Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
NDP SaskPower Critic Aleana Young addressing SaskPower rates on Feb. 25, 2026. NDP photo/LinkedIn
REGINA – In recent years, and in particular the last year, there have been a lot of announcements and initiatives by the Saskatchewan Party government to dramatically expand power generation through nuclear reactors as well and transmission capacity and interties.
Work has been underway to develop two small modular reactors near Estevan since the SMR project was announced in 2022. In June of last year, Minister of Crown Investments Corp. Jeremy Harrison announced the government’s intention to refurbish the existing coal-fired power generation fleet instead of shutting it down Dec. 31, 2029, to tune of $900 million. Last October, an energy plan was released which focused on using coal as a bridge to eventual nuclear power generation. In January, Harrison announced the beginning of “technology selection” for large scale nuclear power reactors in the 1,000 megawatt range. Then in February, he announced major transmission infrastructure upgrades, firstly to connect the northern grid to the southern grid, but also for expanded interties to our neighbours and reinforcement within the province.
Of all these major projects, dollar values have been rather nebulous to date, especially with regards to the cost of nuclear reactors. Ontario is currently proceeding with four SMRs of the same design. The cost? $20.9 billion for the first four of this design to be built anywhere in the world, almost exactly equivalent to the $21 billion provincial budget the Saskatchewan government passed in the spring of 2025.
So with that context, the Saskatchewan NDP, which has expressed support for nuclear power development, has also been raising concern over the cost of all of this. In recent weeks it has been making considerable hay over four per cent rate increases announced by SaskPower for this year and next. The concern, however, is that all of these projects will have a much higher impact on the ratepayers of Saskatchewan.
But is coal refurbishment, in particular, that the NDP has taken aim at, and its impact on rates.
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Modelling
On March 13, the NDP said in a press release, “Independent modelling conducted by Doug Ford’s energy firm reveals that Scott Moe and Jeremy Harrison’s uncosted energy plan risks bankrupting the people of Saskatchewan, and even the province itself, with its unfunded, ideological approach to the province’s energy future.
“The plan proposed by Scott Moe is a recipe for higher costs for families and businesses, more reliance on the Trump administration, and a less competitive economy,” said Aleana Young, Shadow Minister of SaskPower.
“This is a plan that was drafted on the back of a napkin, without either understanding or care about the impacts that it would have on the people of Saskatchewan, on the economy, on businesses. It is the epitome of an irrational plan.”
According to the release, modelling commissioned by the Saskatchewan NDP and conducted by Energy Super Modelers and International Analysts (ESMIA) found that the “Saskatchewan First Energy Plan” released by the Sask. Party without any numbers, or costing, could lead to:
- The doubling of household electricity rates,
- Increased reliance on electricity from the United States,
- Producing the slowest emissions reductions pathway and higher system costs
“ESMIA conducted Premier Ford’s Cost Effective Energy Pathways Study for Ontario and regularly conducts expert energy pathway modelling for other government clients, including Quebec, Canada’s federal government, and the United Nations,” the NDP said.
“The Moe government’s plan is anti-business. It will deliver higher costs, kill jobs, and drive out investment and profits from mines, farmers and manufacturers,” said Young.
“It is a plan designed for the political needs of the Sask. Party, not the reality faced by job creators and families in this province.”
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In depth with SaskPower critic
Young spoke to Pipeline Online by phone on March 13. She said, “You know, as well as I do that when this hit Pipeline Online last January, that it marked a real shift in Saskatchewan electricity and political scene. I obviously knew it was news, and I waited, as did, I think, many others in the province, for more details to emerge about what this plan meant for SaskPower’s long term supply mix, what this meant for costs, for budgets, for rates, all of those fundamental questions, the answers to which didn’t emerge.
“So when it became clear that the Sask Party wasn’t going to show their work on this significant shift for SaskPower, I decided that somebody should show their work for them.”
Although she questioned the accuracy of the $900 million projected for coal refurbishment, she said the analysis used the numbers the government had provided to date. The same goes for nuclear power costs. And they hired Doug Ford’s economic modelers, she said. They used a proprietary algorithm and economic model system. (explained in much greater detail in this accompanying story).
“What we did is we stuck to the numbers that Minister Harrison, Scott Moe and SaskPower have committed to publicly and run this for Saskatchewan. And as I said, we didn’t torque, the numbers, and we wanted to know what the outcomes were in kind of the best case and the worst case scenarios as well.
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“So we ran this across a variety of sensitivities for policy. We ran this with no policy, just SaskPower’s stated commitment to net-zero by 2050. We ran this in a Clean Electricity Regulations with the OBPS (Output Based Pricing System, the industrial carbon tax). We looked at every possible permutation that we could see what the impact would be on costs.
“And frankly, I did not know what the answer was going to be when we set them this project. And what emerged is that the Sask Party’s plan is the most expensive option in the province’s requirements for electricity, and it also has no real plan for growth.
“Of course, elevated risks of higher fuel costs, if the policy environment changes, will make this plan more expensive. If the cost of refurbishment or SMRs increases, that will make this more expensive.
“There’s a few different scenarios for the government’s plan to look at what could the range of options. The current plan is the highest cost option, if there’s some changes, we looked at that too, and the lowest cost options under the energy Security and Supply Plan are the ones that do not meet demand requirements of the province and over rely on exports, which fundamentally undermines the argument around energy security.”
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NDP plan still to come
Asked what the NDP was saying the lowest cost option was, Young replied, “I spent the morning with what I’ll call key economic stakeholders from across the province and outside of it, across industry, biggest industries and players in Saskatchewan. We sat down with them, and we presented some alternative scenarios to them, from both a policy perspective as well as a rate and investment passing. We presented that range to them.
“And what I can tell you is that we’re going to be those alternative plans to the public in the next month here the future that will be presenting the future for Carla Beck’s team for the Saskatchewan NDP, but fundamentally, for the province of Saskatchewan is that we have affordable, flexible, reliable power generation and transmission has developed in partnership with industry, other jurisdictions, Government of Canada, and that Saskatchewan is self sufficient in its production, with the capacity to respond to growing power requirements across the province.”
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Not decommissioning coal now, but decommissioning coal eventually
“You can expect us to have a plan that will be implemented at fundamentally lower cost than the government of Saskatchewan’s plan. It’s going to expand provincial capacity for natural gas and renewables as the bridge to nuclear, with coal decommissioned as is practical. No one’s turning off the lights tomorrow. We’re not looking to lay anyone off or shut anything down tomorrow. That’s nonsense.
“But, yeah, we’re going to be expanding natural gas and renewables to bridge to nuclear as the most efficient from a system perspective and also economical perspective for the utility and for the rate payers of Saskatchewan. We want to enhance power self sufficiency and reliability in both the short and the long term. And we also want to reduce risk for industry and for the utility if the supply chain lag or risks escalate potentially with, say, an SMR deployment, if the plans change there, there needs to be Plan B. And we believe that reducing risk is a plan that is more flexible, more reliable and more affordable for customers of all classes, is a reasonable proposal for reasonable people.”
Saskatchewan’s domestic natural gas production has greatly diminished over more than a decade, as targeting gas drilling flatlined. What gas we do produce is mostly associated from oil production. That means about 90 per cent of the gas running through SaskPower’s natural gas-fired generation fleet comes from Alberta. In contrast, our coal fleet burns Saskatchewan coal.
Asked about sending money to Alberta to purchase their gas, whereas our coal is next to nothing for cost (except to mine it), Young replied, “I think this is such a false dichotomy that government is setting up. On one hand, they say we didn’t be (depending) on natural gas. Frankly, I’m not sure that’s an argument you want to make in a province that largely heats through natural gas. And our capacity for natural gas in Canada is virtually limitless at this point.
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“Building natural gas plants is not a new idea in Saskatchewan. It creates jobs here in the short term and in the medium and the long term. And frankly, I don’t have a problem lying on our neighbour in Alberta for natural gas instead of the Sask Party’s plan, which is going to be looking at expanding imports on the United States to backfill. If we want to talk about energy security, I’d as soon as trust our neighboring provinces.”
“There’s only so much capacity in the Sask Party’s current plan, and with what they’ve laid out publicly, with what SaskPower has available to the future, they are not going to be able to meet the generation needs of the province, as laid out by this government and SaskPower, without significantly expanding their imports, a question you can put to Minister Harrison, if those imports are going to be coming from the United States, if he’s going to be looking to Alberta or Manitoba. Their plan as it stands, does not have the capacity to meet the demands of the future, and that is clear from the modeling work. And again, like we didn’t torque these numbers, we went out, we hired best people for the job, and let Jesus take the wheel. And you know these folks who did this work for Doug Ford.”
She continued, “I’m not saying we need to import power. I’m saying the government’s plan will lead to higher imports.”
“Economic modeling work again – from like the leading experts, has said that the only way for the government of Saskatchewan’s current plan to meet the demand needs of the province, let alone export, is by importing more power. They are not going to have the capacity meet the needs of the province. With the current plan, I think we have all of the opportunity here in Saskatchewan to be a power broker in Western Canada, whether it’s our legacy assets, whether it’s nuclear, whether it’s wind and solar, Saskatchewan can and should be generating more power, exporting it and making a buck off the transmission.”
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On coal
Asked what she sees for coal, Young replied, “I think the same thing I’ve been saying, we don’t think the ideal use of public money to be spending billions and billions of dollars refurbish coal to run it for again, by the Sask Party’s own admission a few extra years. Minister Harrison and the Sask Party have talked about, said it might have even been in your publication, Shand will be set that down 2042, period talks about coal as a bridge to nuclear, and that for every megawatt of nuclear that is brought online, a megawatt of coal will be brought off line. So there’s two options, and neither of them, neither of them, are consistent with what Minister Harrison is trying to sell. The Sask Party is saying that we’re to take a unit of coal offline for every unit of nuclear we bring online. That’s not a renaissance. That’s a bit of a patch. And if they’re shutting down Shand by 2042, period, I suggest the coal shutdown timelines remains largely the same.”
Shand Power Station with a dragline in front of it on July 2, 2025. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
The federal coal regulations require all conventional coal-fired power generation to be shut down by Dec. 31, 2029. Young contended an equivalency agreement with the federal government signed by former SaskPower Minister Dustin Duncan would allow it to run until 2042. Pipeline Online checked with Duncan, as well as Harrison, and both said that the Trudeau government had changed that, and conventional coal, including Shand, had that Dec. 31, 2029 deadline.
However, the Saskatchewan Party government has said it will not abide by those regulations and continue using coal, as a bridge to nuclear power generation.
Young said, “If you want to know what our plan is for coal, we don’t think it’s the best use of public money, what the Government of Saskatchewan is proposing to do, we think, of course, we’re not shutting down coal tomorrow, no matter how many times the Sask Party wants to say this. That’s not practical. It’s not on these this is an important part of our system. This provides reliable, fundamentally critical base load power right now it is. It is not where we should be investing for the future. And these are not investments that the government is making for growth.
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Prior to the refurbishment announcement, as coal had been expected to be shut down in a few years, not a lot of money was being poured into making those power plants last beyond that point.
Young said, “Absolutely. SaskPower should be maintaining its existing assets till there is different capacity. This is a fundamental failure of the Sask Party over the past 15 years, like until last year. You’re absolutely right. These plants were run with patch maintenance. You know it? I know it. The government says, ‘Well, no, actually, there are 90 is it 90 per cent like new capacity?’ That’s nonsense.
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“People do great work on them. But we all know, up until last year, the Sask Party stated plan publicly, year after year, was to retire these units, as per the federal phase out. I don’t know if it was Dustin Duncan or Bronwyn Eyre, who was standing in the way of them launching this revival that Minister Harrison is championing right now. Is there ongoing maintenance required? Of course.”
In summation, Young said, “The independent third party modeling underscored that the Sask Party’s plan is the most expensive option for meeting Saskatchewan’s core requirements. It puts Saskatchewan at greatest risk, expands reliance on other jurisdictions, maintains it doesn’t grow electricity sector, and it has the slowest emissions action trajectory.
“The future that we are committed to and that we will be rolling out later this month, after we conclude these great conversations that we’ve been having industry and farmers and small businesses in Saskatchewan, we will have affordable, flexible, reliable power generation transmission, developed in partnership with history our neighbors, Canada and we’re self sufficient in production, with the capacity to respond to the growing power requirements across the province. It’s the plan for growth.”
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