Steve MacLellan

The Vista mine is located in Treaty 6 territory near Hinton, Alberta. To my knowledge, it’s the first thermal coal mine ever built in Canada for the sole purpose of supplying overseas coal plants.

Almost immediately after the mine opened in 2019, Coalspur Mines Ltd. applied for a massive new expansion. Right now, it’s approved to extract about six million tonnes of coal per year. But the company told the regulator it plans to increase that to upwards of 15 million tonnes, and in one recent publication, Coalspur announced its intention to push that as high as 20 million tonnes in the future.

So this is a massive mine, on a scale that is almost unprecedented—it would be one of the largest if not the largest coal mine in Canadian history. When that 15 million tonnes of thermal coal is burned, it will lead to about 33 megatonnes of carbon dioxide per year, the same as seven million passenger vehicles on the road. For comparison, the largest point source of carbon in Canada right now is a coal plant in Alberta that emits 12.7 megatonnes per year, so this would far surpass it.