In developing the Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture and storage project, SaskPower, Saskatchewan’s principal electric utility, chose the most economical energy generation option available to meet baseload demand, representatives from the utility said during a Tuesday meeting of the provincial parliamentary Standing Committee on Crown and Central Agencies.
Being grilled by Member of the Legislative Assembly Cathy Sproule, the New Democratic Party’s resident SaskPower critic, company officials explained several times that retrofitting the aging BD3 plant with CCS was determined to be the most economical option available.
“We compared baseload with a baseload option,” said Sandeep Kalra, SaskPower chief financial officer. “The least-cost option was adopted, and it has many more benefits. So I don’t see how it can harm the customers of this province.” Kalra noted the potential revenue stream from the sale of CO2 and the ability to continue to use the province’s coal resources among the project’s benefits.
The province’s New Democratic Party, which has been cold to the development of CCS, has been up in arms for several months about the project, SaskPower, and the conservative Saskatchewan (Sask.) Party. The Sask. Party, the current party in power, has not been forthcoming about the plant’s performance, according to the NDP.
Arguing that wind-powered electricity generation would have been a better alternative to the $1.5 billion (CAD) first-of-its-kind retrofit, Sproule ventured that there are enough other forms of baseload generation available to replace coal. “I think what’s at dispute here is there are other ways to deal with emissions rather than using carbon capture,” she said. “Is there not enough baseload through hydro and combined cycle gas plants that you could have considered wind?”
The province needs all of the baseload power it can get, the SaskPower officials said, adding that comparing BD3 to wind generation is not a fair comparison because a wind plant cannot provide continual electricity on its own but must be backed up by baseload generation.
“The baseload generation requirement in this province is absolutely necessary to provide our industrial growth and to satisfy that load. Two-thirds of the energy we produce is baseload generation. That runs 24/7, 365 days a year,” SaskPower CEO Mike Marsh told the committee. “There is no intermittent source available that can provide that kind of energy requirement for the amount we need, and wind is certainly not going to do it.”
Saskatchewan Minister of the Economy Bill Boyd, also present at the meeting, defended the project as well, stating that the Saskatchewan Party stands behind its decision to support the endeavor.
“I know that you would take it a much different approach,” Boyd said to Sproule. “You would probably shut down the coal industry here in Saskatchewan very, very quickly. You would move to a carbon tax, a carbon levy on large emitters here in Saskatchewan. We say that we don’t think that that’s the right approach at this particular time.”
