Like a lot of technologies that might be enlisted in the fight against climate change, carbon capture has faced a bit of a chicken-and-egg dilemma, castigated by skeptics as unproven yet given little opportunity to demonstrate its efficacy on a large scale. That begins to change today with the opening of the Boundary Dam Carbon Capture and Storage Project in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

Provincial-owned electric utility SaskPower bills Boundary Dam as “the world’s first post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility attached to a coal-powered plant.” Not everyone is excited about its arrival: The director of Sierra Club Canada called the project “a waste of vital capital that should be invested in conservation, efficiency and renewable [energy].”