The Boundary Dam Caprbon Coature can now say that they have removed 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

"Well, it is an important milestone," explained Ian Yeates, the Director of Supply Develpoment (Carbon Capture). "We've been working on optimizing our operations at Boundary 3 and the carbon capture facility since commissioning. We've been working since the plant commissioning in the fall of 2014 on dealing with the various issues that came up and the learnings that we've picked up on how to operate one of these facilities." 

"We're really, really pleased with the progress that we've made. A million and a half tonnes, that's a lot."

He added that it has always been a goal for them. 

"We have a goal a goal of capturing about 800,000 plus tonnes a year. Much of it to go to our off-taker, Cenovus, the oil company in the Weyburn-Midale area and they've used the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery."

Currently in a planned shutdown, the plant will use this time for scheduled maintenance. 

"Every two years we have an outage, so we had an outage in the fall of 2015, and we've had it in the June and early July time-frame of this year and we're planning on continuing capturing carbon and sending it to Cenovus for the foreseeable future. The plant is designed for a 30 year life so we're expected to do it for at least that long."

"They're just tidying up a few loose ends and they should have it resolved very soon."

As for the reaching this milestone, Yeates and his team are excited to see the facility continue its mission of capturing and storing CO2. 

"We at SaskPower are amongst the very few entities in Canada that are actually physically doing that."

"It's actually pretty impressive for a small province and a small power company."

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