Surprising silence on carbon capture `bust'

Muted response from province on study showing $1.4B project underperforming

Our government believes carbon capture remains crucial to addressing climate change.

On our government's website, “carbon management” is deemed essential and the International Panel on Climate Change and International Energy Agency are cited as saying “there is no credible path to net-zero emissions without carbon management technologies, and their deployment must be rapid and immense.”

To clarify, “our government” here is the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In this context, you might think Saskatchewan would have become a darling of climate action proponents as a carbon capture pioneer.

When Canada's prime minister announced federal support for a Saskatchewan project to capture carbon at a coal-fired power plant, he was clear about the short-term pain that “reducing greenhouse gases will cost consumers money, will cost business money. That's just the reality.”

To clarify again, that was former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper in Estevan, announcing in 2008 a $240-million federal contribution toward the $1.4-billion carbon capture project at the Boundary Dam coal-fired power station.

Shortly after winning power in 2007, the Saskatchewan Party under former premier Brad Wall threw its support behind the Saskpower project, which was the world's first at a coal power plant.

Wall expressed relief a decade ago that the technology worked at the official opening of the project. It was supposed to capture 90 per cent of the carbon dioxide from the power station's Unit 3, amounting to one million tonnes per year, the equivalent of the amount produced by 200,000 motor vehicles.

A Saskpower executive predicted a capture rate of “99.9 per cent.”

So Boundary Dam became the prototype for carbon capture technology and mitigated the need to move past the use of fossil fuels in power generation. That was the dream 10 years ago. Reality looks a lot different. As first reported by the Canadian Press, an April 30 report by David Schlissel and Mark Kalegha for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysts called the carbon capture project an “underperforming failure.”

The report for the international non-profit agency noted that over the nine years studied, the project has never captured 90 per cent of the carbon dioxide, not even for one year. Overall, its capture rate has been about 57 per cent, or hundreds of millions of tonnes short of its target.

The report calls Canada's “billion-dollar bet” at Boundary Dam “a bust” and warns against future investments in carbon capture.

You can imagine that the spin from Saskatchewan's government — and from the federal government, for that matter, given its stated belief in carbon management — would be decidedly different in interpreting this same data.

But you'll have to imagine, since, if there's been any reaction to the international agency's report, it's been decidedly understated.

Even as Premier Scott

Moe hints a proposed small modular nuclear reactor would be located in Estevan, his government is quiet on Boundary Dam — which is no small feat, given that the Saskatchewan Party rarely misses a chance to promote even minor accomplishments.

Perhaps a talking point on Boundary Dam touting that 57 per cent is still a passing grade is coming someday.

On the province's “Sustainable Saskatchewan” website, part of a $1.1-million advertising campaign to make the only Canadian province without an emissions reduction target look like it cares about the environment, “carbon capture” is mentioned only in passing.

The website brags Saskatchewan is a “global leader in clean energy” and trumpets its “leadership in carbon capture.” If Boundary Dam is explicitly mentioned anywhere, it's in very small print.

While the project is indeed capturing carbon, a debate is needed on whether it represents money well spent or whether investing elsewhere would have been smarter. While the technology appears to work, questions remain on its cost efficiency.

Next door, fossil-fuel rich Alberta is weaning itself off coal-generated power this year. That phaseout was celebrated by an economist as “arguably the largest emissions-reduction policy in Canadian history.”

Conversely, anybody who's celebrating carbon capture in Saskatchewan is doing so quietly.