[6] The collision between the two immense plates had pushed up the Rocky Mountains while depressing the North American continent's interior.
[6] The oldest coal deposits were pushed closer to the surface about 80 to 55 million years ago, forming part of the Rocky Mountains's foothills and Front Ranges.
[7] In the fiscal year 2019-2020 coal represented $11.8 million or 0.2% of Alberta's total non-renewable resource revenue of $5.9 billion.
[8] Acoording to a 2023 Pembina Institute article, coal in Alberta had become a sunset industry as the province underwent a rapid transition from coal-fired power to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.
All of Alberta's coal-fired power plants will have closed or been converted to natural gas by the end of 2023, seven years ahead of the original 2030 phase-out schedule set in 2015.
[12] The vast sedimentary basin underlies 1,400,000 square kilometres (540,000 sq mi) of Western Canada including Alberta, southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories.
This massive wedge of sedimentary rock extends from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Canadian Shield in the east.
"[2][13] In 1793, a British surveyor, Peter Fidler, working for the Hudson's Bay Company wrote about a seam of high-quality coal near the Red Deer River that he had used for heat.
[13] Dawson and was an influential advisor on the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway and on potential industries such as ranching, agriculture, lumber, and mining, including petroleum and coal—whose development he encouraged.
[14] Sir Alexander Galt, one of the fathers of the Canadian Confederation, and his son Elliott Torrance Galt—who was then the Assistant Indian Commissioner in southern Alberta—formed the North Western Coal and Navigation Company in 1882, to exploit coal resources in what is now southern Alberta with William Lethbridge as the company's largest shareholder and president.
Greatly weakened by charges of communism, and Manning's unwillingness to fold caused the unions to attempt to persuade legislators instead of protesting using strikes, or violence.
In 1976, the Progressive Conservative government under then Premier Peter Lougheed restricted open-pit mines in most of Alberta's Rocky Mountains and Foothills through the Coal Development Policy.
Because it is essential to the steelmaking process, and at present there is no other alternative,[28][29][30] metallurgical coal and steel are coupled in the demand chain.
According to JWN Energy, the Vista Coal Project has a "surface area of 9,984 hectares" with a potential to provide more than 350 full-time jobs.
[43] In February 2015, the American billionaire coal investor Chris Cline—who established KC Euroholdings Sarl (KCE)—acquired Coalspur Mines Ltd. "for 2¢ per share".
[7] In March 2015, Coalspur Mining Ltd spokesman said that the company had struggled to "raise the $445 million in equity needed to build Vista".
[46] In July 2020, Jonathan Wilkinson, the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, announced that the proposed major expansion of Vista coal mine would be subject to a federal environmental assessment, in response to concerns by the Louis Bull Tribe legal team that the provincial regulators had not consulted with them.
[50][51] The company is seeking permission to drill 46 boreholes up to 550 meters deep on Crown and private land, with the goal of better understanding the coal deposit and obtaining samples.
[51] At least three groups, including ranchers and Corb Lund, have requested that the AER postpone hearings on coal exploration in the Rocky Mountains while the province's top court considers the legitimacy of Northback Holdings' applications.
The requests stem from concerns that proceeding with hearings would be a waste of time and resources if the Court of Appeal rules against the regulator's decision to exempt Northback from the coal mining ban.
[54] Surface mining on the eastern slopes had been protected by a decades old coal policy that the UCP administration under Premier Kenney had rescinded in May, 2020.
[54] In early December 2020 Alberta Energy said that bids were closing on "nearly 2,000 hectares on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains" that had been made available for coal leases in May.
[56] Alberta Energy also "issues and administers coal leases on Crown lands and collects royalties from producing mines.
"[58] Critics, which include well-known country singers Corb Lund and Paul Brandt, and local ranchers—including John Smith and Laura Laing, who also began a "Save Our Mountains" campaign—are concerned about the June 2020 rescinding of the 1976 Coal Policy, in part because of the threat to watersheds by selenium poisoning.
[59] They cite the case of the Elk River in British Columbia where watersheds downstream of coal mines have been poisoned by the highly toxic selenium released in the process of open pit coal-mining.
[60] In 2020, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reproached British Columbia for allowing Tech Industries to "exceed guidelines" for selenium.
[60]: 2 The EVSTF and the STAC found that the concentrations of dissolved selenium emissions had a "deleterious" effect on fish populations, such as the westslope cutthroat trout.
When the concentration of selenium reaches a toxic threshold it can cause "reproductive failure", potentially resulting in a "total population collapse".