Estevan Gets Clean Power

I received a happy email from my mom tonight where she said my hometown of Estevan, Saskatchewan has been selected for a possible clean coal project.  Estevan is know as the Energy Capital of the province of Saskatchewan.  The area is rich in natural resources like oil, natural gas and coal.  Currently it has two major power generating facilities with Shand and Boundary Dam.  This would be its third, but I assume Boundary Dam would be decommisioned if this went forward.  Anyhow, its still amazing news/

From the official press release on SaskPower.com

SaskPower will focus further engineering efforts for its Clean Coal Project on expansion of the Shand Power Station near Estevan. Should the project proceed, Shand will be the location for the first clean coal unit.

As part of its Clean Coal Project, SaskPower was exploring two regions for development of potential clean coal units – the Estevan area and the Coronach/Willow Bunch area.

“The decision to base future engineering work on the Shand site was made after thorough assessment of both potential locations,” SaskPower President and CEO Pat Youzwa said. “The site for a potential clean coal unit needs to meet a number of equally important criteria.”

When the impacts of local coal characteristics, mining costs, carbon dioxide (CO2) transportation, transmission system interconnection, cooling water, and provision for existing coal supply agreements are considered, initial deployment at the Shand site presents a number of advantages – which include both capital and lifecycle cost savings – over initiating the technology at the Poplar River site near Coronach.

Plans to proceed at the Shand site are pending successful negotiations with key stakeholders in the Estevan area. The Poplar River Power Station near Coronach will be reconsidered if problems occur with development of the Estevan site.

“SaskPower recognizes that host communities play an important role in ensuring successful operation of all our facilities,” Youzwa added. “We remain committed to ensuring the viability of the Poplar River Power Station near Coronach.

In 2005-06, SaskPower invested $130 million to rebuild Poplar River Power Station Unit 2. SaskPower also plans to rebuild Unit 1 in the coming years.

If successful, the advanced clean coal unit will be the first of its kind in a utility scale application in the world. A decision on whether to proceed with the project will be made in mid-2007, with an in service date of 2011.

Mega Projects like this are an amazing thing for small communities.  In addition to the jobs that are created there are other long lasting benefits too.  For example with both Boundary and Shand reservoirs were created to cool the turbines in the facilities.  Those today are stocked with fish and are great places for boating, swimming and more.  Its awesome that they are striving for a clean coal project too.  It will be really interesting to watch how this evolves.

Congratulations Estevan.

And in another back home news, the folks from Leader Saskatchewan are posing in nude calendar to protest their terrible roads to the federal government.

technorati tags: Saskatchewan