Saskatchewan leads the way on coal with CCS

Due to begin operations in early 2014, the plant will produce electricity from coal with two and a half times less CO2 emissions two and a half times less than those of a modern gas plant. – cCapturing around one million tonnes of CO2 a year, it will also eliminate emissions of sulphur dioxide and virtually eliminate emissions of nitrous oxide.

Interestingly, the plant burns lignite coal and uses standard subcritical boilers. We usually talk about the importance of high quality coal and advanced highly efficient supercritical technologies being needed for CCS deployment, but yet this plant shows that CCS can be effectively deployed in other scenarios too.

The project has been made possible with significant investment from the Saskatchewan Government;, it is a $1.24 billion government-industry partnership. The CO2 from this plant is set to be sold for Enhanced Oil Recovery and the sulphur dioxide is to be converted for sale as sulphuric acid, making the economics of the plant even more attractive., but tThere’s are also plans to store CO2 underground in a nearby injection site.

Both for SaskPower and the world, the Boundary Dam project will surely clearly show the pathway forward pave the way for a clean and sustainable future for electricity from coal coal generated electricity. It The project will be critical in securing Saskatchewan’s growing energy needs (the province’s economy is currently booming) but and also as provide a platform to  for improvinge knowledge about operating CCS plants well into the future. SaskPower is currently establishing the “SaskPower CCS Consortium” designed to share the knowledge and expertise gained from operating the new plant.

The good news is that the story doesn’t end there. Keen to commit to a low emissions future, SaskPower is already looking to the next phase, with plans to expand the CCS operation at Boundary Damn to two more units. Successful operation of this project will see further expansion of CCS at Boundary Dam commissioned over the next few years. Even more importantly, the project operators think that with the lessons learned from the first plant, mean that future plants could potentially be 30 per cent cheaper. That could make Boundary Dam the critical first step in bringing down the costs of CCS, making it even more competitive in a low emissions world.