" In 2015, internal documents from SaskPower revealed that there were "serious design issues" in the carbon capture system, resulting in regular breakdowns and maintenance problems that led the unit to only be operational 40% of the time. SNC-Lavalin had been contracted to engineer, procure, and build the facility, and the documents asserted that it "has neither the will or the ability to fix some of these fundamental flaws."[15] The low productivity of the plant had in turn meant that SaskPower was only able to sell half of the 800,000 tonnes of captured carbon dioxide that it had contracted to sell to Cenovus Energy for use in enhanced oil recovery at a cost of $25 per tonne. In addition to the lost sales, this meant that SaskPower had been forced to pay Cenovus $12 million in penalties.[16] In June 2016, and to avoid paying a $91-million penalty, SaskPower renegotiated its CO2 supply contract with Cenovus. That renegotiation means annual revenues are reduced from $25-million to "$16-17-million". Over the 30-year project life this represents reduced revenue of $240-million to $270-million and will further weaken the project economics. [17]
Several major publications have noted what they deem poor economics of the project, among them The Economist,[18]The Financial Times,[19]The MIT Technology Review,[20] and The New York Times.[21][22] An April 2016 Parliamentary Budget Office report found that CCS at Boundary Dam doubles the price of electricity. [23]
Financial concerns appear to fall into three main areas:
the existence of cheaper alternatives, such as wind turbines, which urgently need to be developed.[11][25][26]
the potential for substantial losses for initial investors (Saskatchewan taxpayers and SaskPower ratepayers), in excess of $1-billion [11][27]
Among environmental concerns, critics note that while 90% of CO2 smokestack emissions are indeed captured, only a portion is actually stored.Almost half of captured emissions end up being released in the atmosphere by processing in the oil field and the capturing process.[28] ....Energy consumers are said to be saddled with a "very expensive carbon tax", while Saskatchewan's aging oil industry, namely Weyburn Consortium (headed by Cenovus Energy), which owns the Weyburn oil field receives a "backdoor subsidy."....the project "generates losses in excess of [Canadian]$1-billion for electricity consumers of Saskatchewan: they will be paying for those losses through higher electricity prices for many years to come."[28]
From Wikipedia.
There's a reason there's only one "Clean Coal" plant in the world.
Neither clean coal or Renewable base load electricity are ideal, perfected technologies. They will both require subsidies, and push up electricity prices. But the rest of the world (and the money) is moving in one direction and one direction only. Does Australia want to be the last guy selling horse and traps in the age of the Model T Ford?
As someone said above, the stone age didn't end because they ran out of stones.
