14 DAY TRIAL // This October 2, Canada cut the ribbon on a coal-fired power plant said to be the first facility of this kind to have a negligible ecological footprint. Thus, the facility promises to capture its own emissions and generate power without causing noteworthy pollution.
The coal plant's fans say that, should more facilities of this kind be built across the globe, the energy industry could go on burning fossil fuels without feeling bad about contaminating natural ecosystems and fueling climate change and global warming.
The first clean coal commercial power plant ever
This supposedly eco-friendly coal-fired power plant is officially known as the Boundary Dam Power Station. It sits in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, not far from the city of Estevan.
The facility started out as a run-off-the-mill coal-burning station, but underwent an extreme makeover not too long ago and was fitted with a state-of-the-art carbon capture system. The cost of this project amounted to $1.2 billion (€0.94 billion).
It is understood that, now that it sports this very fancy and really expensive carbon capture system, the coal-fired power plant can trap as much as 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions it itself produces, Nature reports.
More precisely, the carbon capture technology installed at this facility is expected to keep about 1 million tons of greenhouse gases from entering Earth's atmosphere on a yearly basis. This is the equivalent of pulling 250,000 cars off roads.
What will happen to the carbon dioxide?
Information shared with the public says the carbon dioxide captured at this power station in Canada will be either buried in the underground or sold to an oil company dubbed Cenovus Energy.
This company will compress it and then inject it in the underground in an attempt to exploit oil reserves it cannot access without first cracking the rocks encasing them. Either way, what's important is that the carbon dioxide will eventually make it in the ground, and not in the atmosphere.
Fighting climate change and global warming
As cool as the news that a clean coal plant is now operational in Canada might sound, the fact of the matter is that the global fossil fuels industry is nowhere near being environmentally friendly. On the contrary, researchers say that, in 2012, coal-fired power stations alone coughed out a whopping 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
This means that, if the word is to even stand a chance at limiting climate change and global warming, high officials would do well to invest in thousands more capturing systems. Well, either that or start phasing out fossil fuels and support the development of the clean energy industry instead.