Media Coverage of the “ Saskatchewan Advantage”

Please find below the recent article published in the Regina Leader Post by Business Coordinator, Bruce Johnstone.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Estevan, Saskatchewan to visit the SaskPower proposed site of Canada’s first commercial clean coal project that will utilize CCS (CO2 Capture and Storage) technology. SaskPower will be utilizing a competitive process to determine the final technology selection for this project.

The federal government’s commitment of $240 million demonstrates Saskatchewan’s leadership in CCS technology development and deployment.

$1.4-B SASKPOWER CLEAN COAL PLANT

U of R technology used

By BRUCE JOHNSTONE- March 25th, 2008
Leader-Post

A $1.4-billion clean coal project at Boundary Dam power station will use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology developed over the last couple of decades at the University of Regina and licensed by a Regina-based company.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to officially announce the federal government’s contribution of $240 million to the project, promised in last month’s budget, at a news conference in Estevan today.

The clean coal project is expected to use “post-combustion, amine-scrubbing” technology developed by the U of R’s International Test Centre for CO2 Capture.

The ITC research team is led by two U of R professors, Paitoon Tontiwachwuthikul, considered one of the world’s leading experts in carbon capture and storage research, and Malcolm Wilson, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

“This is technology that has been developed over the last 15 years between Malcolm and Paitoon,’’ said Lionel Kambeitz, CEO of HTC Purenergy, the Regina company licensed to market the CCS technology. “They’ve done a fabulous job of taking that to that commercial level.”

“We’ve only been involved for going on to our seventh year,’’ said Kambeitz, referring to HTC’s attempts to commercialize the U of R’s CCS technology.

Recently, HTC has scored some international contracts to license the technology, which uses solvents to capture the CO2 from the plant’s emissions stream.

Last week, HTC signed an agreement to participate in the European CO2 Test Centre in Mongstad, Norway. The centre is supported by the Norwegian government, along with major multinational oil companies, including Shell Oil.

Kambeitz said the U.K. government has also endorsed “post-combustion’’ CCS technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as have Italy and Australia.

Now, with the federal government committing $240 million towards the $1.4-billion SaskPower clean coal project, Saskatchewan will have a pilot project to display the province’s home-grown CCS technology to the rest of the country.

“It is gratifying. We’re very pleased,’’ Kambeitz said of the federal government’s $240-million commitment.

“There’s a need to not only install the technology here and have, what I call, a reference plant here, but to share that with other jurisdictions in Canada.’’

Kambeitz said the amine-scrubbing technology was developed in the 1960s by the natural gas industry in Alberta where it was used to remove CO2 from natural gas before being compressed and transported in transmission pipelines.

“What Paitoon and Malcolm have done over the last 15 years is adapted that technology specifically to capture CO2 from coal plants and natural gas exhaust streams, as opposed to just capturing it from natural gas.’’

Kambeitz added the “post-combustion, amine-scrubbing’’ CCS technology has a degree of “technical certainty’’ that boards of directors of large oil companies and utilities are more comfortable with.

Last fall, SaskPower announced that it was suspending work on a proposed $3.8-billion, 300-megawatt clean coal plant at its Shand power station due to the financial and technology risk associated with “oxy-fuel’’ technology.

Oxy-fuel technology uses oxygen rather than air in the combustion of coal, which removes virtually all of the nitrogen from the input air, producing an exhaust stream that is mainly CO2 and water. The C02 can then be captured for storage or use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects.

Post-combustion amine-scrubbing uses an amine-based solvent to capture CO2 from the flue gas after combustion. The technology is seen as more suitable for retrofit applications, although it can be used in “ greenfield’’ projects.

SaskPower proposes to retrofit Unit 3 at Boundary Dam with the post-combustion, amine-scrubbing CCS technology, which will reduce its CO2 emissions by more than 90 per cent and its power output by about 40 megawatts to 100 megawatts.