It may have been the least surprising and the most anticipated news story of 2011, but when the $1.24 billion clean coal project was finally announced in late April of this year, the ultimate impact was still huge.
The retrofitting of Boundary Dam Power Station's Unit No. 3 into carbon dioxide capture and sequestration mode is now underway with the intentions of coming on stream in 2014 with 110 megawatts of power with very low CO2 emissions while continuing to use coal, making this fuel source sustainable for the future.
The true clean coal concept had been bandied about for a few years with various methods being trotted out for examination. But in the end, a post combustion process was selected and the regulatory hurdles were ultimately cleared with the federal government announcing that their regulations would be made known later that summer. That was done in late August when federal Environment Minister Peter Kent arrived in Estevan to lay out the format which did not threaten the viability of the Estevan based project.
When it goes on stream in late 2014 or early 2015, the BD3 project, as it has been labelled, will be the first in the world capable of producing over 100 megawatts of electrical power while capturing 85 to 99 per cent of the noxious gases and sequestering the carbon dioxide underground for later use as a tool for enhanced oil recovery in the nearby patch. That means adding value to the overall project and allowing the new power being generated from the unit to be cost competitive with its neighbouring Units 4, 5 and 6. Those units, also housed at Boundary Dam, will be slated for similar treatment in an organized fashion once the BD3 project goes on stream and proves out what the experts and analysts predict.
At the current stage of development, there are between 140 and 160 workers deployed at the Boundary Dam site where most of the concrete has been poured and some of the skeletal steel structure has been put in place. Before it is completed, the BD3 plant will have absorbed about 6,000 person years of employment with between 500 and 600 workers buzzing around the site during the peak construction phases.
