Background to the Study

On October 2, 2014, the first-ever, commercial-scale, coal-fired power plant incorporating amine solvent absorption carbon capture began operation near Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada at the Boundary Dam Power Station, Unit 3 (BD3). This was a global landmark event. Although carbon capture technologies had been pilot tested prior to this, a commercial-scale power plant now exists that has demonstrated a number of high-risk technology and business issues have been overcome.

Summary

The coal-fired BD3 power plant that was retrofitted to incorporate carbon capture was over 40 years old. This retrofit enables SaskPower to continue operating it under new Canadian GHG regulation that came into effect in July 2015. The CO₂ captured at BD3 is geologically stored at two locations: in an oil reservoir at Cenovus’ CO₂-EOR operation near Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and in a deep saline aquifer at the SaskPower Carbon Storage and Research Centre, located near the Boundary Dam Power Station.

This report released by IEAGHG on August 31, 2015 summarizes the experience and learnings of SaskPower to provide some insights to other clean-coal initiatives on a wide variety of issues during the design, construction, and first year of operation of BD3.