The Saskatchewan government and provincially-owned utility SaskPower are facing a wall of critical analysis after leaked documents attached a $26-billion price tag to a plan to refurbish the province’s aging coal-fired power plants, continue running them for up to 25 years, begin building small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in the 2030s, and suspend all renewable energy procurements and emission reduction commitments along the way.

On the instructions of the provincial government, “SaskPower is terminating previous corporate commitments related to renewable capacity and emissions reductions,” the utility stated in a November 5 memo released to the media by the provincial NDP opposition and published by CBC in early May. The memo projected the plan will raise electricity costs in the province 20% in 2030 and 95%—nearly double today’s rates—in 2040.

“I think we’ve got $26 billion, 26 more reasons today to not trust the government,” NDP Opposition leader Carla Beck said after the document leaked.

The memo, the executive summary of a memo presented to SaskPower’s audit and finance committee and then its board in November, was attributed to Gregg Milbrandt, SaskPower’s Estevan-based vice president, asset strategy and planning. It said officials were assuming that “negotiations between the Saskatchewan and Canadian governments” will allow their plan “to proceed without regulatory violation.”

Coal is considered the dirtiest of the fossil fuels (although liquefied natural gas exports sometimes give coal a close run for that title), and longstanding federal regulations currently require all provinces to phase out coal power plants by 2030. Ontario and Alberta have already done so.

An ‘Incomplete, Early Draft’

Saskatchewan’s minister responsible for SaskPower, Jeremy Harrison, said the document was part of an “incomplete, early draft” of a board presentation, CBC reports. He said the NDP was being dishonest with its cost figures, since the $26-billion total included $11.4 billion for the actual coal facility extension, $13 billion in fuel costs, $1.4 billion for transmission, and $393 million for “initial capital sustainment investments” to keep the plants running in the interim.

The CBC report contained no indication of whether Harrison understands that solar+ and wind+storage systems incur no ongoing fuel costs to deliver clean, affordable, reliable power.

The NDP pointed out that the coal extensions as a whole will cost more than Saskatchewan’s entire budget for 2026. “This is not only about how much we are paying for this coal plan, which is, to be clear, a staggering amount,” Beck said. “This is also about all of the things that this government cannot pay for.”

The document assessed the “residual risk profile” of the scheme as extreme. “Provincial and federal governments have been engaged in discussions regarding regulations to electricity generations,” it states. “It is assumed that an agreement will be reached to manage this financial risk.”

The memo also assigned medium to high risk assessments to possible reliability problems in the coal refurbishment plan. Across North America and around the world, power utilities and their regulators and system operators treat reliability—the guarantee that the lights will stay on and devices will continue to run—as the cornerstone of their promise and their duty to households and businesses.

The leaked document traces SaskPower’s new direction back to the moment early last year when the utility received “new provincial government direction to solely focus on the affordability and reliability of the power system and to include the use of coal-fired generation” beyond the 2030 retirement date.

“This direction fundamentally changed the path that the SaskPower Supply Plan had been on to transition out of conventional coal-fired generation by the end of 2029. Integrate high levels of renewables into the grid to reduce emissions, and build out natural gas-fired generation to support the transition away from coal,” Milbrandt wrote.

It said work was already “well under way” to “ensure reliability until each coal-fired unit is life extended.”

The ‘Vaguest Sorts of Estimates’

A slide deck accompanying Milbrandt’s presentation described the $26-billion cost of the plan and the more detailed breakdown as an “order of magnitude estimate”. Order of magnitude estimates are “the vaguest sorts of estimates…essentially how many zeros are in any measurement,” explains an online teaching guide by the University of British Columbia, “finding the closest power of ten to the number you’re looking for.”

The guide says order of magnitude estimates are useful when “you don’t know any of your measurements for sure, you want to ‘play it safe’ and make a conservative estimate,” or “you have calculated a more precise result but want to know if your answer is reasonable.” It recommends against using the tool when “you have access to complete information that is very precise.”

A SaskPower spokesperson declined to answer questions on the reliability of the cost estimate, the latest cost projections for the proposed SMRs, and whether SaskPower had a mandate or opportunity to compare the coal extension scheme against the cost of procuring the same amount of electricity from gas, renewables with storage, and demand management and response.

‘The Dirtiest Form of Electricity’

Last week, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported that two local experts were questioning the province’s claim that a coal extension is a better plan than a shift to gas plants and renewables.

“We know from other research (on) the full cost of providing electricity, (that) coal is not the cheapest, and certainly nuclear is one of the most expensive. The renewables have come down in price tremendously over time, and the forecast is that (they) will continue to come down over time,” said University of Saskatchewan natural resource economist Joel Bruneau. “Coal is past its prime.”

“Coal-fired electricity is the dirtiest form of electricity we can produce, which means it has a lot of CO2 emissions, and if you put a price on those, it’s very expensive,” added University of Regina economics professor Brett Dolter. “A coal plant might be 1,080 tonnes of CO2 per gigawatt-hour of electricity. A gas plant is going to be about a third of that, and then if you take a gas plant and only run it in tandem with wind and solar… then your emissions are even lower.”

The Star-Phoenix had SaskPower CEO Rupen Pandya distancing the utility from the memo.

“As with any large organization, various scenarios, analyses, and options may be reviewed internally before decisions are made. Those discussions should not be confused with finalized government direction or policy,” Pandya told the paper an email statement. “Public confidence is not served when confidential internal deliberations are taken out of context.”

In an email to The Energy Mix, Dolter shared his own preliminary scenario work comparing the coal extension plan—and baking in the “generous estimate” that the refurbished plants would run 85% of the time, compared to their current capacity factor of about 60%—with an alternate universe where the province builds four 360-megawatt combined-cycle gas plants at $1.7 to $2.5 billion each, then procures 1,200 megawatts of wind and 300 megawatts of solar. A final scenario combined 1,560 megawatts from six simple-cycle gas plants that would be less efficient than combined-cycle but more flexible to meet shifting demand, combined with 1,500 MW of wind and 600 MW of solar.

Dolter cautioned that his numbers have yet to be finalized and published. But so far, the alternate scenarios come in at low fractions of the cost of extending the coal plans.

Bob Halliday, vice-president of the Saskatoon Environmental Society, added that SaskPower has had good past success with demand-side management, easily meeting a target to eliminate 200 megawatts of power demand several years ago. “A 500-MW target seems feasible and could be achieved at very low cost,” he told The Mix in a note.

An interconnection with hydropower-rich Manitoba could bring in another 1,000 MW at a cost previously estimated at $2 billion, so perhaps $3 billion today, he said. Adding 1,800 MW of wind capacity would cost about $3 billion, another 1,8000 MW of solar about $2.5 billion, and the existing Forks hydropower plant along the Saskatchewan River system could accommodate a 420-MW capacity increase.

“Solar and wind can work together to enhance reliability as well as in complementary fashion with hydro,” Halliday wrote.

‘Really Good Job’ by SaskPower

Previously, “SaskPower did a really good job of exploring several electricity pathways out to 2050 and ran a very open and transparent supply planning process between 2023 and 2024,” Dolter told The Mix. “However, after the 2024 provincial election and the appointment of Jeremy Harrison as [SaskPower Minister], that transparent process was suspended. SaskPower had promised to release a final supply plan coming out of that process, but they reversed that decision under Harrison. It would be really good to see SaskPower go back to the transparent approach.”

David Pickup, electricity program manager at the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, said Saskatchewan “has chosen to go in a different direction than every other Canadian province and much of the world” with its decision to extend its use of coal to generate electricity.

“In a province with a long history of coal mining and coal-fired power, it’s especially important that the government takes steps to ensure affected workers know they will be supported—and their economic futures are being considered—even as the grid makes this necessary transition,” Pickup told The Mix in an email.

Pembina’s initial estimates show wind and solar delivering the same amount of energy as the coal plant extensions “for around half the price, with none of the associated health impacts or climate-warming emissions that come from burning coal,” he wrote. “Of course, nobody is suggesting that Saskatchewan run its grid on renewables alone—but the cost difference is so stark, it reinforces that in 2026, coal is the wrong choice.”

In a recent blog post, Pickup and Pembina Senior Analyst Will Noel showed renewable energy costs plummeting, while the cost of nuclear electricity continues to rise. Multiple other independent analysts have warned that small modular reactors are far too new and unproven a technology to permit accurate cost or reliable estimates, by the power utilities that are supposed to count on them or even by their fiercest advocates.

Maryo Wahba, Ottawa-based climate justice policy analyst at Citizens for Public Justice, warned that “Saskatchewan is burning piles of cash to revive coal. A $26-billion investment in energy generation should build a cleaner, more affordable electricity system and fund a real just transition for affected workers,” rather than locking the province “into decades more of fatal pollution, higher energy costs, and stranded assets.”

Earlier this year, a judge rejected CPJ’s legal challenge to the coal extension plan, contending that the province was breaking the law and “undermining the rule of law” by ignoring federal coal regulations. In an email to The Mix this week, Wahba calculated the cost of the coal plan at C$167 per megawatt-hour, compared to US$38 to $86 for solar and wind, or US$50 to $131 including energy storage. None of those figures included the outsized health and environmental costs associated with burning coal.

“Southern Saskatchewan has some of the best wind and solar potential in Canada,” Wahba added, indirectly echoing the City of Estevan’s assertion that the community is “considered the sunshine capital of Canada,” with average annual solar gain of 2,499.9 hours.

“The better alternative is not one silver bullet; it is an interconnected network of wind, solar, storage, efficiency, and demand response initiatives, transmission upgrades, as well as targeted supports for workers and coal-dependent communities,” Wahbo wrote.