Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
The report puts a lot of faith in wind and solar, but real world examples over the last two weeks bring that faith into doubt
Looking down at the coal stockpile from the roof of Boundary Dam Power Station. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
On Aug. 24 the Saskatchewan NDP released another paper suggesting sky-high costs should Saskatchewan proceed with planned refurbishment of the coal-fired power generating fleet.
The paper was published by the Pembina Institute and entitled Burning Questions: How Saskatchewan’s coal extension impacts affordability, reliability and a modern electricity grid.
It was authored by Nina Logvin and Will Noel. Notably it quotes CBC eight times, CTV twice, Pipeline Online zero times, despite this publication doing more in-depth coverage of this issue than all other Saskatchewan media.
Shadow Minister of Environment Jared Clark said in a press conference, “The report that we have today is showing from the Pembina Institute that the true cost of the coal refurbishment is going to be $32 billion. So that’s in addition. This report is in addition to the CD Howe Institute’s independent report that said $46 billion dollars for the coal refurbishment. In addition to SaskPower’s own documents, internal documents, $26 billion, and our internal documents that show from our internal modeling used by the Government of Saskatchewan, the same modeler that Doug Ford uses.
“Again, this is the most expensive option that the Sask Party could be choosing when it comes to powering Saskatchewan in the future. Now, the report also warns that there are health implications to continuing to burn coal, and the number that they put that cost at is $160 million to the Saskatchewan healthcare system. Now, Scott Moe and Jeremy Harrison have refused to listen. They’ve refused to heed the warning after warning as a report after report comes out showing that their choice of this catastrophic coal plan is going to be the most expensive plan. It is going to double power rates for Saskatchewan people. So my message to Saskatchewan people is very simple here today. The only way to stop this catastrophic coal plan is to change the government. It’s time for change.”
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Minister responds
Minister of Crown Investments Corporation and Minister Responsible for SaskPower responded by email, saying, “The events of the past week are another reminder of why energy security matters more than ever.
“At the center of our Energy Security Strategy is producing power by using Saskatchewan’s resources of today as a bridge to using Saskatchewan’s uranium resources for tomorrow. The government will not accept the NDP’s plan of dependency on other jurisdictions, like the United States, to keep the lights on.
“For Saskatchewan, that means putting reliability and affordability at the centre of every decision we make about our electricity system.
“That is why our government developed the Saskatchewan First Energy Security Strategy and Supply Plan.
“We are taking an all-of-the-above approach. We are extending the life of existing thermal assets while we build the next generation of our power system. We are adding renewables, advancing nuclear and strengthening transmission to meet growing demand.
“This is about making practical decisions based on reliability and cost, not rebuilding Saskatchewan’s electricity system around ideology like advocated by far left academics, think tanks, and the Saskatchewan NDP.
Minster Jeremy Harrison at Boundary Dam Power Station. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
“Saskatchewan is growing, and that growth will require significantly more electricity. New investment in mining, manufacturing, technology and other industries depends on reliable power being available when it is needed.
“We have the resources, workforce and existing generation to meet that demand. Our job is to use those advantages responsibly and make the most of what Saskatchewan already has.
“We cannot control what happens beyond our borders. We can control the choices we make here in Saskatchewan.
“We will continue to make those choices based on what works, what keeps the system reliable and what delivers the best value for Saskatchewan.
“That is how we build a stronger, more secure energy system for the province.”
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Executive summary
Here is the executive summary of the paper:
Saskatchewan is at an important juncture in shaping the future of its electricity system. The province and its crown utility, SaskPower, have taken positive steps to diversify their supply mix and reduce electricity emissions while also meeting growing demand, reducing electricity emissions intensity by 35% in the past 15 years. However, in June 2025, the Government of Saskatchewan announced its intention to extend the life of its aging coal-fired generation fleet until 2050 and reversed its plans to achieve significant renewable capacity by 2030.
This decision has been framed as a measure to support affordability, reliability and security; however, our analysis finds it a more expensive option than using its world-class wind and solar resources in addition to storage and energy efficiency, all of which are outcompeting fossil fuel electricity in Canada and around the world. Saskatchewan’s decision also sets them apart from the path taken by all other provinces and much of the world, including its fossil-fuel reliant neighbor, Alberta, which successfully phased out coal in 2024 — six years ahead of schedule.
In 2015, SaskPower set a goal to source 50% of its installed capacity from renewable energy. Although the target was later revised to “40–50%”, Saskatchewan has made notable strides in meeting this target and has reduced its electricity emissions over the past decade. Coal’s share of annual electricity generation had fallen to less than 25% by 2025.
Against this backdrop, the Saskatchewan government’s decision to extend the life of coal-fired power plants marks a significant shift in direction. To better understand the implications of this reversal, this report examines the affordability, reliability and emissions implications of extending coal-fired power by an additional 20 years.
Key findings
- Refurbishing and operating Saskatchewan’s coal fleet is estimated to cost roughly $26 to $32 billion between 2025 and 2050. Alternatively, converting the coal fleet to burn natural gas costs about $18 to $25 billion, while expanding wind and solar capacity could displace the total 25-years of coal-fired electricity supply for roughly $12 to $17 billion. This portfolio of wind and solar could mostly match the output of the coal plants with an additional $1 billion worth of batteries.
- Continuing to rely on coal for electricity generation presents, according to a leaked internal SaskPower planning document, high reliability risks. Rather than a more resilient and diverse portfolio of technologies that could include wind, solar, natural gas, nuclear and battery storage, a continued reliance on coal increases the risk of disruptions or outages, especially while one or more large coal plant is down for maintenance (planned or unplanned) or refurbishment.
- Extending Saskatchewan’s coal phase-out by an additional 20 years would release an additional 155 megatonnes of greenhouse gases (Mt CO2e), which is comparable to adding the total annual emissions of a mid-sized country such as Netherlands, or roughly twice the annual emissions of New Zealand or Austria.
While Saskatchewan’s reliance on fossil fuels contributes to some of the highest electricity costs in Canada, the province also benefits from some of the country’s strongest wind and solar resources. Extending the life of coal-fired generation risks both delaying the development of these competitive advantages and locking consumers into higher-cost, higher emissions electricity. With the rapidly falling cost of renewable energy technologies, however, Saskatchewan has a unique opportunity to modernize its electricity system, strengthen energy security, and ultimately, deliver a more affordable, reliable, and cleaner electricity system that can support both a growing economy and rising electricity demand for decades to come.
Recommendations
- Get back on track for a 2030 coal phase-out. The Saskatchewan government should recommit to its initial objective of phasing out conventional coal-fired power by 2030 and diversify its supply mix with a portfolio of generating technologies and complementary resources.
- Put affordability, reliability, and emissions at the centre of SaskPower planning. The province should require SaskPower to model future supply scenarios based on meeting reliability and decarbonization objectives at the lowest cost to ratepayers. This planning should be transparent and include community and stakeholder engagement consistent with SaskPower’s 2024 sessions.
- Protect the integrity of Canada’s coal phase-out in federal-provincial equivalency deals. The federal government should only pursue an equivalency agreement with Saskatchewan if it contains a clear pathway for phasing out coal generation in the short term, while safeguarding national emissions reduction targets and international climate leadership.
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Renewables
The paper heavily suggests that dramatically expanding wind and solar power generation capacity can replace baseload coal-fired power generation. It stated:
Our analysis finds that the total cost of refurbishing and continuing to operate Saskatchewan’s coal generation until 2050 ranges from $26–32 billion, including the price of refurbishment, fuel costs, operations and maintenance and financing (Figure 2). This represents the most expensive option compared to alternatives, such as converting Saskatchewan’s coal fleet to burn natural gas ($18–25 billion) or expanding Saskatchewan’s renewable generation with wind and solar ($12–17 billion). A conversion from coal to gas offers an average cost reduction of 35% while building out wind and solar assets would cut costs by over half, even without a price on emissions. In other words, renewables could provide the same amount of energy at a lower cost than refurbishing and continuing to operate Saskatchewan’s coal fleet — even if these coal plants had no refurbishment (capital and financing) or maintenance costs at all. This difference in total costs leaves significant headroom for SaskPower to deploy complementary resources (e.g. battery energy storage, demand response or peaking gas) while also expanding and modernizing its grid, to smooth variability and provide backup generation during lulls. In fact, results of our analysis show a mix of wind and solar would require only $1 billion in additional costs for battery firming.
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Indeed it lays out a scenario using data from five days in early November, suggesting that wind and solar, with batteries, could keep the lights on in this province. But November does not typically see the worst extremes for temperature or lack of wind. That usually occurs in late December into late February. The Pembina Institute scenario does not reflect is the harshest parts of the winter, or periods like January, 2024, when Pipeline Online reported that for seven days in a row, SaskPower saw wind generation hit zero output for part of the day.
An another instance previously reported by Pipeline Online, on May 16, 2023, SaskPower president and CEO Rupen Pandya said, “SaskPower currently has 617 megawatts of wind generation and on the hottest or coldest days of the year, when demand for electricity is that it is at its highest, there’s often very little wind for days at a time, with minimal electricity provided for wind generation. We had a period in December, where there was no wind between Alberta and Saskatchewan, so across both prairie provinces, for seven days in a row.”
The Pembina Institute scenarios for wind and solar suggest that either 250 megawatts of battery capacity for four hours, or 1,100 megawatts of battery capacity for four hours, would be sufficient to Saskatchewan’s needs to handle a massive buildout of wind and solar. However, Pipeline Online’s ongoing reporting on the performance of wind and solar in both Saskatchewan and Alberta show four hours for either of those numbers is not nearly enough.
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Here’s the scenarios laid out:
We consider three different scenarios, where added capacity is:
-
entirely wind (4,375 MW)
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two-thirds wind (3,400 MW) and one-third solar (1,700 MW)
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one-half wind (2,818 MW) and one-half solar (2,818 MW)
The reality is Alberta has already built out and is operating 5,684 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity and a further 1,892 megawatts of nameplate solar capacity. That’s substantially more wind than the Pembina Institute suggests in all three scenarios, and more solar capacity in two of them.
At the time of writing this (1 a.m., Aug. 25,) Alberta’s total wind output is 172 megawatts and solar is zero. And since the sun went down four hours ago in Alberta, the suggested four hour battery capacity would be fully depleted in a real-world scenario like today. And in the previous four hours, Alberta pool price for power was within spitting distance of its theoretical maximum, with prices ranging from $930 to $962 per megawatt-hour over the space of three hours. It was indeed the dispatchable and baseload power generation keeping Alberta going throughout the night. But paper doesn’t think much of baseload – more on that later.
As for Saskatchewan numbers, on Aug. 12, 2026, wind output for 24 hours averaged just 11 megawatts out of a nameplate capacity of 817 megawatts. That’s according to SaskPowers’ Where Your Power Comes From web page, as recorded by X account @SkElectricity, which logs that data.
On that day, alone, all three of the scenarios envisioned by the paper would have seen the “four hour” batteries depleted six times over in the space of just 24 hours, assuming they could have been instantly recharged, which is itself impossible.
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Emissions
The report goes into detail on how much greenhouse gas emissions would occur should coal-fired power generation be retained, saying, “Our analysis shows that extending Saskatchewan’s coal phase-out by an additional 20 years would have a material impact on Canada’s electricity emissions, resulting in 155 Mt CO2e of additional greenhouse gases being released — a 15% increase in national electricity emissions relative to a 2030 phase-out”
As for emissions, the report points out that Saskatchewan has an outsized percentage of greenhouse gas emissions when it comes to power generation because it burns coal. It says this without providing the context that unlike Manitoba, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan is not blessed with a.) large amounts of water or b.) substantial elevation change. Manitoba has all of the water from the prairie provinces watershed. The other provinces have substantial elevation changes and lots of water, but Saskatchewan has neither, (and not much natural gas left, either). But it does have coal.
For example – the elevation of the North Saskatchewan River, where it enters the province north of Lloydminster, is 497 meters (1,631 feet). The elevation where it leaves Saskatchewan, near The Pas, is 270 metres (886 feet). That’s a difference of 227 metres (745 feet), and you can fit the entirety of Germany between those to points. In comparison, the Churchill Falls Generating Station in Labrador, which produces power for Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec and the United States, is approximately 312 to 322 meters (1,024 to 1,056 feet). That one site has more elevation change than the entirety of Saskatchewan on its most important river.
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Baseload
The Pembina Institute report is dismissive of the concept and importance of baseload power generation, implying it is both outdated and outmoded.
Here’s what it says about baseload power:
What about baseload?
The term “baseload” stems from how electrical grids used to be designed; it is not a physical requirement for keeping the lights on.
Baseload generation often refers to inflexible steam power plants, such as coal and nuclear, that are designed to run at steady state throughout the year (except for the few weeks when they are offline for scheduled annual maintenance). Historically, these plants tended to have high capital costs and lower operating costs, so it made economic sense to try to run them as much as possible once they were built. While this may have been true in the mid-to-late 20th century when other supply types were more expensive, these large, centralized facilities are becoming more of a liability in modern electricity grids as their inflexibility limits a system’s ability to integrate and dispatch low-cost renewables.
Additionally — like all power plants — units designed to operate as baseload still require backup and system redundancy, not just for annual maintenance but also to cover unexpected outages. For instance, Saskatchewan’s Poplar River Power Station, which accounted for roughly 10% of the province’s grid capacity, flooded in 2023, causing it to be partially offline for months. Similarly, in July 2017, Alberta lost a third of its coal capacity (equivalent to 20% of demand) due to high temperatures, leading to skyrocketing electricity prices and the need to reduce non-essential electricity loads. And, in a recent assessment of North America’s grid reliability, Saskatchewan was shown to have a high risk of grid issues during winter periods, especially when its large generating units are offline and electricity demand reaches its seasonal peak
The historic design and approach to grid operations is not a necessity in modern electricity systems. Grid resiliency comes from a diverse portfolio of complementary generating resources, including shares of wind, solar, natural gas, nuclear and/or hydro, further bolstered by energy storage, demand response and transmission interties that will provide far more resilience than an overreliance on a small number of large, inflexible generators. As Canada looks to increase demand for electricity, it is system flexibility, not baseload, that will keep the lights on.
Indeed, the figure presented as the “future grid” all but does away with baseload power, with “variable” power being the vast majority of generation in their conceptions.
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Wind and solar is their answer, along with batteries
In the recommendations, the paper says, “Saskatchewan, like the rest of Canada, is confronting important questions about how it will build and strengthen its electricity system. With some of the best wind and solar resources in Canada, the province is uniquely positioned to meet this task without compromising on affordability, reliability, and resilience. Key to meeting all these ambitious goals, however, is a sustained and thorough commitment to building a modern and flexible electricity system that includes a diverse mix of energy sources, including renewables and storage. Our analysis suggests this approach can help the province avoid significant long-term costs, strengthen reliability, and ultimately, better position the province to deliver an affordable electricity system for all Saskatchewan residents.”
The recommendation points were included in the executive summary above.
The methodology includes interest payments for 20 years on the refurbishment of individual units “Calculated assuming an 8% weighted-average cost of capital.”
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