Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Edmonton-based Capital Power Corp. says it is no longer pursuing a proposed $2.4-billion carbon capture and storage project at its Genesee natural gas-fired power plant. Capital Power’s Genesee Power Plant is seen near Edmonton in an Oct. 19, 2022, handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Capital Power, Jimmy Jeong,
Governments are pushing carbon capture, but utilities aren’t willing
The next great hope of carbon capture for power generation in Canada just got punted in Alberta. Now what is SaskPower to do?
In late 2014, SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit 3 Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Project went online. Saskatchewan took a big risk, laying out $1.6 billion to be the first grid-scale post-combustion carbon capture project on one unit of a then-four-unit coal-fired power station.
And while the world beat a path to our door to see it (trust me, I accompanied many of the tours), there was not a rush to implement the process, at scale, on power generation elsewhere.
Coal-burning generators in Alberta either switched to natural gas or shut down, pushed to do so by the NDP government under Ratchel Notley. When UCP Premier Jason Kenney replaced Notley, there didn’t seem to be any encouragement to reverse that course, even as more and more wind and solar were built. By the time Danielle Smith took office, all that was left burning coal was the Genesee Power Station west of Edmonton. But it, too, was slated to convert from coal to natural gas as a fuel this year. And along the way, they were going to spend $2.4 billion on carbon capture and storage (CCS). The conversion to natural gas will take place in the coming months. More on the carbon capture in a bit.
Biden’s EPA demands CCS
Then last year, it seemed everything changed. On May 11, 2023, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started talking about adopting carbon capture and storage wholesale across the US. The Joe Biden Administration said it its plans to essentially force coal and natural gas-fired power generators to adopt carbon capture or shut down by a certain date. That rule was brought in by the EPA on April 25 of this year.
“The rule also would force future electric plants fueled by coal or gas to control up to 90 per cent of their carbon pollution,” noted an April 25 story from the Associated Press, republished by Pipeline Online. “Coal plants that plan to stay open beyond 2039 would have to cut or capture 90 per cent of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032, the EPA said. Plants that expect to retire by 2039 would face a less stringent standard but still would have to capture some emissions. Coal plants that are set to retire by 2032 would not be subject to the new rules.”
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EPA rules based in part on BD3
That 90 per cent didn’t come out of nowhere. If that 90 per cent sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the number that was cited for the Boundary Dam Project, which was specifically mentioned when the EPA rules were first proposed. The project was specifically cited by the EPA in its proposed rule. On Page 56 of 681, it states, “There are several examples of the application of CCS at EGUs, some of which are noted here with further detail provided in section VII.F.3.b.iii(A) of this preamble. These include SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit 3, a 110-MW lignite-fired unit in Saskatchewan, Canada, which has achieved CO2 capture rates of 90 per cent using an amine-based post-combustion capture system retrofitted to the existing steam generating unit. Amine-based carbon capture has also been demonstrated at AES’s Warrior Run (Cumberland, Maryland) and Shady Point (Panama, Oklahoma) coal-fired power plants.”
Wait a minute
Except that BD3 doesn’t capture 90 per cent of emissions, despite that being its initial goal. SaskPower’s most recent BD3 update, published April 24, noted the last three months have been some of the best yet for the project. For the first three months of 2024 the CCS facility was available 96.1 per cent of the time, and it captured 240,515 tonnes of CO2. “This resulted in an emissions intensity of 330 tonnes of carbon dioxide per gigawatt hour.”
That’s great. But an OECD report published Nov. 25, 2019, titled, “How to Decarbonise Coal-Fired Power Plants” said, “Conventional lignite coal-fired power generation (used in Saskatchewan, Canada) emits roughly 1,100 tonnes of CO2 per gigawatt-hour (t/GWh). Traditional natural gas-fired power facilities emit in excess of 500 t/GWh.
“Boundary Dam Unit 3 was designed to capture up to 90 per cent of the CO2 in the flue gas and operate as low as 120-140 t/GWh.”
SaskPower publications confirm that 1,100 t/GHh.
Even if Boundary Dam Unit 3’s capture plant reached its designed capture rate of 90 per cent, it would still emit nearly five times more than the federal government will allow under the draft Clean Electricity Regulations. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
By my math, emitting 330 tonnes out of 1100 means that 30 per cent of the CO2 is still being emitted. That’s a capture rate of 70 per cent, not 90. Now, I’ve seen higher numbers quoted for capture rate, but never 90.
That capture rate used to be posted in SaskPower’s monthly BD3 updates, but not for the last two years (SaskPower switched from monthly to quarterly updates at that point, and the reporting changed.) I had to go back as far as May, 2022, to find that month BD3 had captured 67.7 per cent of max capacity. In March, 2022, it was 71 per cent.
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Clean Electricity Regulations
This disconnect between performance and expectations is a real issue, because the Canadian federal government last August brought in its proposed Clean Electricity Regulations which called for emissions to be reduced to 30 t/GWh. That’s one eleventh of what BD3 is currently emitting, following a great quarter. And the feds want this by 2035 for all natural gas-fired power, and whatever coal is left, if any.
There has been one great hope in all this – remember Genessee? After converting to natural gas, they were going to add carbon capture onto the newly-gas-fired power plant.
Were.
In a bombshell announcement on May 1 as part of their quarterly earnings report, Genesee parent company Capital Power pulled the plug. It announced, “Capital Power is discontinuing pursuit of the Genesee CCS project. Through our development of the project, we have confirmed that CCS is a technically viable technology and potential pathway to decarbonization for thermal generation facilities including Genesee. However, at this time, the project is not economically feasible and as a result we will be turning our time, attention, and resources to other opportunities to serve our customers with balanced energy solutions. Capital Power looks forward to exploring CCS at Genesee and certain assets in our North American fleet in the future as economics improve.”
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Back to SaskPower
And as if SaskPower’s coal-fired coffin needed any more nails pounded into it, SaskPower’s March 2024 Long-Term Supply Plan Draft Summary said regarding CCS on coal, under the subheading of “future”: “No additional units. We’ve determined that the cost and technology risk of additional CCS units on coal are very high in comparison to other baseload generation options at this time. Additionally, CCS on coal can’t meet the emissions targets as proposed in the Federal Government’s draft Clean Electricity Regulations.”
It noted a carbon intensity of 200-500 t/GWh for coal with CCS, “based on our experience operating BD3 with CCS and calculated using regulations affecting our coal facilities.”
But what about CCS on natural gas? The same report said the carbon intensity would be “potentially less than 30 t/GWh.”
As for natural gas-fired power with CCS’s future, the report said, “Possibly increasing. We’re investigating CCS on natural gas as a supply option for 2033.”
It added, “CCS on natural gas is a rapidly developing technology. Its goal is to capture CO2 to prevent it from being released into the atmosphere. Instead, it’s stored in underground repositories or used for enhanced oil recovery. CCS on natural gas isn’t commercially available yet. Much of our extensive knowledge and experience on the BD3 CCS project can be transferred to implementing CCS on natural gas turbines. Natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal and CCS on natural gas is expected to be more efficient.”
As a “developing technology,” SaskPower could have learned a lot from Capital Power’s Genesee CCS on natural gas experience, except that Capital Power has punted that down the road.
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Coal to natural gas conversion
SaskPower has been considering converting its coal plants to natural gas – at least Shand Power Station and possibly BD3, but it would be highly unlikely to do so for the rest of Boundary Dam Power Station or Poplar River Power station.
Here’s a possibility – SaskPower could convert BD3 to natural gas and use the existing carbon capture plant as a full-scale pilot. It’s already there, and it’s paid for. And since natural gas burns so much cleaner than coal, all the coal-related gunk that’s been literally gumming up the works in the carbon capture process should be dramatically reduced if not eliminated.
But even if BD3’s capture plant turns into a remarkable success by switching to natural gas, with much higher capture rates as a percentage, the reality is the total volume of CO2 would drop by about half because natural gas produces roughly half the CO2 compared to burning coal. That’s great if you’re biggest concern is reducing CO2. But it’s not great if you’re an oil company at the other end of the pipeline, needing that CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. All things being equal, the volume of CO2 BD3 could supply the Whitecap Resources-operated Weyburn Unit would plummet.
Remember how Whitecap recently announced using CO2 in the Frobisher Formation saw oil production from its test wells increase by a factor of five?
There could be huge potential for CO2-enhanced oil recovery with more CO2 sources. But if the power companies aren’t going to do it, that’s an opportunity lost.
One other thing…
Come to think of it – if the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservatives are elected within a year and actually throw out the carbon tax, not just for consumers on gasoline, but on everything, including power, then all bets are off. Indeed, that could be the very reason Capital Power cancelled Genesee’s CCS. No sense spending $2.4 billion if the carbon tax driving the project, as well as the Clean Electricity Regulations, are almost certainly going to be eliminated a year from now.
I just realized as I type this – Genesee’s CCS getting killed could be the first major project punted because of an expectation of a change in federal government. Could we see the same for the Regina carbon hub, involving Whitecap, Federated Co-operatives Limited, Yara, K+S Potash, and possibly more?
Genesee might be the canary in the coal mine.
And that mine is shutting down.
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online, and occasional contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@pipelineonline.ca.
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Nine years after SaskPower pioneered carbon capture on coal, the US intends on adopting it wholesale