Massive mine expansion looms over calls to halt thermal coal exports

Canada committed to ending thermal coal exports by 2030, but a massive mine expansion proposed in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains will keep exports trending in the wrong direction.

“Exports of Canadian mined thermal coal have more than tripled and overall thermal coal exports through Canada have almost doubled since 2015,” reads a letter sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Oct. 22. It was signed by 36 organizations, including Environmental Defence, Ecojustice and Greenpeace Canada.

“Thermal coal exported from or through Canada in 2022 alone caused 40Mt of GHG emissions when burned – more than the domestic emissions of all of Canada’s Atlantic provinces combined that year,” it reads.

Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, producing the most planet-warming emissions and releasing harmful pollution into the air we breathe. Burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of the climate crisis.

The Liberals first promised to end thermal coal exports in 2021. The federal government has five more years to make good on that promise, but with a federal election coming next fall at the latest, time is running out.

The letter urges the federal government to commit to introducing legislation this spring to ban thermal coal experts in consultation with impacted trade unions and Indigenous communities.

Coalspur Mines Ltd. wants to expand operations at its Vista coal mine, 10 kilometres east of Hinton, Alberta.

“If it's allowed to keep going forward unchecked, it would be the largest thermal coal mine in Canadian history,” Fraser Thomson, staff lawyer at Ecojustice, said in a phone interview with Canada’s National Observer. He noted the mine is only an hour north of where climate change-fuelled wildfires tore through the town of Jasper.

Currently, the Vista open-pit coal mine produces about six million tonnes of thermal coal per year, according to the company’s 2021 submission to the Impact Assessment Agency. Coalspur is pursuing two expansions to the existing mine. One would expand the current open-pit mine to increase coal production capacity by 4.5 million tonnes. The second proposed expansion is for a small underground mine in the same area to test whether the company could add a larger underground mine to its operations.

"Coalspur has stated an intent that its expanded operations will produce up to 15 million tonnes of coal a year, which we know will have massive impacts on our climate,” Thomson said.

Canada has made significant progress phasing out the use of thermal coal within our borders, both Thomson and the letter noted.  In 2016, the federal government promised the phase-out of unabated coal-fired electricity by 2030 and, just this summer, Alberta transitioned its last coal plant to natural gas and ended its reliance on coal.

Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia still use coal-fired electricity generation. 

Despite Canada being “at the forefront in phasing out thermal coal … Coalspur is now seeking to massively expand its thermal coal mines just so it can ship this thermal coal overseas to produce polluting electricity,” Thomson said.

Coalspur’s underground mine expansion is already underway, despite the objections of local groups and Ecojustice, which say the company started construction work without seeking federal permits necessary under the Fisheries Act and Species at Risk Act.

Both the underground and open pit expansions impact the critical habitat of threatened Athabasca rainbow trout and bull trout. 

The federal government originally said it would do an impact assessment for the expansions. But Coalspur argued it wasn’t necessary and the issue went back and forth through the courts for several years until a Supreme Court decision called some parts of the Impact Assessment Act unconstitutional, which killed the federal assessment of Vista.

After the act was amended, Ecojustice (on behalf of Keepers of the Water Society and the West Athabasca Watershed Bioregional Society) requested the federal government designate the expansions for a federal impact assessment. The Impact Assessment Agency determined that because Coalspur already started construction on the underground mine expansion, it will be excluded from Ecojustice’s request.

“It's up to Mr. Guilbeault, (Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Canada), to make sure that Coalspur’s further expansion plans, the open pit expansion plans, undergo a thorough impact assessment,” Thomson said.

“This government has a demonstrated track record tackling thermal coal in the past, and we believe that nothing would better demonstrate its commitment to building a sustainable future than ordering an impact assessment for the Vista coal mine.”

On Thursday in Edmonton, physicians and healthcare professionals with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) sounded the alarm about the Vista expansion.

“Allowing Vista to expand is like throwing gasoline on a fire — it will drive up pollution, drive up deaths, and drive us further into the climate crisis.” said Joe Vipond, CAPE’s former president, in a press release.

“The health impacts of coal pollution are severe — from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases to increased hospital visits for asthma attacks.” 

More than 800,000 people around the world die each year from the pollution generated by burning coal, according to the federal government’s Powering Past Coal Alliance webpage.