To the editor,
I was glad to see Tim Bousquet's column on Nova Scotia Power in last week's Coast ("Unjust rewards," May 10). With respect to greenhouse gas emissions and the company's ecological footprint in general, we should also take into account the source of NSP's coal over the last several years. Even though we have shut down coal mines in Nova Scotia, NSP didn't take that as an opportunity to switch to a more renewable energy source—they went looking for cheaper coal instead. NSP now gets approximately 17 percent of its coal from Colombia at a fraction of the cost of Canadian coal. How much do the company's greenhouse gas emissions increase when you factor in the shipping fuel used to transport the coal to Nova Scotia? And that's not considering the cost of human rights violations and community displacements associated with the mines NSP buys from in Colombia.
To learn more about NSP and New Brunswick Power's use of Colombian coal and what Maritimers can do about it, the website www.arsn.ca is a good place to start.
By Caitlin Hancey