Cleaner coal-burning technology causing financial problems, delays at Saskatchewan power plant

OTTAWA, Ontario – An electrical plant around the Saskatchewan prairie was the truly amazing expect industries that burn coal.

In the first large-scale project available, the guarana plant was designed with a technology that promised to pluck carbon in the utility’s exhaust and bury it underground, transforming coal into a cleaner source of energy. In the months after opening, the utility and also the provincial government declared the project an unqualified success.

But the $1.1 billion project is now appearing like a green dream.

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Known as SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3, the work continues to be affected by multiple shutdowns, has fallen way lacking its emissions targets and faces an unresolved trouble with its core technology. The expense, too, have soared, requiring millions of dollars in new equipment and repairs.

“At the start, its economics were dubious,” said Cathy Sproule, a member of Saskatchewan’s legislature who released confidential internal documents about the project. “Now they’re a disaster.”

The utility that runs the work, SaskPower, and advocates for carbon capture argue that the setbacks are normal teething problems associated with any new and sophisticated technology.

“With time, weight loss companies, countries participate in carbon capture and storage technologies, the price of everybody is going to fall,” Mike Marsh, the main executive of SaskPower, told a legislative committee in January. “That will make it easier to employ.”

The Boundary Dam Power Station sits near an abundance of resources near its northern border Dakota border.

Hundreds of many years of coal reserves are buried under the ground nearby, virtually eliminating transportation costs. And also the mining creates employment in an area with limited job prospects.

“It’s a low-cost, stable supply,” Marsh said. “There’s a tremendous opportunity in North America to carry on to make use of coal.”

To the utility and also the provincial government, the process referred to as carbon capture and storage seemed tantalizing whenever a overview of the power system began 11 years ago.

The technology offered a method to stick to coal in a carbon-conscious era. It had been especially attractive in Canada, where rising emissions from the oil sands convey more than offset reductions elsewhere, including Ontario’s abandonment of coal-fired electrical generation.

Through the procedure, machinery would first remove most of the soot and ash from the coal’s exhaust. The exhaust would then pass through a kind of chemical called an amine that would snatch the carbon, by means of carbon dioxide, out of it. The gathered co2, separated from the amine, would be compressed, moved through pipelines and eventually buried underground.

Variations from the technology have been used as far back as the 1920s. And small demonstration projects have largely worked, including one out of Norway that opened in 2012.

Boundary Dam, which received a significant Canadian subsidy and opened in September 2014, was the first full-scale deployment of the technology to chop emissions from burning coal. Saskatchewan picked a procedure of Shell, encouraged by its history with petrochemicals.

The documents showed that the system was working at only 45 per cent of capacity.

At the outset, the utility and the province said the work was being employed as intended, capturing 90 percent of the plant’s carbon. It was the equivalent, i was told that, of taking 250,000 cars off course. Environmentalists and politicians from around the globe found check out Boundary Dam.

But the success story disintegrated last November when Sproule, a member of the opposition New Democratic Party, unveiled the confidential documents within the provincial legislature. She would not identify the individuals who provided the documents, although the government confirmed their authenticity.

The documents demonstrated that the system was working at only 45 per cent of capacity. One memo, written per month following the government publicly boasted about the project, cited eight significant problem areas. Fixing them, it said, might take annually . 5, and the memo warned that it was not immediately apparent how to resolve some problems.

A chart since the newbie of operation showed that the system often didn’t work at all. If this was turned back on after shutdowns for adjustments and repairs, the quantity of carbon captured sometimes even dropped.

The buoyant public remarks, Marsh said, accurately reflected the company’s early assessment of the system. “I was very optimistic when this plant came online,” he explained.

Still, he acknowledged that “there were a few statements it’s achieving a lot more than it had.” Marsh characterized many of the problems as design issues, such as inadequate temperature control systems, instead of fundamental flaws.

But Boundary Dam has exposed a problem with Shell’s process when combined with coal exhaust. Regardless of the plant’s initial filtering, tiny particles of ash still stay in the exhaust and contaminate the amine, reducing its ability to grab carbon, Marsh said.

“Overall, we are happy with the performance of the capture technology,” Shell Canada said in a statement, adding that it was working with SaskPower “to optimize operations and capture any lessons that can be applied to improve future projects.”

But the costs are piling up.

One shutdown last spring to clean and replenish caffeine cost $17 million. Marsh asserted the organization was still looking for a way to prevent the contamination.

The repeated shutdowns have caused SaskPower to miss multiple co2 deliveries to Cenovus Energy, the Canadian oil company that signed a 10-year contract with the utility to buy most of the gas. (Cenovus uses co2 to force oil from largely depleted wells.) SaskPower has had to pay for $7 million in penalties, offsetting most of the $9 million in payments received.

On top of that, the carbon product is a voracious consumer of the electricity generated by Boundary Dam, that has 150 megawatts of capacity. Marsh testified that about 30 megawatts of capacity were consumed by the system, and an additional 15 to 16 megawatts were required to compress the co2.

Tim Boersma, the acting director of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution, said that extensive power loss is a significant factor keeping other utilities from following SaskPower’s lead.

“That’s precisely the reason this is not going to fly,” Boersma said. “The plant’s efficiency falls so dramatically.”

As it is constantly on the sort out the plant’s problems, SaskPower is damping expectations. The utility cut its emissions reduction target with this year to 800,000 metric tons, from A million.

The company said hello is dealing with the engineering firm that designed the project to resolve the issues and increase efficiency. Marsh said there have been indications that performance was improving. Recently, the utility said the machine was working at 67 percent of capacity.

Even some environmentalists hope for a turnaround.

George Peridas, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and climate program, said his group didn’t endorse using coal, however it accepts that coal will continue to be part of the energy mix.

Carbon capture, he said, will be a “vital part” of reducing emissions. According to discussions with SaskPower, Peridas said he was confident that Boundary Dam would eventually exercise.

“I don’t see any indication the carbon capture system of this plant is broken,” Peridas said. “It’s were built with a bumpy start.”