Ontario gas plant carbon: the Rogers Centre metric

How many times do Ontario gas plants emit enough carbon dioxide (CO₂) to fill up the Rogers Centre with the roof closed? You can figure out how much they have emitted so far today: just divide the amount of CO₂ in the Gas category in Table 2 on the left-hand sidebar by 2,877, which is how many tons of CO₂ would fit into the Rogers Centre at 25 °C and one atmosphere pressure. (For an explanation of how I got that figure, see the Info Box below). As of nine a.m. today (December 10), they had emitted enough CO₂ to fill Rogers Centre just over 2.6 times.

Here’s how many times Ontario’s gas plants filled up Rogers Centre per day in November 2013:

DAY IN NOVEMBER 2013	CO2, TONS	# OF ROGERS CENTRES FILLED
1	12626	4
2	13795	5
3	16940	6
4	17984	6
5	17505	6
6	16018	6
7	15795	5
8	16173	6
9	12239	4
10	13460	5
11	16110	6
12	19600	7
13	16885	6
14	16171	6
15	14499	5
16	13129	5
17	13210	5
18	14889	5
19	19317	7
20	20908	7
21	22826	8
22	19398	7
23	15801	5
24	20381	7
25	19906	7
26	24974	9
27	23079	8
28	30860	11
29	31980	11
30	20816	7
Total	547274	190

As you can see, Ontario gas plants filled the Rogers Centre 190 times in November. On November 29, the Ontario gas plants filled Rogers Centre with CO₂ 11 times. The lowest days were the 1st and 9th, when they only filled it 4 times. The average for the month was 6 times.

At 25 °C, Rogers Centre with its roof closed holds 2,877 metric tons of CO₂. Here is how I got that number:

The mass of one mole of CO₂ is 44.01 grams. (Most versions of the Periodic Table, including this one, give the mass of each element. Look up carbon and oxygen—the constituent atoms in a molecule of CO₂—and note their mass. Don’t confuse the atomic mass of an element with its atomic number! Add the mass of one atom of carbon, ~12.01 atomic mass units or AMU, to that of two atoms of oxygen, ~32 AMU. The result: a molecule of CO₂ has a mass of 44.01 AMU. A mole of CO₂ is therefore 44.01 grams.)
One mole of any gas, at 25 °C and one atmosphere pressure, occupies 24.47 litres of volume. (One mole of any gas at standard temperature and pressure occupies 22.414 litres. To calculate molar volume at another temperature, let’s call it T₂, with the same pressure, convert temperature to Kelvins and then multiply the ratio of the STP volume to temperature by T₂; this is Charles’s Law. In this case, your T₂ is 25 °C, which is 298 Kelvins: 25 + 273 = 298. Your ratio of STP volume to temperature is 22.414/273 = 0.0821. Multiply 0.0821 x 298 = 24.466 litres.)
One metric tonne, or one million grams, of CO₂ contains 22,727 moles: divide one million by 44.
Multiply those 22,727 moles in a tonne of CO₂ by the molar volume of a gas at 25 °C, which from point 3 is 24.47 litres.
Therefore one metric tonne of CO₂ at the above-mentioned temperature and pressure occupies 556,136 litres.
One cubic meter is 1,000 litres, so a metric tonne of CO₂ occupies 556.14 cubic meters (divide the 556,136 litres of CO₂ that make up a metric tonne by 1,000).
Now you need to know the volume of Rogers Centre. According to Rogers, Rogers Centre’s volume is 1,600,000 m³. So divide that by 556.14 to get 2,877.

How many times can we as a society keep doing this? Dumping so much CO₂ into the air won’t make our atmosphere thicker or more dense, as Al Gore claimed in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. But it will make it more “opaque” to long-wave (infrared) radiation. Which is to say, it will trap more heat.

It will also increase the number of CO₂ molecules making contact with surface water. This will increase the amount of CO₂ being absorbed into the world’s oceans—most of the world is covered with salt water. When CO₂ absorbs into water, it turns it slightly more acidic. This has been increasing since the Industrial Revolution, and scientists now estimate that half of the man-made CO₂ has been absorbed in the world’s oceans. The pH of the oceans has historically been 8.2, which is slightly on the base side (neutral is 7); today it averages about 8.1. That might sound small, but it has altered the water chemistry especially of shallow areas, where a lot of ocean life is. More CO₂ in the water means less of the calcium carbonate minerals which are the building blocks for the shells and skeletons of many marine animals.

Scientists also think the oceans absorb today about one-third of the man-made CO₂ dumped into the air. So have another look at the table above. Divide the tons of CO₂ emitted by Ontario gas plants by three. That is how much our electricity is affecting the world’s oceans.

Next time you pass the Rogers Centre, think of it as a receptable for CO₂ for Ontario gas plants. In November, the provincial gas fleet dumped enough carbon to fill Rogers Centre once every four hours. A third of that will acidify the oceans, and harm marine animals. How much should we rely on these plants for our electricity, especially when we have nuclear plants that dump no CO₂ at all?

Table A1: Total Ontario generation and related CO₂, by fuel, in the hour preceding 12:05 on 2023-03-23
FUEL	MWh	CO₂, tons
Nuclear	4,934	0
Hydro	0	0
Gas	0	0
Wind	0	0
Biofuel	0	0
Oil & Gas	0	0
Solar	0	0
TOTAL	4,934	0
CO₂ intensity per kWh (CIPK) in the last hour: 0.00 grams.

Actual Ontario grid	Gas replaces nuclear
0	2,714
0.00	550.00
Tons CO₂ CIPK, grams If gas had replaced nuclear last hour, Ontario power plants would have dumped enough CO₂ to fill Rogers Centre 0.9 times. As it was, 0 tons were dumped, which would fill Rogers Centre 0.0 times.

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