As debate over Alberta’s new climate change policy heats up, the task force developing policy options for the NDP government is down to dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the much-anticipated report.

“For the most part it’s there. It’s just getting it into the final form,” said Andrew Leach, who chairs the provincial Climate Change Advisory Panel. “We’re, shall we say, dotting i’s and crossing the t’s at this point.”

Leach expects to deliver the report to Premier Rachel Notley in the coming week but he said Friday that nothing in the document will come as a surprise to the government as there has been ongoing conversations and interactions with senior bureaucrats since thefive-member panel was assembled in August.

Even as the panel’s work winds down, speculation about the future of coal-fired power plants — which produce about two-thirds of Alberta’s electricity — is rampant. A report this week from environmental think-tank Pembina Institute suggested the province doesn’t have to compensate the owners for early phase-out of the plants.

Maxim Power responded that would amount to a “confiscation of private capital.”

At a speech Thursday in Toronto, Notley made specific references to coal-fired power plants as part of the strategy to fight climate change when she told the audience “we are going to address the issue of coal.”

She also committed to “reduce carbon emissions by pricing them.”

It’s worth noting Notley wasn’t making those comments blindly in advance of the report from the panel but with the knowledge of what the panel thinks about climate challenge policies in the province that’s home to Canada’s oil and gas industry and is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country.

“It’s not a question of the premier and her staff waiting for us to emerge from a cave and deliver a report and they take the report away and start a process … its been an ongoing and integrated process from Day 1,” Leach told the Herald’s Chris Varcoe. “The panel’s report is much more a report to Albertans than a report to the government.”

Notley is scheduled to attend a first ministers’ meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss climate change Nov. 23 and will travel to the UN climate conference in Paris that starts Nov. 30. Notley has said she will make elements of Alberta’s climate strategy public before the United Nations event.

Alberta produces about one-third of Canada’s total GHG emissions.

“Canada needs to become a world leader on climate change,” Notley said in Toronto. “More needs to be done … so we will do what needs to be done.”

What exactly “more” amounts to in terms of government policy is unclear, but as speculation mounts Leach cautioned “don’t read too much into the tea leaves” before the release of the report.

Notley’s government increased Alberta’s existing carbon levy on large industrial emitters within weeks of coming to power after a historic election victory in last May — doubling the fee to $30 per tonne in 2017.

Pembina is among those calling for anearly phase-outof coal plants as well as a$40-a-tonne price on carbon emissionsit calculates would raise $9 billion a year for the cash-strapped government. While big oil companies — including Royal Dutch Shell and Suncor Energy — have backed a carbon tax that impacts consumers as well as industry, debate over the future of coal-fired electricity has featured prominently in the more than 5o0 submissions to the panel.

Electricity production accounted for 17 per cent of Alberta’s GHGs in 2013, with coal-fired plants making up 85 per cent of emissions from the power sector. The power producers said their plan would mean 10 per cent of Alberta’s electricity would be generated from coal-fired plants by 2030.

“There were submissions by people who have views and then there were submissions by people who have assets,” TransAlta chief executive Dawn Farrell said when the company released third-quarter results this month.

Pembina’s Ben Thibault called the power sector’s proposals “quite weak.”

The submissions from TransAlta and other power producers in the province lay out a different path to GHG reductions than Pembina and environmental groups proposed to Leach’s panel but make no mistake it’ll be Notley’s government that ultimately determines what course Alberta chooses from the options proposed.

“We’ve put together recommendations on policy architecture on how we would solve this problem,” said Leach, energy and environmental economist at the University of Alberta. “What we’ve always said we’re going to do is provide the government the (policy) tools and then let government determine the way those tools are applied.”

One thing he will predict is achieving a consensus on climate policy is too much to ask.