Challenges and opportunities

There are no easy answers to environmental issues facing the industry. As time goes on, power companies will be able to deal fully with some environmental impacts, they will continue to wrestle with some, and new issues will emerge which the industry must address. An ongoing goal for industry will be to balance the goal of environmental protection with the need for affordable and reliable sources of electricity.

In meeting this goal, the nature and the speed of industry’s response will be shaped by key challenges and opportunities:

• coal: vital option in certain regions but environmental concerns
  Canada’s Prairie and Atlantic regions are endowed with rich reserves of coal. In these areas, where geography is not conducive to large-scale hydro projects, coal provides an essential source of reliable, competitively priced electricity. But development of this resource also raises environmental concerns, including greenhouse gases and air quality emissions. An important solution may be found in clean coal technologies, currently operating or being developed, that offer increased thermal conversion efficiencies, decreased emissions and significantly lower environmental impacts.
  
  
• natural gas: cleaner burning but supply and pricing issues
  Natural gas is a cleaner-burning fuel, contributing lower greenhouse gases and air quality emissions than coal and oil. However, existing natural gas in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin is being depleted. Natural gas supply is also subject to volatile market pressures and pricing. Development of natural gas reserves in the offshore Atlantic region and Canada’s North will add supply but at higher prices than previously seen. If natural gas supply remains competitive with other energy options in the future, natural gas-fueled technologies, such as combined cycle cogeneration, could offer lower emission alternatives to coal-fueled plants and an interim step to advanced technologies (fuel cells, clean coal technologies) under development.
  
  
• fossil fuels: still essential to our electricity system
  As consumer demand for electricity grows, the need to build new generation capacity raises important questions about our different energy options. Alternative forms of energy such as fuel cells are being developed but are not commercially ready. The costs of renewable sources such as wind energy and photovoltaics are approaching economic levels. Offering intermittent supply, they are still found in only small quantities, making up roughly two per cent of Canada’s total generation. Other sources — hydro, nuclear and coal- and natural gas-fueled generation — remain the backbone of today’s electricity system, providing reliable, competitively priced power to consumers.