Fact Check: Outlook for Coal Not Quite What it Used to Be

Coal pollution in China

This is a guest post by Benjamin Thibault and Andrew Read of the Pembina Institute

Coal Association of Canada (CAC) president, Robin Campbell is currently touring Alberta with a series of “ACT information meetings.” He is making a number of assertions about the province’s coal industry and Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan. We feel that some of the points being raised by Campbell need to be addressed. This is the second blog post to address those claims and to reiterate the importance of Alberta’s pledge to phase out coal power pollution.
 
As our first fact check showed, the CAC has been disseminating some misinformation on coal’s contribution to air pollution in Alberta. Another bucket of inaccuracies centres around the long-term future of coal — both locally and internationally — and the potential for coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) in particular.