Pointing to the Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture and storage project in Saskatchewan, Canada, as proof that the technology is viable, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) promised to advocate for its continued development in a state energy plan released Tuesday. “Washington D.C. has not done enough to advance and support clean coal technologies. We’ll need both carbon-based and renewable sources of energy in the coming decades. Unfortunately, as a country, we have not prioritized this research enough,” the plan says.
Bullock noted his tour of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam project, the world’s first commercial-scale post-combustion CCS project on a coal-fired power plant. “As would be expected, the new technology is not without its challenges and detractors. But the plant can capture in excess of 90 [percent] of its CO2 emissions for storage and utilization in enhanced oil recovery,” the plan says. “We need to ask, why isn’t this happening here?”
In the plan, Bullock pledged to advocate for more support and funding from the federal government for CCS, and to work with the Department of Energy to “review the feasibility of carbon capture and EOR as a means of addressing the carbon emissions from coal-fired generation in Montana.”
