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SaskPower consults public regarding proposed natural gas plant

SaskPower, along with the City of Moose Jaw and Associated Engineering, held an open house Monday to discuss the new industrial park and SaskPower’s planned natural gas facility that will be housed at the site.

The expected first tenant of Moose Jaw’s new Southeast Industrial Park met the public Wednesday.

SaskPower, along with the City of Moose Jaw and Associated Engineering, held an open house to discuss the new industrial park and SaskPower’s planned natural gas plant that will be housed at the site.

A number of representatives from SaskPower were on hand to discuss the plans for the new facility that will be located south of the Moose Jaw River and east of the No. 2 Highway.

“We want to make sure we engage the public early and often in the process,” said SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry. “We invited the public here today both to provide a lot of information about what it is that we’re planning, but also to get important feedback from the people who live here. Ultimately they know what the concerns are better than anyone else.”

The new Moose Jaw power station will be an important cornerstone of SaskPower’s move to drastically reduce its carbon emissions.

“Our commitment is that we’re going to get our carbon footprint, our total emissions, down to 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030,” Cherry said. “So 2030 is our benchmark and we want to have significant carbon reductions by then. That will be done, in large part, through shifting to cleaner options such as natural gas for our baseload power and also through increasing renewables. What we’re looking at here for Moose Jaw is going to provide that baseload power going forward.”

SaskPower bought 110 acres of land from the City for $615,000 though Cherry notes that the footprint of the actual plant will be significantly smaller than that.

Given that there are still in the consultation stage, a hard date for construction has yet to been set, but the project is expected to begin construction in the second half of 2020 at the earliest, with 2024 the target for the opening of the power station.

While SaskPower is adding more new sources of energy like solar and wind power to lower emissions, they are sources of intermittent power, while natural gas provides baseload power.

“Basically as long as the plant is on, you’re producing power. And that will support that intermittent power. Natural gas has a lower carbon footprint than convention coal does,” Cherry said.

The new Moose Jaw power station will produce 350 megawatts of power, the same as the Chinook Power Station in Swift Current which is still under construction but nearing completion.

“Between the two that’s 700 megawatts of power and at the moment the max capacity of SaskPower’s grid – and that includes energy that we import from Manitoba, and that includes independent producers that we buy from – is about 4,500 MW,” Cherry said. “So that gives you an idea of what these two plants are going to bring to the table.”

There has been no estimate of a cost for the construction, but Cherry noted that it is expected to be in the same ballpark as the Chinook Power Station in Swift Current that is due to be completed by year’s end at a cost of $680 million.

Cherry said that according to SaskPower’s calculations, at the peak of construction there will be more than 500 people working at the site and that over the three years of construction the facility will employ an average of 230 people per year. SaskPower estimates that the construction will generate $140 million for Saskatchewan businesses.

“So that is going to bring a lot of money into the area because people are going to be staying here,” Cherry said. “We haven’t determined how the procurement is going to work yet, but there is major potential for economic spinoff here. That’s something we have seen in Swift Current already with the building of Chinook.”

When the power station is completed, it will employ 20 people.

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