It’s been called everything from a billion-dollar boondoggle to a solution to the problem of climate change.

The owner, SaskPower, Saskatchewan’s electrical power utility, calls it the Boundary Dam Unit 3 Carbon Capture and Storage project – or BD3 CCS for short.

It’s the world’s first commercial-scale, post-combustion CCS project attached to a coal-fired generating station. And the world is watching it very closely. About 250 people from 20 countries, including scientists, engineers, politicians, bureaucrats and journalists, witnessed the official launch of the $1.4-billion project near Estevan in southeastern Saskatchewan in early October.

The plant, which uses amine solvents to “clean” the waste from the coal-burning process, is designed to reduce CO2 emissions by 90%, or about one million tonnes per year – equivalent to removing 250,000 vehicles from the roads every year.

Much is riding on the BD3 CCS’s success. SaskPower views it as a proving ground for CCS technology, which can be applied to other units in the utility’s aging fleet of coal-fired generating stations. The company also views CCS as a potential source of revenue from the sale of “clean coal” technology to other jurisdictions, such as the U.S. which uses coal to generate 40% of its electricity.

The Saskatchewan Party government views the project as a potential lifeline for the province’s coal industry, which has a 300-year supply of low-cost coal reserves.

There is much at stake. With the highest per capita greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions in Canada, Saskatchewan has much to prove with this powerful demonstration of its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint. And the fossil fuel industry views CCS as a potential solution to the growing problem of GHG emissions from coal-fired electrical-generating stations, the single largest driver of manmade climate change.

An estimated 1,200 coal-fired power plants are in the planning stage around the world. China alone accounts for more than three-quarters of those projects.

Many jurisdictions have looked at CCS, including Norway, several U.S. states and even Alberta, but walked away because of the high costs and technological risk.

For SaskPower, the economics work because the utility sells up to 3,200 tonnes a day of compressed CO2 to Calgary-based Cenovus Energy Inc. for use in its enhanced oil recovery project at nearby Weyburn, Sask.

But clean coal is an oxymoron in the minds of many environmental groups, including Sierra Club Canada, which condemns the BD3 CCS project as a “waste of vital capital” that would have been better invested in conservation, efficiency and renewable energy. “It doesn’t get us off fossil fuels,” says the Sierra Club’s John Bennett.

That’s true. But the world isn’t going to give up using the cheapest, most abundant form of energy on earth overnight.

And, as a means of reducing GHG emissions, CCS costs roughly the same as renewables such as wind and solar.

The International Energy Agency has identified CCS as one of six crucial technologies for fighting climate change, accounting for almost 20% of CO2 reductions.

As demonstrated by Saskatchewan’s BD3 CCS project, clean coal could be – if not a silver bullet – our best shot to stop manmade climate change.

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