Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
practice of just emitting waste gases. These emissions, along with similar practices
by other companies, had devastated the vegetation in the area around Sudbury for
over a century. Increasing environmental concerns about the effects of these emis-
sions on human health as well as the local ecology led to various gas-capture proce-
dures by the company, which had reduced this level to 150,000 kt. by 2011. How-
ever a new project costing over $ 100 million by the new owners (Vale Inc.) will be
completed by 2015. At its heart is a new plant to convert most of the formerly flared
waste gas to sulphuric acid which will reduce annual emissions to 45 kt., well below
Ontario's regulatory limit of 66 kt. and with dust and metals emissions also down
by 40 %. The sale of the formerly waste product will enable the company to recoup
its expenditures, since can be used in many industrial processes and also converted
into a valuable fertilizer. This plant is claimed to be the most ambitious project of its
kind in Canada, one that is designed to help the more general environmental initia-
tives to re-green Sudbury.
In a more general context several new technologies are under development to
reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide in particular from industrial plants (EC-
Climate 2013). Recently there has been a lot of interest in a sequestration processfor
carbon emitted from coal-burning electricity generating plants, such as storing it
underground, or using it in oil or gas reservoirs to improve outflows from existing
oil fields. But the expense of such additions to most existing coal-generating or oil-
refining plants has deterred most companies from applying such a procedure, except
in a few pilot projects. Yet there are exceptions. Statoil, the national oil company of
Norway has successfully added carbon sequestration to several of their production
systems, while the Canadian province of Saskatchewan announced in 2013 that it
would invest $ 1 billion in carbon sequestration to allow it to develop more coal
burning power plants. By contrast, in the same year the province of Ontario decided
to close down the last of its coal burning plants in the interest of sustainability, al-
though it is not without significance that this province has no useful coal reserves,
whereas Saskatchewan does.
5.7.3
Vehicle Changes and Emission Reductions
In the transport sector the growth in the number of cars with new propulsive sys-
tems is reducing the low levels of sustainability. The simplest approach to reducing
emissions is that of changing the fuel input, such as by running on natural gas, or
a mixture of gas and bio-fuel. There are some signs of increasing gas use, but the
need for larger and thicker fuel tanks and adjusting engines remains a problem. So
the most significant progress to date is taking place by the conversion of the bus
fleets in some progressive cities to gas power. Since large vehicles are major gen-
erators of greenhouse gases, this substantially reduces the emissions from oil based
fuels, although there are conversion costs in altering the fuel input. The growth of
bio-fuel has been considerable in the past decade, but the use of this fuel alone, or
mixed with regular oil-based fuel, lags far behind the use of traditional gasoline. A
