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Alberta's recent coal blunders in the news again today, this time on Alberta sitting on coal mine contamination data. I wonder when the topic of methane emissions from coal mining will come up. Huge amounts of methane are being quietly vented to the atmosphere every day in every one of the province's coal mines, methane being a very potent greenhouse gas (far more so than CO2). I wonder if these methane emissions are at all quantified/estimated, and if the coal companies doing the mining/venting have to account for this (e.g., as a large final emitter in the provincial TIER GHG regulation). In December, Justin announced that the federal regulated price of CO2 is going to $170/tonne by 2030. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the methane emissions from coal mining in Alberta are in the megatonne/year scale (on a CO2 tonnage equivalent basis). Megatonne-scale CO2 emitters certainly attract a lot of regulatory attention, both provincially and federally. I haven't been through the Grassy Lake or any other proposed coal mine regulatory application information, but I wonder if all this GHG accounting for methane emissions is included in the information. IMHO, methane-GHG emissions could be a major regulatory issue for these coal mines, both existing and proposed. I suspect the GHG numbers may be shocking in size.