From coal to wood thermoelectric energy production: a review and discussion of potential socio-economic impacts with implications for Northwestern Ontario, Canada

摘要

The province of Ontario in Canada is the first North American jurisdiction withlegislation in place to eliminate coal-fired thermoelectric production by theend of 2014. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) operates coal-fired stations inOntario, with Atikokan Generating Station being the only facility slated toswitch to 100% woody biomass. It is anticipated that this coal phase out policywill have socio-economic impacts. Because of these anticipated changes, in thispaper, we review the current state of peer-reviewed literature relating to threeburning scenarios (biomass, coal and co-firing) in order to explore theknowledge gaps with regard to socio-economic impacts and identify research needswhich should elucidate the anticipated changes on a community level. We reviewedover 150 sources, which included peer-reviewed articles and non-peer-reviewedgrey literature such as government documents, non-governmental organizationreports and news publications. We found very few peer-reviewed articles relatedto Canadian studies (even fewer for Ontario) which look at woody biomass burningfor thermoelectric production. We identify a number of socio-economic impactassessment tools readily available and present potential criteria required inselecting an appropriate tool for the Ontario context. For any tool to providemeaningful results, we propose that appropriate and robust local data must becollected and analyzed.