Ontario has committed to phasing out all coal power generation by 2014.  I’m not sure that it is entirely clear how that is going to be done, since something like 19% of power generation in Ontario comes from coal.  In fact I think the largest coal fired power plant in North America is at Nanticoke, Ontario.  But I came across an interesting article in the January 2010 Edition of Environment Science and Technology by some folks at the University of Toronto that suggest a partial contribution to doing this.  

The University of Toronto study found that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be reduced by 91% by substituting wood pellets for coal.  The wood pellets were made from roundwood harvested from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest region. The researchers compared greenhouse gases (GHG) and some air pollutant emissions of wood pellets with those resulting from coal.  They included GHG emissions from resource extraction (coal mining, natural gas production or forest harvesting), fuel processing, transportation to the generating station and combustion to produce electricity.

In New Hampshire in 2006 the Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH) converted a coal-fired plant at Schiller Station to wood pellets. The Northern Wood Power at Schiller Station is capable of 50 MW and gets its wood pellets come from the leftovers of forestry operations.  By converting the fuel source for power generation from coal to wood chips, Northern Wood Power generates 50 MW of cleaner, greener electricity-enough to power approximately 50,000 New Hampshire homes, reduces coal use by more than 130,000 tons annually, reduces GHG emissions, reduces the dependence on fossil fuels,  and provides a new and significant wood chip market for the New Hampshire forest industry.

Some Statistics

The Ontario Medical Association estimates that air pollution costs Ontario more than $10 billion per year in health care costs, lost work time and other quantifiable expenses.  Coal-fired power plants are the single largest industrial contributors to this problem.  The Nanticoke generating station on Lake Erie is Canada’s single largest source of air pollution.  The emissions coming from Nanticoke are the equivalent of the pollution produced by 3.3 million cars.

The annual production capacity of wood pellets from the Great Lakes St Lawrence forest region is estimated to be 1.25 million oven dry tonnes (metric tons).  This equates to an annual displacement of 0.9 million tonnes of coal, about 9% of total coal fired power generation in Ontario or 1.6% of total power generation in Ontario.