NDP challenges SaskPower carbon capture travel costs

The Saskatchewan NDP is questioning why a Crown official spent nearly half a million dollars in travel to promote carbon capture when the province can’t even sell the technology.

Mike Monea, president of carbon capture for SaskPower, spent $476,000 from 2009 to 2014 to boast about a carbon capture facility at the Boundary Dam power plant near Estevan.

The CO2 capture technology is owned by Shell Cansolv.

SaskPower CEO Mike Marsh says SaskPower is the first utility to attach carbon capture technology to a generating station and it needs to market that expertise.

Marsh says Monea’s role was to engage the international community and let people know what’s going on at the plant.

SaskPower and the provincial government have been facing criticism over the project after documents show the facility has only been working 45 per cent of the time since it opened last year.