Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
2/13/2015
SaskPower’s decision to retrofit Unit 3 of its Boundary Dam power station with carbon capture and storage was ill-advised and will cost the utility more than it’s worth, according to a new paper released this week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an Ottawa-based think tank. “CCS may well become an appropriate technology in future for pipelines, some refineries and gasification plants. Biomass energy with carbon capture and storage may become an important carbon-negative technology in the future. But at this time it is far too expensive for coal-fired plants to adopt, and a completely inappropriate technology for Saskatchewan and SaskPower to adopt. The risks greatly outweigh the rewards,” the report says.
According to the report, SaskPower’s decision to pursue CCS has resulted in the prolonged impairment of the utility’s financial standing and will raise the cost of electricity for Saskatchewan electric customers significantly. Further, the study finds that “with the cost of electricity at 12-14 cents per kilowatt-hour and rising, the province’s economic competitive position will be weaker. Saskatchewan no longer has affordable electricity and it is likely to get more expensive in future, especially if Boundary Dam 4 CCS is built.” The potential first-mover benefits of Boundary Dam, in terms of profiting from the eventual sale of the technology, are questionable, according to the report. “The financial rewards from future sales of CCS technology are highly questionable making the return on the CCS investment nearly impossible to attain,” the report says.
The report also says that the environmental benefits of the project are negligible and would have been greater had SaskPower decided to move away from coal entirely. “On the environmental side the CCS decision has brought about very small rewards. Shutting down Boundary Dam permanently would have resulted in no future GHG emissions. The one million tonnes captured amounts to only about seven per cent of all GHG’s created by SaskPower’s coal-fired generation, and less than two per cent of the province’s total emissions,” the report says.
Boundary Dam Exceeding All Expectations, SaskPower Says
Following the release of the CCPA paper, SaskPower released preliminary performance numbers stating that while a final cost of the plant is not yet available, Boundary Dam is exceeding all expectations. According to a SaskPower release, the plant is producing 120 MW of electricity, compared to the expected 110 MW. The plant is capturing CO2 at a purity of 99.99 percent, compared to an expected purity of 95.5 percent, and is on target to meet its goal of capturing 1 million tonnes of CO2 a year, SaskPower said. “People used to say there’s no proof that CCS works, a claim that is no longer valid,” said Mike Monea, SaskPower President of Carbon Capture and Storage Initiatives, in the release. “Unit #3 is now producing affordable coal power for more than 100,000 homes and businesses for at least the next three decades, and it’s doing so 10 times more cleanly than other coal units and four times cleaner than a comparable natural gas unit,”
