麻豆视频

The anti-coal crowd in Saskatchewan has been silent for much of the past 18 months regarding carbon capture and storage (CCS).

They weren鈥檛 too keen to find out that the CCS process at the Boundary Dam Power Station was online each day for seven of 12 months last year, that it was operational for most of the remaining five months, and that it captured nearly 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from entering the atmosphere.

But when a new report from University of Edinburgh professor Gordon Hughes questioned the viability of CCS, you knew the anti-coal buzzards would be circling.

Of course, they fail to mention the numerous awards the project has won, the praise that it has generated on a national and international basis, and the attention that it continues to draw from people around the world who want to see this technology at work.

You can be sure that the Boundary Dam detractors have been harping on the shutdown that has been happening since early June, even though shutdowns are a necessary occurrence with all types of electrical generation.

The next time there is a shutdown with the CCS project at Boundary Dam, the naysayers will be out in full force again.

Now there were issues at Boundary Dam when it first opened. It was offline more than a normal power generating station should have been, with a two-month shutdown in September and October 2015 the biggest culprit.

But since that time, it has been producing power and capturing CO2 on a much more consistent basis, highlighted by sustained production last year.

Hopefully the shutdown that is now just wrapping up will be the last prolonged shutdown for some time.

Boundary Dam has received considerable international acclaim from the scientific community. It has been praised for its technology, for its innovation and for its potential to keep coal a viable power source while making it more environmentally friendly.

Coal is proven and plentiful. It doesn鈥檛 suffer from wild price variations, and coal reserves are deep. Make it environmentally friendly, and it鈥檚 still the best source of power.

Even the federal Liberal government, with its desire to cut carbon emissions, has praised the work that is taking place at Boundary Dam, citing it as a potential means to keep coal going while conventional coal is rapidly phased out from the power generating picture.

Of course, the anti-coal crowd wants to keep this information away from the public鈥檚 attention. They want us to forge ahead with an over-reliance on renewables, even though most renewals have yet to establish a track record as a source of baseload power.

But thanks to carbon capture and storage, coal has a future well beyond 2030, much to the dismay of the critics who want to see it remain in the ground. 聽