The challenge was raised in the provincial legislature on Oct. 29.
The official opposition, the New Democratic Party was also put to the test as the governing Saskatchewan Party fielded criticisms from across the aisle regarding the supposed failures of the Boundary Dam Unit 3 project.
Premier Brad Wall put the question rather directly into NDP Leader Cam Broten’s wheelhouse.
What would they do if given the opportunity?
The NDP refused to take the bait. They came very close, but cooler heads prevailed. Broten and friends could not bring themselves to say they would shut down Saskatchewan’s coal-fired power plants, mainly because a sudden dose of reality rushed in to replace their snippets of critical rhetoric.
Would the NDP really shut down Boundary Dam, Poplar River and Shand?
Could they find quick renewable replacement power generation for a seamless transition for 45 per cent of this province’s electrical power supply?
Would they be prepared to invest in 120,000 wind turbines (or more) or 200,00 acres of solar panels which appear to be the only alternatives the BD3 critics tout as potential options?
What about the 700 SaskPower employees who are deployed daily to keep the coal-fired plants operating? Laid off ? Directed to learn new skills?
So, when the reality factor hit the opposition, they knew they couldn’t make a “shut down coal” statement because they realize it just doesn’t make economic, social or practical sense at this stage of transition.
The other factor that is being unheard, but continues to lurk in the background, is that clean coal technology works. It is not a boondoggle.
Yes, BD3 has suffered growing pains and it’s been down more often than its been in operation.
As Wall noted, the University of Saskatchewan synchrotron that cost several hundreds of millions of dollars was also late in arrival and was out of operation more often than not during its first year and a half of operation. Now its scope of operations have expanded and nobody cites it as an example of a project gone wrong. And it had the benefit of working from a template of similar units already in existence.
There was no background template for BD3. It’s a global pilot project and the NDP leadership had to be reminded that they were intrigued by the potential of clean coal while they were in government. They took the first few stumbling steps on that road before the Wall government took the additional bold steps forward and signed off on the new generation project.
BD3 and CCS works at full carbon capture capacity. It’s just that it has only been up 40 to 50 per cent of the time. Engineering readjustments are continually being made during the steep learning curve timeline. Some tweaks have worked remarkably well, others have been tried, found wanting and dismissed. That’s how progress is made.
Saskatchewan’s political parties could ignore a 300-year inexpensive fuel supply by closing coal fired power plants, or they can operate them, without appreciable additional costs to the consumers, while they tinker with the efficiency ratings of BD3. We suggest neither party would pull the plug on coal because they all understand the alternatives are just as pricey and risky as what is already on the table.
SaskPower’s global partners remain keenly interested in the base product and they understand the implications and processes that have to take place to make BD3 the best it can be. They aren’t pulling away, so why would we?
Additional costs associated with obvious errors made by SNC Lavalin during the construction phase will be recovered eventually, and by selling electrical power through the SaskPower grid system for the next 30 years, BD3 will prove its value in protecting profits and the environment.
