World’s first CCS plant opens

SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Integrated CCS project in Estevan, Saskatchewan is an 110MW coal-fired power unit with amine capture technology. It is anticipated that the C$1.35 billion (£751m) facility will capture around one million tonnes of CO2 each year from the power plant’s Unit 3, cutting the unit’s emissions by 90%.

While the facility has been capturing CO2 since late September, today sees the start of operations to pipe the greenhouse gas to Cenovus Energy’s oilfields for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations, thereby completing the CCS chain.

Europe lacks a pipeline of CCS projects and will lag behind in technology development

SCCS director Stuart Haszeldine

There are currently two commercial-scale CCS projects being developed in the UK under the government’s CCS Commercialisation competition: the 426MW White Rose facility at Drax; and Shell and Scottish and Southern Energy’s  (SSE) Peterhead CCS. Both projects would transport CO2 to the North Sea for use in EOR.

Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage (SCCS), a research partnership of the British Geological Survey and four Scottish universities, claimed the significance of Boundary Dam’s start-up was “huge”.

“The Boundary Dam CCS Project is a global first and its impact will create ripples worldwide,” said SCCS director Stuart Haszeldine who is attending Boundary Dam’s opening ceremony today.

“SaskPower is – right now – demonstrating for the first time that brown coal can be used to generate electricity with only one quarter of the carbon emissions of natural gas and one tenth of the emissions caused by burning coal historically. The CO2 captured here has a commercial value, and the project demonstrates improved energy security through enhanced oil production.”

Haszeldine added that there were likely to be more commercial projects in North America within two years, while China plans to move from its 20 pilots and demonstrations to multiple commercial projects by 2017.

“Scaling up the technology for power plants in China and Poland is now possible, and there are more than ten vendors of CCS equipment globally,” said Haszeldine.

“SaskPower has predicted that its next CCS project in Saskatchewan will cost 30% less than Boundary Dam. Europe should take note: the continent lacks a pipeline of CCS projects and will lag behind in technology development, and in the delivery of secure, flexible energy. It will also fail to protect the interests of energy-intensive industries if the CCS ship sails without it.”