TORONTO - The Ontario government has rejected the idea of installing anti-pollution scrubbers on the province's four remaining coal-fired electrical stations because of the cost, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said Tuesday.
The Ontario Power Authority released a report Tuesday warning that installing the air pollution technology on the coal burning electrical plants would cost $1.6 billion. Duncan said it doesn't make sense to spend that kind of money on coal plants that the government hopes to phase out in seven years, especially when the scrubbers don't do anything to reduce greenhouse gases.
"We're not going to spend $1.6 billion on technology that doesn't help climate change. That's just dumb," Duncan said.
"We have determined it makes better sense to replace coal as quickly as we can and not be side tracked with a scrubber sideshow."
Conservative Leader John Tory has said the province should at least consider installing scrubbers at the huge Nanticoke generating station, one of the worst polluters in North America.
But the OPA report said that project alone would cost $666 million, and Duncan said he doesn't want to spend money on coal plants he plans to close.
"It takes five years to put these (scrubbers) on," he said.
"So Mr. Tory's plan is very clearly a coal plan. It's a plan about keeping coal (plants) open well beyond 2014."
In the legislature, the opposition parties mocked the Liberals for breaking their 2003 election campaign promise to close all of the coal-fired plants by 2007.
"What we hear today is more statements from the McGuinty government about coal-fired plants, and the only question I think people across Ontario are asking is this: 'why should we believe anything that they say,"' said NDP Leader Howard Hampton.
Conservative critic John Yakabuski said the Liberals used to speak about the huge health care costs from burning coal, not about reducing greenhouse gases, and said $1.6 billion is not out of line when it comes to saving lives.
"That is a small amount of money compared to $4 billion in health care costs and 2,800 premature deaths in just the past four years," said Yakabuski.
"How many more (deaths) before those coal plants are actually shut down?"
Duncan also dismissed the idea of having the electrical generating stations burn a less polluting form of coal, describing so-called "cleaner coal" as the equivalent of putting a filter on a cigarette.
