Carbon capture expansion put on hold
REGINA Saskpower and the Saskatchewan government announced Monday they will not be expanding carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology on any more coal-fired plants in the near future.
Dustin Duncan, the minister responsible for Saskpower and the environment, said there is “simply not a business case” to retrofit Boundary Dams 4 and 5 south of Estevan with CCS technology.
Saskpower spent $1.5 billion retrofitting Boundary Dam 3, near Estevan with CCS technology. It came online in 2014 to mixed results. Its aim was to reduce carbon emissions generated by the coalfired plant while still contributing to Saskatchewan’s power grid.
Despite months where it has performed as expected, there have been long stretches of time where the plant was not operating because repairs were needed.
It is built to be a long-term producer of 120 megawatts (MW) of baseload electricity and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by up to one-million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year. Despite being built several years ago, it only surpassed capturing two-million tonnes of CO2 this year.
The age and size of BD4 and BD5 were cited as two reasons not to move forward with an expansion.
Depending on the outcome of a still-being-negotiated equivalency agreement for coal production with the federal government, those plants will potentially have to be retired within years. Under current regulations, BD4 and BD5 will have to be retired at the end of 2021 and 2024, respectively. The two plants generate a combined 300 MW of power.
Saskpower also noted the low price of natural gas — essentially arguing it’s cheaper to use gas than coal to create power — as another reason for not moving forward with CCS technology right now.
But Duncan and Marsh were clear CCS technology is “vital” to achieving climate-change goals in Saskatchewan and globally.
“I certainly don’t sit here today thinking that this is the end of CCS. It’s certainly not the end of CCS for Saskpower, obviously BD3 is an important component of Saskpower’s future,” said Duncan. “We’ll have decisions to make on additional units.”
While the province is closing the door on expanding the technology in the immediate future, there is a “high-level” feasibility study being done to evaluate whether or not the Shand coal-fired power station near Estevan can be retrofitted with the technology. It has a longer lifespan than BD4 and BD5, and it is capable of generating 276 MW.
The Saskatchewan-based International CCS Knowledge Centre — an organization that, in part, helps promote CCS technology — has been tapped to do the study. A Monday afternoon news conference saw the organization touting how a CCS retrofit of the Shand Power station would be more cost effective than Saskpower’s BD3 build because it would be a secondgeneration build and, because of its size, economies of scale.