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago

I assume Albertans are somehow mad about this?

[-] dgmib@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Pretty much everybody is happy to see coal power shutdown. Even most people working in the coal industry are fine with it as there’s still a depressingly large market for coal.

We’re replacing it with natural gas and the oil and gas industry employs way more Albertans than coal. People in that industry are generally happy about it.

If we had replaced it with solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, anything that would make a significant impact on our still massive GHG emissions. Then about half of Albertans would be happy and about a third would be claiming “F*ck Trudeau yadda yadda”

[-] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Welcome to 2024, Alberta.

[-] nik282000@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Did it fail again?

[-] small_crow@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Wait so these coal plants got shut down ahead of the schedule the NDP set back when they were in, that everyone said was ridiculously short and impossible to meet without devastating our power grid.

It turns out that timeline was conservative and they blasted right through it?

What other things that these fossil fuel industry people say is impossible and we should be ashamed of ourselves for even suggesting do you think we could get done in checks notes half the time proposed.