Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/3/2014
Coming on-line this week, SaskPower’s Boundary Dam in Canada became the world’s first post-combustion coal-fired carbon capture and storage project. “It is huge. It literally could be a game changer. Almost any company now or any government, if they’re going to continue to burn coal, should be looking at our model to see if it fits,” SaskPower CEO Robert Watson told GHG Monitor this week. Prior to a formal ribbon cutting ceremony, representatives from several industry organizations hailed the effort as a major milestone to the wide-scale deployment of CCS technology. “This trailblazing project clearly demonstrates that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is possible on a large-scale in the power sector. Importantly, the lessons learned at Boundary Dam will help progress CCS projects internationally as a vital technology to meet our climate change challenge,” Brad Page, CEO of the Global CCS Institute, said in a release issued this week.
Others expressed hope that the opening of the plant will act as a catalyst to accelerate progress in CCS worldwide. “We commend SaskPower and Canada for showing us all how it can be done. I believe that this event demonstrates that we are at the brink of a new era for CCS: we hope that Boundary Dam will help showcase to the rest of the world that full-scale commercial CCS is achievable and to kick start the development and deployment of this essential technology,” Graeme Sweeney, Chairman of the Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP), said at a CCS Symposium hosted by SaskPower earlier this week.
All Systems Go at Unit 3 Following Minimal Project Delays, Overuns
Thus far, Watson said, the system appears to be operating well. “The power facility was commissioned earlier in the summer and is up and running and is running at a very good efficiency factor. The capture facility has now been commissioned and it is capturing [carbon dioxide] and in fact we are compressing it and also delivering CO2 to the pipeline, so it’s fully operational.” The project is anticipated to capture 90 percent of its carbon emissions, roughly 1 million tonnes per year. Most of the carbon captured will be used by Cenovus for enhanced oil recovery in the Wayburn oil field, Watson said, with the remainder being injected into a deep well as part of SaskPower’s Carbon Storage and Research Centre’s Aquistore project.
The project, a partnership between SaskPower, the Canadian Government and the Government of Saskatchewan, experienced few delays or cost overruns, regardless of its first-of-a-kind status. “The project is very close to budget, we are over budget, but considering the size and scope of the project we consider being less than six months late and not many dollars over a real accomplishment and quite frankly, it works and it works well,” Watson said. The project, which transformed the aging Unit 3 of the Boundary Dam Power Station into an 110MW producer of clean coal electricity, was originally billed at $1.24 billion.
Cost overruns and construction delays were attributed to an asbestos scare and unanticipated engineering work. The asbestos scare alone halted nearly all construction work for almost a month, costing SaskPower $30 million, the utility reported. New engineering specifications cost an unanticipated $25 million to build in boiler reinforcement for Unit 3, and SaskPower also paid about $30 million to remove lead paint from the power unit. Other unforeseen engineering work cost the company another $35 million. “When you’re building the first in the world at this scale you never really know what your issues are going to be. We did have issues along the way that were dealt with in a very efficient manner and I think it’s just a matter of people having the will to get it across the line,” Watson said. The final price of the project sits at around $1.4 billion.
Monitoring to Continue in Coming Years
While the project is now operational, monitoring will continue well into the future, Watson said. “We will now take the time to verify the technology. We’ll take the time to verify the operating structure of it and also the financial model. It will probably take a good two years to do that … [to] look at everything. The carbon capture facility is a chemical plant so therefore you know, you have to tweak the chemistry to make sure you get the efficiencies up although I can say that first indication is that it’s going to be very successful, but you have to true these things in. So we’ll be looking at it over the next several years,” Watson said. “We’ll be quite happy to share with people that information. We’re going to set up a consortium where people can access the information.”
