The provincial and federal governments have come together on a new equivalency agreement when it comes to SaskPower’s fleet of coal-fired power plants.
If you were hoping this agreement would allow Units 4 and 5 at the Boundary Dam Power Station to remain open for the long-term, you’ll be disappointed. Barring a major miracle, nothing is going to save those units.
But the equivalency agreement, if it is officially ratified, represents a reprieve for Units 4 and 5, and it gives the city more time to move forward and plan for life after Units 4 and 5 close, and plan for life after coal-fired power in general.
If the agreement goes ahead, Unit 4 will shut down at the end of 2021, and Unit 5 would be shuttered three years later. It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s a much better situation than those units closing at the end of this year, which would have happened without equivalency.
If those two units were to close this year, then it would be a pretty bleak outlook for the community. It wouldn’t have hurt just the SaskPower employees in the community, it would have hurt the local mining operations, and as such, it would have had negative consequences on every aspect of the community, ranging from real estate to education to healthcare to retail to the hospitality sector.
It wouldn’t be a rosy short-term and medium-term picture for Estevan.
Now there’s time to prepare, not so much for the closure of Unit 4, since its end-of-service date would be less than three years away, but there is time to get ready for the end of Unit 5, which is more than five years away from going offline.
As we’ve stated before, the demise of conventional coal power – among other issues – is why economic development is one of the most important portfolios for the City of Estevan moving forward.
The city took over economic development responsibilities from the Estevan Chamber of Commerce in 2015, and while you can question whether that was the right decision, you can’t debate the value of the city’s economic division.
It should be viewed as essential at any time, but now it’s even more vital than in the past.
