An ambitious Canadian project to collect carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant has underperformed for nearly a decade, according to a new analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Despite optimistic claims from the operator of the Saskatchewan project, SaskPower, the carbon capture and storage project on a 115-MW coal-fired unit at the Boundary Dam Unit 3 has consistently failed to achieve its stated goals of 90% CO2 removal from the flue gas, or a million metric tons per year.
courtesy SaskPower
The Canadian utility’s website brags that the $1 billion (Canadian) project “In the fall of 2014…became the first power station in the world to successfully use Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology.” The project injects the CO2 it captures into an existing field to boost oil recovery.
The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is counting on carbon capture and storage technology to meet its goals of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired generating plants and new gas-fired plants. Elsewhere, there is considerable skepticism about the technology and little practical experience with it at a scale necessary to meet the EPA’s targets.
The IEEFA report by analysts David Schlissel and Mark Kalega found, “Boundary Dam 3’s long-term CO2 capture rate through the end of 2023 was just 57% (that is, 63% of 90%).” The report concluded, “After nine years, the project has a consistent history of capturing far less than the 90% promised when the project was built—and all the carbon dioxide (CO2) captured at the plant is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that injects captured CO2 into the ground to extract more oil.”
IEEFA recalls that three years ago it published a short analysis “responding to project owner SaskPower’s claim that capturing 4 million metric tons of CO2 at Boundary Dam 3 was a milestone “to be proud of.” IEFA observes, “The coal plant did capture its four millionth metric ton of CO2 in March 2021, but it reached that mark two years later than had originally been forecast—highlighting the project’s inability to sustain the 90% capture rate promised by SaskPower and other proponents.”
The project has never achieved its goal of 1 million metric tonnes captured per year. The closest it has come is 780,540 tonnes last year.
IEEFA says, “To be considered a success, a carbon capture project must capture all or almost all CO2 produced by the facility (power or industrial plant) to which it is attached and must do so for decades. SaskPower’s own CO2 capture data shows that Boundary Dam’s overall capture rate during its nine years in service has been closer to 50% than 90%.”
An October 2022 paper by SaskPower and the International CCS Knowledge Centre discussed some of the reasons for the project’s failure to meet its goals. The report found that in 2021, the carbon capture technology achieved 90% efficiency only “when operating at 70% to 80% of the designed capture capacity….” IEEFA summarized, “During the remaining 20% of the hours the plant has been available, its flue gases containing the CO2 have been emitted directly into the atmosphere—with no CO2 being captured.
“But even when the CCP has worked, not all the plant’s flue gases and the CO2 they contain are processed by the carbon capture portion. According to the Knowledge Centre’s paper, the entire facility typically operates with only an average of 73% of the full flue gas going to the CCP. The remaining 27% of the flue gases and their CO2 have been released into the atmosphere.”
Despite this less than stellar performance, advocates of CCS have claimed that Boundary Dam 3 is a success. “For example,” writes IEEFA, “Eadbhard Pernot, carbon capture policy manager for the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, has claimed that “the project has consistently performed at its capacity. And I think that’s really something Canada should be proud of.” IEEFA commented that the claim “is patently false.”
–Kennedy Maize