ESTEVAN – SaskPower’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility at the Boundary Dam Power Station Unit 3 near Estevan continues its strong performance as the facility has eclipsed 10 years of operation, the Crown corporation said in a news release Wednesday.
According to SaskPower, as of Sept. 30, 2024, the CCS facility had captured 6,434,234 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from being emitted into the atmosphere since CCS came online in early October 2014.
“SaskPower’s CCS facility has made Boundary Dam Unit 3 the cleanest-burning coal power unit on Earth, and has turned Saskatchewan into an international expert for the development of CCS projects in a wide range of industries,” said Jeremy Harrison, Minister responsible for SaskPower. “By capturing CO2 before it enters the atmosphere, SaskPower’s CCS facility has also saved SaskPower customers over $160 million in carbon taxes since 2019 and enabled new innovations in fields like enhanced oil recovery.”
When operations began in the fall of 2014, Boundary Dam became the first power plant in the world to successfully use CCS technology. During the past decade, the CCS facility overcame challenges associated with being the first of its kind and is now achieving record capture rates.
In the 12-month period between August 2023 and 2024, the CCS facility captured more than 900,000 tonnes of CO2 and achieved a peak daily capture rate of 3,047 tonnes. In the same timeframe, SaskPower says Unit 3 maintained an average emissions intensity of 348 tonnes of CO2 per gigawatt-hour, well below the carbon tax threshold of 549 tonnes.
“Boundary Dam Unit 3 remains an important part of our generating fleet, producing enough lower-carbon baseload power for 110,000 Saskatchewan homes,” said Rupen Pandya, SaskPower president and CEO. “With stable operations achieved, we can focus on maintaining a low emissions intensity in the years to come.”
SaskPower has also released the third-quarter numbers for July 1-Sept. 30. The Crown corporation said the quarter included an abnormally hot and humid summer, resulting in a slightly lower daily average capture of 2,675 tonnes per day, and a peak daily capture of 2,980 tonnes.
“However, CCS reached the fall 2024 planned outage without any major unplanned events,” SaskPower said.
Overall, the CCS facility was available 80.6 per cent of the time in Q3, capturing 202,353 tonnes of CO2. This resulted in an emissions intensity of 316 tonnes of carbon dioxide per gigawatt hour. The acid plant at CCS was available 47 per cent of the time, producing 932 tonnes of sulfuric acid.
Unit 3 was online 81.2 per cent of the time.
In the first nine months of the year, the CCS facility has captured 675,874 tonnes of CO2.
According to information from SaskPower, the planned shutdown started on Sept. 13 and the facility was back online Oct. 23.