SaskPower and Lehigh Hanson Materials Limited have signed an agreement to give Lehigh exclusive rights to market and distribute fly ash from Shand Power Station.
This expands on an existing 10-year agreement signed in 2012 to market fly ash from the Boundary Dam Power Station. The agreement with Lehigh is in effect until Dec. 31, 2021, and after that, there will be the potential for two five-year renewal terms.
鈥淪ince we signed the agreement with Lehigh in 2012, we saw the amount of fly ash that we鈥檙e able to get to market increase,鈥� said Joel Cherry, a SaskPower consultant for media relations and issues management. 鈥淟ehigh has the expertise. This is what they do is sell fly ash concrete products.
鈥淭hey have the knowledge, they have the relationships with customers that we need in order to get as much of our product as possible to market.鈥�
It has proven to be a beneficial agreement for both sides over the past six years.
The SaskPower and Lehigh sales agreement goes into effect this month. Shand fly ash customers have been notified of the change.
鈥淭he original agreement signed in 2012 to market Boundary Dam fly ash was awarded through an RFP (request for proposals) process,鈥� said Cherry.
Fly ash is a fine powder by-product of coal combustion used in ready mix concrete, mine backfill, oil well cementing, road base stabilization and liquid waste stabilization.
鈥淲e鈥檙e taking a waste product that is produced at our coal-fired power plants, and using it to offset some of the carbon emissions of the cement industry. 鈥�
Producing cement is actually a fairly carbon intensive process, he said, and it takes about one tonne of carbon emissions to produce a tonne of cement.
鈥淪o if we鈥檙e replacing half of the material going into a tonne of cement, say, fly ash, that鈥檚 half a tonne of carbon emissions that aren鈥檛 going into the atmosphere,鈥� said Cherry.
An estimated 215,000 tonnes of fly ash per year will be sold from the Boundary Dam and Shand Power stations.
Cherry pointed out Shand is a 300-megawatt generating unit and Boundary Dam has approximately 750 megawatts of generating capacity, and the volumes of fly ash collected at each power station will reflect those numbers.
鈥淟ehigh Cement is excited to expand on our already strong relationship with SaskPower,鈥� said Chris Ward, president and CEO of Lehigh Hanson Materials Limited. 鈥淭his agreement is a step forward as we work to foster economic growth in Saskatchewan by selling fly ash from Boundary Dam and Shand power stations to markets across North America."
SaskPower has been selling fly ash since the late 1960s, although it has not sold any fly ash at the Poplar River Power Station near Coronach. The composition of the fly ash from Poplar River is not suitable for the ready mix cement industry.
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