You can forgive people in communities like Estevan, Bienfait and Coronach if they were exchanging high fives and even popping champagne corks this week.
The Government of Saskatchewan revealed in a letter to SaskPower employees on June 18 that it was officially committing to extending the life of the province's coal-fired power units. Five months earlier, the province said it was strongly considering the move, despite the federal government's commitment that conventional coal-fired power would end in 2030, and even though the feds have been calling for a net-zero emissions power grid for 2035.
The province didn't commit on how it was going to extend the life of the plants, although one would have to expect it's going to be through the carbon capture and storage process that has been used at the Boundary Dam Power Station since 2014, and has been far more productive since the spring of 2022.
The letter was also short on specifics such as timelines and cost, but that's to be expected.
I always take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to big government announcements. I don't think the government wants to go through this process, make a commitment and get our hopes up, only to pull the rug out from our feet. I'm confident this will happen, but I know it's not certain.
Remember when the government was planning to build a clean-coal plant at the Shand Power Station, but then had to opt for the smaller retrofit of Unit 3 at Boundary Dam due to soaring costs? Or remember when it was going to twin Highways 39 and 6 from Estevan to Regina? We had to settle for passing lanes.
So you can forgive me for being skeptical about the government's decision on coal. But I'd still rather have the government says it's going to do it, rather than having them say they won't.
I do wonder about the feds' reaction. Will they back away from the no-coal-by-2030 pledge? Hard to say. The Liberals under new Prime Minister Mark Carney are showing a more pragmatic approach than they had under Carney's predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
But we haven't seen if the Liberals will take a more hands-off approach to dealing with the provinces, and actually respect jurisdiction, than having the "Justin knows best" attitude that permeated Trudeau's tenure. (As we often saw, Trudeau didn't know best).
If the feds don't try to block Saskatchewan's efforts, will they fund expansion of CCS? Probably not. Even the federal Conservatives under former prime minister Stephen Harper said support for CCS was going to be a one-and-done proposition, with Unit 3 at Boundary Dam as the beneficiary.
If the life extension proceeds, then it would not only boost the future of the coal communities, but it would carry other economic benefits with all of the people that would be in the communities to work on the plants and bring them to a modern standard. The province shouldn't run the Shand Power Station, the two units at Poplar River, and Unit 6 at Boundary Dam as they've been. They aren't going to bring back Units 4 and 5 at Boundary Dam to what they were. They're going to be retrofitted to meet the more stringent environmental standards.
I'm admittedly pro-coal, because I'm pro-Estevan. I want to see coal-fired power extended and CCS expanded. And while we're at it, I want the Estevan area to be home of the province's first small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). The SMRs would not only represent a big step forward for our area when the day does come that coal power is phased out, but the SMRs will provide energy security. We just have to recognize the first one won't be operating for nearly a decade. (That's the best-case scenario).
If the province wants Saskatchewan's largest-ever solar project to be down here, well, that's great too, but we have to remember solar is still a complementary power source that doesn't generate jobs.
And I want to have as many people and business in the Estevan area as possible. I want to see investigations continue for coal-to-graphite and coal-to-hydrogen. And I want to see further diversification in the Estevan area's economy. Call me greedy.
The coal announcement is also a big win for Saskatchewan. It would provide reliable, baseload power for decades, and if CCS is involved, then it will be environmentally sustainable as well. We're seeing that CCS is reliable. It was online 98.4 per cent of the time in the first quarter of this year. Most of the outage time last year stemmed from a planned shutdown.
Last year it captured a record 848,388 tonnes of CO2; in the first three months of this year, it captured 226,359 tonnes.
Extending the life of coal-fired power would buy time for the regulatory review pross for SMRs to be completed, for the plants to be built and have the bugs worked out. It might even give time for renewables to become more reliable.
I get there are concerns about coal power, and there some who want nothing to do with it, now and in the future. But we need coal now and will need it for some time. And when an option exists to make it more environmentally friendly, that's a big bonus.
