Estevan invites Musk on carbon capture tour

If the City of Estevan has its way, Elon Musk's next business trip could take him to the community in southeast Saskatchewan.

Estevan's mayor Roy Ludwig wrote a letter to Musk, inviting him to the city to tour their Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facility at Boundary Dam Power Station.

Ludwig's proposal was in response to one of Musk's tweets, which detailed the business mogul's plans to donate $100 million towards a prize for best carbon capture technology.

“When we first saw the tweet and heard about the XPRIZE contest, we knew we had an opportunity to showcase this world class technology and promote the environmental and economic benefits that this facility has brought to our city,” said Ludwig, in a news release issued this week.

Musk actually has ties to Saskatchewan.

His grandfather settled in this province in the early 1900s, and its where Musk's mother Maye was born. In 1989, Musk himself spent the summer working on a cousin's farm, near Waldeck, in the Swift Current area.

Estevan, some 20 kilometres north of the Canada-u.s. border, is known as the energy capital of Saskatchewan.

Their economy is defined by power generation, as well as by coal mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and oil and gas drilling.

Their $1.5 billion CCS facility, which is attached to Saskpower's Boundary Dam 3 (BD3), opened in 2014 has garnered a reputation for being the first of its kind.

It is capable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to one million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, which is the equivalent of removing 250,000 cars from the road.

It is known as the world's first fully integrated and full-chain carbon CCS facility on a coalfired power plant, although it has also been plagued by challenges meeting its yearly carbon capture targets.

It started as a pilot project, but gradually expanded to become a full-time endeavour.

The CCS facility set the bar for other organizations, including Estevan's Shand Power Station, which functions as a test facility where international clients can analyze their carbon capture and storage systems commercially.

“Industry and government officials from across the globe have toured and researched this facility and it has been the blueprint for other CCS projects in the world,” said Ludwig.

In the statement, Ludwig stressed the importance of community support.

He encouraged residents to further the conversation by retweeting Musk's message and tagging him in posts online.