Why This Canadian Community Is Betting on Coal Again

-The world wants this coal. It needs it. -Not only is this a bad idea economically, not only is it a bad idea politically, I don't want to see this country messed up. -I am extremely, capital P, R, O, coal. -In the heart of the southern Canadian Rockies, on the western border of Alberta, lies Crowsnest Pass, home to 5 historic mining communities that lost the key driver of their economies years ago, when the nearby coal mines closed down. -When I was younger, Crowsnest Pass was very vibrant. There were a lot of businesses. And mines went away and businesses left. -You see this community just trying to struggle to have businesses and just a thriving culture. And I've seen it just really just struggle and limp along. -We are the forgotten corner of Alberta. And nobody really gives a [Beep] about us until we actually got a chance to get something good. -As the world turns its back on coal production, some in Alberta see opportunity. Northback, a subsidiary of Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting, wants to reopen and expand a mine in the area, which would be the first of its kind to open in Alberta in two decades. Local business owner and rancher Lucas Michalsky sees the new proposed mine as a beacon of hope. -Northback has put tens of million dollars into the Crowsnest Pass. All the people that are against it, I haven't seen them plant a single tree. I haven't seen them clean up a single old mine site. I've never seen them put any money into the Crowsnest Pass. You know what we are? We're a little drive-through town. This is a blue collar community. It always has been. And we've lost our logging. We've lost our oil and gas. Mining is the only thing we have left because we never really had much of the first two. So, yeah, this coal mine is very, very important for the community. -Located on an abandoned mine that closed in the 1960s, the Grassy Mountain Project was first proposed back in 2015 and initially rejected in 2021. Since then, Northback has been attempting to revive it and plans on submitting a new proposal within the next 6 months, with planned production starting in the next few years. The mission is to mine millions of tons of steel-making coal, otherwise known as metallurgical coal. Do you have an economic estimate for the benefits to this area? -We think on an annual basis, as much as 90% of our spend on OpEx will be within Alberta. Eventually, this will be part of our overall pit operations. -Brad Johnston is the CEO of Northback. How big is the export volume for Canada right now? -For steel-making coal produced in British Columbia, they're producing between 25 and 30 million tons a year. And our production is going to be about 2.5 million tons a year. So let's say 10% of what they produce in B.C. That's what we would expect we produce at Grassy Mountain. -What makes this coal deposit especially valuable is its unique chemical composition. Unlike most coal, which is burned for electricity, this higher grade material is used to make steel. Ian Lange is a professor from the Colorado School of Mines. -So the difference between met coal and thermal coal is generally just the amount of impurities within the coal. And so the less sulfur, ash and moisture, the more likely you can turn something into met coal. If you would like to take met coal and move it into steel, right? You would mine the met coal from the ground, you would put it on presumably a rail line, have that railed to a port. That port would then ship it to wherever the met coal is going to be turned into coke. Once it's become coke, it can go into a steel mill, and the steel mill combines the coke with iron ore to make steel. -Alberta has some of Canada's richest metallurgical coal deposits. But since 1976, provincial policy has restricted where new mines can be developed. Today, met coal production is nearly 85% below its 1982 level. Brad Johnston thinks that could change. He believes that rising demand for met coal will meet faltering supply lines, constrained by dwindling resources at already existing mines and strict regulations. -We think as early as 2030, there's going to be undersupply of steelmaking coal. And by 2040, it could be as much as 100 million tons a year. So that's one of the factors that makes us interested in this development because the world very much wants this coal. -Met coal can be found around the world, but global exports are concentrated in just a handful of countries, with Australia, the United States, Mongolia, Canada and Russia making up 95% of the total. -This met coal project would presumably benefit allies like Japan and South Korea as they're able to get the resources they don't have domestically. -And that potential demand comes as Canada is looking for more customers beyond the United States. Heather Exner-Pirot is a Senior Fellow and Director of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. -When we talk about diversifying trade alliances, when we talk about being, you know, more relevant to different countries, I think metallurgical coal could provide a great opportunity for that. -In the wake of trade frictions with the United States, Canadian businesses and policymakers are looking for ways to diversify. In September, Prime Minister Mark Carney released a bill to speed up the approval process of infrastructure projects. Mining is high on the agenda. -Since Trump was elected, there's been much greater emphasis on resource development. Public opinion towards it has gone much more positive. And people see that we do want to trade with other partners. We want to trade more with Asia. We want to trade more of our resources. And obviously for many nations, for Europe, for the United States, for India, they consider metallurgical coal a critical mineral. So it is going to become more and more a tool of soft power and building alliances. -One of the benefits of our coal, it has low phosphorus and low sulfur. And those particular characteristics are desirable for European steel makers. And that would be, let's say, pretty consistent with some of the discussions taking place now between Prime Minister Carney and the EU. I recently had discussions with steel mills in Japan and Korea, as recent as 2 or 3 weeks ago. And they are very interested in pursuing us as one of their suppliers. -So how much coal is in the mountain? -Our models show we have upwards of 200 million tons of raw coal in the mountain. And right now we're thinking we're going to have approximately 100 million tons of economic coal that we will produce. We think it will be about 25 years of mine operations. -While Northback expects 25 years of economic development... -The first thing you see is deformities in fish. -...some Canadians are worried about the longer-term impacts of the mine, and whether the company will make good on its promises. Corb Lund is among the skeptics. -I don't believe anything they say, frankly. And I don't think they're telling the truth. But in my opinion, they're just lying, and they'll say anything they've got to do to get in there with the bulldozers and mine our coal. -Lund is a country singer turned environmental activist whose connection to the land stretches back generations. -My family's been here for 120 years. My great-grandfather, he's from Utah, he settled here in 1902. People don't often associate ag people with conservation, but generational ranching is really about conservation. -The musician started the "Water Not Coal" petition in early 2026 to ban all new coal mining in the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies. The petition received over 170,000 verified signatures, falling just short of the 178,000 needed to put the issue to Alberta voters. -We've been asking for 5, show us 5 examples in the world where this kind of mine doesn't contaminate the groundwater, they can't do it. The only groups of people who want these mines are A, the Aussie coal companies, B, the small handful of people who get the jobs, very few jobs, which will be automated away as we speak, and the government people. -Although Lund's ranch will not be directly affected by water contamination, he says his concern is for the surrounding communities. -So there's lots of reasons these coal mines are a bad idea, but water is the biggest one. And it's not only a quality issue, but a quantity issue. The quality comes into play with the sediment... or the contaminants that get released into the groundwater by this kind of coal mining. Selenium is the one that comes up a lot. These coal mining companies have told us over and over they don't need any of our water. And then recently they just applied for a big water license. And so I don't trust them at all on this stuff. They're just saying whatever they've got to say to get in there. But we've got to protect the water. -Other local residents who live nearby share Lund's concerns. Lethbridge, a city of about 110,000 people, gets its water from the Crowsnest watershed. And the city's former mayor says that the mine would put surrounding jobs at risk. -What happens with coal is there's usually a lot of dust created. And here we have some of the strongest winds in Alberta and Canada. So that windblown coal dust is going to blow as far as 100 miles from the mine. And it's going to contaminate the water. It's going to contaminate the air. It's going to contaminate the soil. Why would you jeopardize 40,000 jobs to create 400? -Let's continue talking about water, because that's the big issue for opponents. -How we're going to address the matter of selenium will be like a multi-layered system of controls. So first thing is we're going to have a water treatment facility, a plant, on site on day one. And the other thing we're committing to do is after mining is completed for as much as 25 years, we're going to run, or continue to run, the waste treatment facility until the actual data or water testing tells us that we can shut them down and the site can actually just administer itself. -Another problem on the environmental side that people are concerned about is coal dust. Everybody who lives here tells us the wind blows tremendously here and they're worried that the coal dust will spread, not just around the town, but will spread east and land in the agricultural areas and do some damage. -It's our assessment that this won't be a regional problem. However, one of the ways we control that is using water to control dust. -Why should people here trust you? -Ah, goodness, that's a good question. Um, we've invested almost $200 million in operating costs in the province, in the area. And we're living up to our commitments. We hire local. We try and be a good neighbor. We engage with First Nations. We have community engagement. And so trust is something, I think, that not necessarily is given. We have to earn it and we try and do that. -It's certainly not uncommon for a firm to say, "Hey, trust us." It's very difficult to sort of lock a company in to fulfilling environmental regulation or reclamation rules well after, say, the mine has closed or well into the future. So, yeah, it's really hard to say with certainty that this won't be a problem 30, 40 years down the line. -The Alberta Energy Regulator will ultimately decide if Northback's application will move forward. A decision which could be as long as a year away. Leaving residents to either daydream about the future... -♪ Take a close look ♪ At the stock that you own -...or fight for their home -♪ 'Cause this is my prairie ♪ This is my home [Guitar playing]