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SaskPower Sidelines Oxy-Fuel Clean Coal Project For Now
7 September 2007
SaskPower, the government-owned, principal supplier of electricity in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, is sidelining its C$1.5-billion, 300MW Clean Coal Project in favor of a C$525-million, 400MW natural gas project, along with expansions in “Green Portfolio” generation totaling 170MW.
We remain fully committed to exploring clean coal as a supply option in the longer-term. Over the last year, our feasibility work has given us a great deal of confidence in clean coal from a technology perspective. But, given the need for new supply by 2010, and given the costs of clean coal at this early stage in its development, it would have been premature to proceed to the construction phase at this time.
—Pat Youzwa, SaskPower president and CEO
SaskPower will continue to study clean coal, and it will be one of the supply options considered again in 2009 for the post-2014 period.
To position the electrical grid for additional wind, biomass and other renewable generation projects, SaskPower will install up to 400 megawatts of simple cycle natural gas turbines, at a capital cost of approximately $525 million. The turbines will be installed over the next five years, in areas where electricity supply is most needed. This will reinforce the existing electrical system and minimize transmission costs.
The province will expand its Green Power Portfolio—currently the 150-megawatt Centennial Wind Power Facility and customer energy efficiency and conservation initiatives—to include:
The expansion of wind generation in Saskatchewan, with a goal of an additional 100 megawatts by 2012;
Delivery of waste heat recovery projects, with a goal of 50 megawatts by 2010;
Delivery of biomass forestry projects, with a goal of 20 megawatts by 2010;
A net metering program, which will allow customers to generate their own electricity and send excess electricity to the electrical grid for a credit toward their energy costs;
Phase Three of the Environmentally Preferred Power Program, to solicit additional renewable power projects from the private sector; and,
More energy efficiency and conservation programs, with a target of reducing electricity demand by 300 megawatts by 2017.
SaskPower’s electrical generating fleet will continue to be powered by both renewable and traditional energy sources but, moving forward, all new generation will be either emissions-free or fully offset by emissions credits. These natural gas units are very attractive given their relatively low capital cost, and they can be started and stopped to support the availability of wind generation. This positions us well for the growth of wind power in Saskatchewan, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
—John Nilson, Minister responsible for SaskPower
The Clean Coal Project proposed the development of a 300MW oxygen-fired pulverized coal combustion (Oxy-Fuel) plant that would capture about 8,000 tonnes of CO2 per day.
The Oxy-fuel process combusts pulverized coal in a mixture of oxygen and recirculated flue gas to reduce the net volume of flue gases from the process and to substantially increase the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the flue gases for easier separation and processing. SaskPower, Babcock & Wilcox Canada (B&W) and Air Liquide were jointly developing carbon dioxide (CO2) separation technology as the core process for the project.
SaskPower was working with Hitachi Ltd. and Marubeni Canada Ltd. on the design and engineering for the steam turbine generator and related systems.
September 7, 2007 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
Well I think this is a good step to turn the focus away from clean coal and towards renewable energy at least in part. I think they should ideally be considering combined cycle gas power plants as more efficient option the way Toronto has done with the Portlands power plant.
I feel that most of the targets SaskPower set were rather unambitious, only 100MW of wind is pretty weak. Quebec has over 1000MW already with much more coming online soon. One large wind farm would be 50MW or more, so only 100MW by 2012 is very unambitious.
The waste heat recovery and energy efficiency programs are realistic and appropriate, but the biomass program could be expanded given the agricultural residues in Saskatchewan.
Posted by: jc777 | Sep 7, 2007 5:14:20 PM
I am sorry to see this project sidelined. Oxy-coal is one of the most promising technologies to advance CO2 sequestering. I hope that SaskPower will keep this project alive, even if it is taken off the front burner.
Posted by: Bill Young | Sep 8, 2007 5:52:24 AM
Switching to renewables is a great idea. Installing more NG capacity is pretty short sighted when you consider that NG production in North America has already peaked.
Posted by: Neil | Sep 8, 2007 8:30:19 AM
Neil,
you are right about natural gas having peaked, but Alberta, the province next door, has plenty of gas reserves that could be used. Renewables and conservation would be best, but in the short term efficient gas turbines would decrease CO2 compared to coal in a big way.
Posted by: jc777 | Sep 9, 2007 10:47:52 AM
Wind is, by its intermittent nature, not suitable by itself for baseload generation. When used as baseload, it must be backed up by predictable and flexible generation such as natural gas.
Coal in general and the originally planned oxy-coal plant in this instance specifically is baseload. The oxy-coal plant with sequestering was to be emissions free.
The wind/gas plan, is not as greenhouse gas friendly as the oxy-coal unit.
I assume that Saskpower was concerned about the cutting edge nature of the oxy-coal plant and the associated reliability and cost risks.
Posted by: Bill Young | Sep 10, 2007 2:54:01 AM
All right! Another reason for me to move back to Saskatchewan from Alberta, Green power and now net metering too. Sask allready gets a large chunk of its power from Hydro, >50% I believe. In looking at the 100MW number for wind power compared to Quebec consider Sask has less than 1 million people compared to Quebecs 7.5 million. In terms of percentage of total generation thats alomost as good.
Posted by: Jesse Smith | Sep 10, 2007 7:28:10 AM
