BHP, which has its potash business headquarters in the Saskatchewan and is one of the world's largest suppliers of coal, needs CCS to work so it can reduce any costs associated with global carbon taxes and continue to push for the widespread use of fossil fuels.

BHP will inject $20 million in cash over the next five years, while SaskPower will primarily contribute its CCS expertise from the Boundary Dam CCS development, which is attached to a coal-fired power station and which is designed to capture around 90% of the CO2.

Boundary Dam has been something of a failure to date, but clearly BHP sees the potential for it to iron out its teething issues.

“We need some immediate opportunities to reduce emissions,” BHP Billition Potash Canada president Giles Hellyer said at the launch this week.

“What we see with Boundary Dam is a fully working model of a power plant with an integrated capture system that works today.”

A report released at the Paris Climate Summit in December found over 2400 new coal-fired plants are in the works globally, and increasing numbers are looking to incorporate CCS, but it is still very much an emerging technology with multiple issues that need to be overcome.

Hellyer said it was important to bring pockets of CCS knowledge together to improve power plant design.

Regina’s proximity to the Boundary Dam will allow researchers to evaluate new carbon capture technology in a real world setting, however the state-owned SaskPower fell substantially short of its million tonne capture goal, and this year has lowered its target by 20% to 800,000 tonnes.

That’s double last year’s actual 400,000 tonnes of CO2 removed last year.

According to SaskPower the CCS facility ran every day in January and captured about 85,000 tonnes of carbon.

The CCS plant costs around $13 million per annum to run, and according to some reports SaskPower paid $17 million for repairs to the facility last year, plus $7 million in penalties to Cenovus Energy, which is contracted to take 2000-3000tpd of CO2 for an enhanced oil recovery project in Weyburn.

The $1.5 billion project is not yet working as planned, and was offline for around half of its expected running time last year.

An extended overhaul to fix some of the nagging problems and replace some of the faulty equipment at the plant in November did not solve all of the issues.

In January it operated at 85% of an expected 90% rate.

The plant was first switched on in October 2014 and uses amine solvent technology on an industrial-scale never before tested.