Fresh off their in-council protest of Atura Power’s proposal to expand its local gas-fired power plant, a coalition of health and environmental groups gathered Monday evening (Nov. 27) for a virtual town hall to further oppose the plans.
The gathering sought to update those in attendance about the situation on the ground in Halton Hills and Greater Napanee, where similar plans are in the works.
On the agenda were discussions about the environmental impacts of gas plants, the health effects of natural gas emissions and why the coalition believes hydrogen is not the way to go, among other topics.
Aside from the environmental dangers of climate change, at stake is a Dec. 11 Halton Hills Council meeting where the local politicians will debate whether or not to provide consent to expand Atura's power plant.
Town hall-goers were instructed on how to contact their local elected representatives and provided with email and phone numbers to do so.
“We are going in the wrong direction,” declared Jack Gibbons, Ontario Clean Air Alliance chair and former Toronto Hydro commissioner.
He urged everyone in the meeting to work together to persuade Halton Hills and Napanee councils to "say no to gas plants and say yes to energy efficiency, renewables and storage."
Atura's proposed $400-million expansion of the Halton Hills Generation Station drew a wave of opposition from the coalition groups at a council meeting last month. The company wants to add an additional turbine at the facility overlooking Steeles Avenue and Sixth Line, expanding the plant's output.
“This is in response to the IESO’s (Independent Electricity System Operator) request for additional generating assets,” Atura spokesperson Darius Sokal told HaltonHillsToday. At an announcement last week, VP Chuck Farmer said the IESO is "forecasting that Ontario's electricity demand will grow by at least 40 per cent over the next 20 years."
Atura is also on the threshold of building the necessary infrastructure for blending hydrogen with natural gas to, they say, reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Hydrogen extracted from water at their soon-to-be-built electrolyzer in Niagara will be trucked to the generating plant in Halton Hills. The Province of Ontario announced a roughly $4-million investment to this end.
But the environmentalists weren’t buying it. Photos of last summer’s orange haze from wildfires blanketing the GTA and parts of the United States were presented to illustrate why the groups oppose the gas-fired power plants in general. They also showed population centres in range of the power plant like Halton Hills, Brampton, Mississauga and Milton.
"When we look at the human health harms and death worldwide in 2020, there was as much harm and death due to gas as there was due to coal," Dr. Mili Roy, regional co-chair of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) Ontario, told the gathering.
Ontario began phasing out coal in 2007 with the passing of the Cessation of Coal Use Regulation.
“But the most important pollutants generated from gas-fired electricity include particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, both of which are components of smog. So gas expansion risks reversing much of the huge and hard-won gains of getting off coal,” Roy asserted.
Atura, through Sokal, told HaltonHillsToday that the company will always “operate under the guidelines that the Ministry of the Environment has provided.”
Climate Policy Co-ordinator for The Atmospheric Fund Samia Anwer contended at the meeting that truck transportation of hydrogen would “still introduce a significant environmental footprint” that would offset any benefits.
“Expanding the facility with an additional [turbine] unit would only serve to compound this impact, increasing the emissions from both the facility itself and the emissions and air pollutants introduced to the area and transporting the hydrogen,” Anwer elaborated.
When asked about this, Sokal told HaltonHillsToday that Atura has conducted a comprehensive study of emissions associated with transporting hydrogen and their “estimations indicate that there is still a net benefit in terms of GHG reductions with the project.”
In addition, Anwer said that GHGs have been increasing due to “existing plants running more often.”
Sokal acknowledged that demand on the stations has been higher lately “with the refurbishment of the [Pickering] nuclear power plant.”
“We don’t dictate when we run. We run when we are required and when we are dispatched by the IESO,” Sokal added.
The coalition that hosted the virtual town hall consists of: Halton Hills Climate Action, Environmental Defence, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, CAPE Ontario, The Atmospheric Fund, Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign and the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario.
