Â鶹ÊÓƵ

There has been some undeserved hammering of SaskPower and its Boundary Dam Unit 3 project lately, not only from the political fronts, which would be expected, but also from regions and individuals who don’t have and don’t appear to be interested in the whole story. They would rather cherry pick negatives, as do political opponents who are declaring the BD3 program a lost cause and poor investment. 

As we said in the past, based on facts and future, it’s not. And, we say that not because SaskPower makes up a huge component of our community, but because the carbon capture system is working, albeit not always at peak efficiency and not always online but, this was to be expected. 

Yes, SaskPower should have been more forthcoming about the frequency of the shutdowns and the loss of efficiencies when they occurred. Those poorly reported halts in production provided fodder for the critics, and there have been more than a few. 

To claim SaskPower is losing tub loads of money on this project, is, quite purely, hogwash. 

As it has been pointed out time and again, if BD3 had not gone into refurbishment and carbon capture mode, whatever SaskPower would have needed to build to replace it, would be at least three-quarters of its $1.5 billion cost. 

Yes, there were $17 million in additional costs after the fact to compensate for original design and build flaws. Most of that will be recovered through legal means. 

Yes, there was a $12 million loss on early sales of carbon dioxide that has now been turned into profit, not further losses. 

Coal can still be a primary source of fuel, here and elsewhere. 

We learned that when Ontario made the supposedly bold move to turn to electrical power production that was going to be green, to meet the green committees’ aspirations. The process turned ugly very quickly politically, practically and financially. Ontario’s Hydro One and its hybrids are currently billions and billions in debt that they’ll never be able to crawl out of for at least five decades. 

In Thunder Bay, for instance, they eschewed Saskatchewan’s coal in favour of producing power using biomass. The problem was, biomass was not massive enough so the refurbished former coal-fueled plant is now burning imported wood and it’s costing them $1,600 per megawatt hour to produce. Compare that with the $126 to $130 per megawatt hour cost to produce residential power in this province, and then tell us Ontario is on the right track. Ontario’s companies have been forced to turn to nuclear, with huge construction costs and even larger maintenance costs and larger than large decommissioning costs at shutdown.

Their add-on costs (above the more traditional fuel sources) to provide a small fraction of their needs through wind and solar contracts, currently stands at $9.2 billion. 

In some sectors Ontario Hydro One can produce power for $135 per megawatt hour, but adding green energy to the mix, is adding at least 50 per cent to the cost. The folly is costing each Ontario taxpayer hundreds of dollars. 

In the meantime, in an act of desperation, Ontario is selling 13.6 per cent to the private market, as one analyst noted, it’s not a P3 project, but rather a P4. It’s a perverse, public, private, partnership. That has led only to a jumble of governance representative shuffles with appointments being made to boards, or sometimes elected representatives taking a seat at the table. Regulatory agencies are in a state of flux and rate regulations are bypassed. 

It makes SaskPower’s go for green look pretty darn good.