BY HANNEKE BROOYMANS, EDMONTON JOURNAL JULY 21, 2010
A layer of smog hovers over Calgary.
Photograph by: Dean Bicknell, Canwest News Service
EDMONTON — The oilsands industry is resisting a new air emission standard that would back up their claim to environmental stewardship, says a former Alberta Environment director of air and water approvals.
David Spink now represents the Prairie Acid Rain Coalition on a team set up by the Clean Air Strategic Alliance to hammer out new recommendations on air emissions from power plants. The alliance passes those on to the provincial government for consideration.
Spink said representatives from the utility sector, the government and non-governmental organizations all agreed on new technology requirements for limiting the amount of nitrogen oxides (NOx) that are emitted from power plants, but the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) disagreed. The association also wants an emission limit twice as high as what the rest of the team wanted.
Nitrogen oxides are prime ingredients in the formation of smog and at elevated levels can impair lung function, irritate the respiratory system and, at very high levels, make breathing difficult, especially for people who already suffer from asthma or bronchitis, according to Health Canada. The pollutant can also harm the natural environment by acidifying rain or by overfertilizing areas and throwing natural systems off balance.
The air emissions report is now in the hands of Alberta Environment, which will have to decide which way to go.
The new technology recommended for non-peaking, natural gas fired generators by the majority of the CASA team is called selective catalytic reduction. The two sides disagree on how much more it would cost industry to use this technology and how much of a difference it would make in overall NOx emissions.
CAPP would prefer to continue using a technology that is currently being more widely used and it has the support of the Chemical Industry Association of Canada and the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute.
"It's not that industry doesn't want to be green," said Travis Davies, a CAPP spokesman. "It's that we question whether this technology is green that's been mandated."
They believe the selective catalytic reduction technology has a larger land and water footprint, and presents bigger safety and environmental risk because it uses ammonia. Spink, however, counters that industry is used to safely handling ammonia and if they run their plants efficiently, it shouldn't be an issue.
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