POWER August 2015 - 24

PLANT OF THE YEAR
SaskPower's Boundary Dam
Carbon Capture Project Wins
POWER's Highest Award
Courtesy: SaskPower
There was no debate among our editorial team when it came to selecting the most
interesting and worthy project worldwide for this year's top award. Boundary Dam
Power Station Unit 3 is the world's first operating coal-fired power plant to implement
a full-scale post-combustion carbon capture and storage system. It did so
more economically than other commercially available capture processes, and the
utility has been active since project initiation in sharing its experience with generators,
regulators, and others globally.
Gail Reitenbach, PhD
T
he 2015 POWER Plant of the Year
award goes to a single, relatively small
coal-fired unit: Boundary Dam Power
Station Unit 3 (BD3) and its integrated carbon
capture (CC) plant. But the award really
goes to SaskPower, the Saskatchewan provincial
utility that owns the unit, for developing
an entire carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS) infrastructure and larger ecosystem to
support that unit.
The magnitude of the need to lower greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions in order to limit
the negative consequences of climate change
has led many jurisdictions around the world
to set GHG reduction goals and to adopt
policies that place limits on emissions from
new and existing coal-fired power plants. For
example, Canada in 2012 passed legislation
at the federal level requiring new coal-fired
plants to include carbon capture and requiring
existing plants reaching the end of their
useful life (defined as 50 years) to shut down
unless they are retrofitted with CC facilities.
24
But even before then, Ontario decided to
eliminate coal-fired generation (see " Ontario
Goes Coal-Free in a Decade " in the May
2013 issue or in the archives at powermag.
com), and SaskPower had already committed
to its BD3 project.
Whereas some jurisdictions are striving
to reduce emissions by replacing fossil fuels
with renewables or nuclear power, others
(typically, those with fossil fuel resources)
are hoping that CCS technologies will enable
the continued use of abundant and relatively
affordable fossil fuel resources while keeping
climate-forcing carbon dioxide (CO2) out of
the atmosphere.
It's true that equipping one 161-MW gross
coal-fired unit with 90% carbon capture is a
small step in the global context, but it's also
true that someone had to take it. The SaskPower
team has taken what actually constitutes
a giant leap for the coal-fired power
industry and, consequently, has garnered attention
from around the world.
www.powermag.com
I was fortunate to visit Boundary Dam
Power Station (BDPS) and interview some
of the project leaders in mid-May. The professionalism
displayed by everyone I met is
clearly one reason this project reached completion
in a timely way and with minimal
cost overruns.
Plant History and Location
SaskPower is a government-owned utility
that provides power to the majority of the
province of Saskatchewan and manages approximately
C$9 billion (US$7.36 billion)
in generation, transmission, and distribution
assets. It operates three coal-fired power stations,
seven hydroelectric stations, six natural
gas stations, and two wind facilities, and has
partnerships with 21 independent power producers
for a total capacity of 4,211 MW. (A
note on costs and currency conversions: All
dollar amounts are in Canadian dollars unless
otherwise noted. Though the Canadian dollar
was at and above parity with the U.S. dolPOWER
| August 2015

http://www.powermag.com

POWER August 2015

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