Article content continued

All in all, the new rules are designed to ensure coal-generated electricity is as clean as natural gas, mainly by steering plants to adopt new technology such as carbon capture and storage.

But the rules are also meant to give provinces some flexibility in how they will deal with their coal-fired electricity.

Already, Nova Scotia has negotiated a separate deal with Ottawa to handle coal in its own way, while meeting the same end goals set by the federal government. Saskatchewan has announced it intends to put together a similar deal, and Alberta is expected to head down the same road.

Those three provinces are the most dependent in Canada upon coal for their electricity, and have argued that Ottawa’s original rules would penalize them unfairly.

But environmentalists as well as the Ontario government have been urging Ottawa not to lose its resolve with the coal regulations, saying those rules will set the tone for rules in the oil and gas sector expected some time next year.

“For us, if they do weaken them (the coal regulations) from the draft, it’s really troubling for the regulations that are coming next,” said P.J. Partington, a climate change policy analyst at the Pembina Institute.

“If they’re willing to take such an approach with coal, then we can only imagine what will happen with oil and gas.”

The federal government is taking a sector-by-sector approach to reducing greenhouse gases. Instead of imposing a tax on carbon emissions, or developing a cap-and-trade market that would reward clean energy over high emissions, Ottawa is gradually imposing rules and restrictions on emissions in each polluting sector of the economy.