The city of Estevan is thrilled for the future after SaskPower announced it would look at lengthening and possibly expanding the service of the Boundary Dam power station.
That would keep the station's jobs running past the current expected lifetime while potentially opening up more demand for coal.
Mayor of Estevan Tony Sernick says that the original announcement has been a big shock for the city.
"I was shocked to hear the news, but it was also it's been refreshing, still in a little bit of disbelief. Obviously it'll come to fruition when they actually start rebuilding one of the boilers out there, but I mean it's fantastic news for Estevan. One for the area and for Saskatchewan, right? So we've obviously we've mined coal here for 150 years and it's in our DNA."
Sernick says they'll keep an eye on exactly what SaskPower will decide, with a final decision coming this summer.
"They put it into SaskPower's hands to look into what it would take to rebuild the fleets and I can't remember the actual date, I think July 1st, something like that, SaskPower will make a decision and all that. So we should know where it's all going this summer, early in the fall, so can't wait.
Even though coal will be sticking around Estevan for a while longer Sernick says the city won't be abandoning transition efforts which would diversify the town.
"It changes nothing on that front, so again this is just news, it gives us that true transition, right? My issue was that obviously, it was always coal shut down by 2030, but we weren't gonna replace it with anything. So kind of the message I've always relayed whenever I could is a true transition is, let's say the coal fleet going until the nuclear future. Once the nuclear reactors, SMRs are being built, once those come online and then the coal fleet goes down, that's a true transition, right?"
"Hopefully that's the way it goes. That's the idea I gathered was, rebuild the coal fleet one more time, that'll give us 20 years to keep the nuclear, everything going. Coal to graphite hopefully happens, coal to hydrogen, or different things you know on the go right now. So again, hopefully all that happens but with rebuilding the coal fleet one more time will allow us that time to truly transition into whatever the future brings."