Community benefits felt across Alberta
Project Pioneer is aligned with the Government of Alberta’s two foremost energy related priorities:
- Ensuring Alberta’s resources are developed in an environmentally sustainable manner
- Enhancing value-added activity, increasing innovation and building a skilled workforce to improve the sustainability of Alberta’s economy
Through Project Pioneer, these priorities will be supported in the following ways:
- Preserving the value of Alberta’s natural resources
- Incremental income for the province
- Growing expertise in a knowledge economy
- Position Alberta as a world leader
Preserving the value of Alberta’s natural resources
Coal is one of the world’s most abundant and easily accessible fuel sources. Alberta has more than 33 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves – more coal than oil, in fact. That’s approximately 70 per cent of Canada’s total reserves.
Project Pioneer will preserve the value of this resource in a carbon-constrained world by reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 1 megatonne from an operating coal plant. This is equivalent to removing 160,000 cars from Alberta’s roads every year.
Project Pioneer will also reduce SO2 emissions by 875 million tonnes annually and particulate matter by 110 tonnes per year.
In doing so, Project Pioneer will help ensure Alberta continues to benefit from important natural resources - including coal, oil, and natural gas - in an environmentally responsible way.
Incremental income for Alberta
Project Pioneer is ideally situated close to operating oil fields where the extracted CO2 can be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). From this one facility, there is the potential to generate up to $850 million directly for the province through incremental royalties and taxes on this EOR activity alone.
Growing expertise in a knowledge economy
Through Project Pioneer, Alberta will develop a specialized and highly sought after expertise in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
Most of the detailed engineering work for the capture and sequestration facilities will be completed in Alberta, and TransAlta is already in discussions to help develop a research network through the University of Calgary’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and the Economy (ISEEE).
Position Alberta as a world leader in CCS
By 2015, Alberta will have more large-scale CCS facilities than any jurisdiction on the planet. Through Project Pioneer, Alberta can demonstrate that it can develop its resources sustainably and that it can balance economic, environmental and energy policy through advanced technology.