A multimillion-dollar proposal to pipe carbon dioxide from Saskatchewan and store it underground in Montana is officially dead.A multimillion-dollar proposal to pipe carbon dioxide from Saskatchewan and store it underground in Montana is officially dead.
When the $270 million project was announced almost two years ago, Premier Brad Wall and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said they hoped to get big grants from their respective federal governments.
But last summer, the Associated Press reported that the Montana portion of the money was not going to come through. At the time, the province said it was still possible to go ahead with a scaled-down project, using $50 million in provincial money.
However, the project quietly died last fall when Ottawa told the province it wouldn't kick in any cash.
On Thursday, the province confirmed that the $50 million has been spent elsewhere and the pipeline project won't proceed.
"In hindsight I should have done more to alert the public that while that chapter had come to a close there was still significant international interest," said Rob Norris, the cabinet minister responsible for the project.
Norris said the Saskatchewan government is still keen to try out carbon capture technology, noting that Crown utility SaskPower is spending about $350 million to refurbish its Boundary Dam 3 unit to make it "carbon capture ready."
Saskatchewan gets much of its electricity from coal-powered plants, with the carbon dioxide they produce ending up in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas that scientists say contributes to climate change.
NDP MLA Kevin Yates said the government should have been up-front with people about the project falling through.
"If you're going to lose a major, major initiative like that that you make such an issue of ... that's clearly a political decision by the cabinet to withhold that information from the public," Yates said.
The NDP Opposition has been trying to portray the end of the pipeline project as another example of Brad Wall dreaming up grandiose schemes that don't go anywhere when federal funding stalls.
On Tuesday, the Saskatchewan government said plans to build a $430-million multi-use facility in Regina were dead as a result of no money coming from Ottawa.
No comments:
Post a Comment