Viable?? Sustainable????

Whatever capacity building has to take place that is based not only on the existing use of “garbage” by-products of the forest products industry, but also on the high increased feedstock inventory resulting from the MPB disturbance, will not be sustainable over much longer than 10 to 15 years, if that. So, we have to be careful we understand what “viable” means before we get into this.

Does viable mean that the portion of the capacity which is built to take advantage of the MPB attacked feedstock will be self sufficient? That it will pay for all costs associated with that option through revenues received from the product they will sell? That it will pay for the technology required to ensure that the GHG they put into the air, and the local emissions put into the air that affect people’s health, including the emissions to transport the feedstock from the woods to the factories?

I suspect that is furthest from the minister’s mind. They are going to proposal requests. Yet we have not yet seen the projected balance books from the economic and the ecological/environmental side of things. If it is there for us to see, then I would like to see it.

I know that they are going into this with the mantra that “bioenergy is good”. I think that is a fallacy and the cracks are starting to show for those who are paying attention. It is no different than the mantra that going to daylight savings a few weeks earlier will save 1% in energy in the USA.

The blind leading the blind.

Hey, it is starting to appear that even new program development and roll out by government needs some oversight. The auditor general is too busy to keep up with this sort of Disneyland mentality.

"BC Hydro is committed to finding new, clean, renewable sources of power for British Columbians and we see wood fibre as one of the many potential sources of this clean energy"

That has been going on for some time. I think the cogen plant in Williams Lake is over a decade old. Although there might be some more up-to-date figures out, a few years ago they were losing money when they were selling it to the grid. And that is using garbage byproducts which did not require the cost recovery of woodland harvesting and silviculture practices and transportation which were recovered from the primary products.

So, the question that needs to be asked, and has been asked in many for a, but has never been answered is this:

Given 10,000 hectares of harvested fibre feedstock, what is the best end use for that feedstock – pulp & paper, panel boards, lumber, pellets, ethanol, etc.

In other words, we are currently using a trickle down integrated products approach. The feedstock from the forests end up being used for lumber in the first instance, chip based panelboards in the second instance and pellets in the third instance. Not quite as simple as that, but close enough for this purpose.

So, back to the question. Would it make more economic sense to go to pellets and other chip and sawdust based products right from the start and skip lumber completely? Or would a different mix be more appropriate to control the market a bit better?

We have had the technology for close to tow decades now for computers to be tied in to the lumber markets so that companies can decide virtually on the fly whether a sawlog coming though a saw will cut 2x4s or 2x6s or larger based not only on scanning the log and then positioning it automatically to cut, but also on the present demand in Chicago or wherever the “lumber market” resides.

If it has not already been integrated to one further level, then maybe it needs to be integrated to the extent of deciding where a log that is harvested is sent to for processing, working out through the computer parameters such as distance to transport to factory, factory capacity, and product demand based on prices.

In order to do that natural progression of working in the 21st century economy, one needs to know the cost of doing one thing versus to doing another thing.

Thus back to the question to which no one yet has an answer. Lots of people have a “feeling” about what that answer might look like. But surely the forests economists at UBC must have looked at that some time ago. Even the forest industry must have looked at that every few years to figure out what infrastructure improvements they should be funding – pulp mill improvements; sawmills; panel board factories; cogen working off hog fuel; pellets?

How many pellets will the market bear? When will there be an oversupply? What is the longevity of the bio-energy fad? Is it a fad, or is it the BAT (best available technology) for many decades to come?

From the log to the mill, then woodchips, for the pulp mills, and then sawdust and debris for the pulp mills co-generation plants. Other sawdust,and chips, used for pellets, osb, etc; Excess out of town is burned in beehive burners.

When prices are up for lumber then their is sufficient byproducts available to fill these needs, however when the price goes down, then some pulp mills get into whole log chipping to meet their chip requirements to produce pulp.

I suspect that the Pulp Mills will try and increase their electricity production through their co-generation plants over the years as there are big dollars to be made, and they control most of the woodchip, sawdust, mill debris, and would get first crack at it before it went to pellet plants (Unless they also own the pellet plants, some do)


To build a stand alone Co-Generation plant to process wood waste from the bush, or to process whole logs to burn in a Co-Gen operation is probably inefficient, and I doubt if one would be built. I suspect that we will continue on as we are now, with some expansion of the Co-Gen plants at Prince George Mills, and Kitimat, with some other Co-Gen plants put in (One possibility is North Central Plywood) and there are others.

What ever the big boys cannot get out of the bush and sell for lumber with the byproducts being processed into electricity will sit in the bush and rot.

This is more about the next Provincial Election than it is about anything substaintial. Its all about being seen, to be doing something.

Same as growing Canola here and hauling it to a Bio Diesel plant in Dawson Creek. This doesnt make a lot of sense, and you would burn up more diesel in transportation costs than you ever would get out of the Canola in the first place.

Everyone is going green is seems, and there is less and less room on the bandwagon.

As the old gal said in the restaurant **Wheres the beef?**

Good question owl! What IS the most viable option for the long term? Pellets seem to get the most press but I have to wonder how many plants it will take to drive the price per ton down? That may be good for the consumer in the short term, but not so good for the producers in the long run.And how many pellet plants do we really need?Never mind the air quality!
There has been a lot of co- generation noise in the Fort St.James area as well,and a couple of proposals floated around.Neither of which has so far raised much interest.
For the minister to stand there and throw out a bunch of ideas is short sighted at best.This wlll take a lot of careful thought and number crunching or it will all be a mess!!It's easy to say bio-energy is good but how long will it all be viable?
Seems like too much too fast.Much forethought and study is needed.

Again, the European culture, as expressed in almost all these postings, is obsessed with money and how much money can be extracted from the forests in as short a period of time as possible. Europeans are like the dog chasing it's tail, always frustrated that the tail cannot be caught. Your tail is your obsession with always getting more and never being content with what you have.

The European culture, always ignorant of what does not fit it's exploitive mind set... in this case that the Creator made the Earth to take care of itself, that everything in nature is for a purpose, including rotting wood. Only the European is obsessed with proving the Creator wrong and as usual will end up wrong. The Earth is groaning under the European culture and it's obsession with control and greed.

If only the European would lose it's worship of money they would open their eyes and see that all the Earth's problem's are easily solved... if only you would stop your money worship.

kevin1006. You must not be very observant. I have over the years seen a number of dogs that actually caught their tail and tore it all to pieces. So in effect the tail can be caught.

If the European loses its worship for money the rest of the world will starve to death. We are to far down this road to turn around. Millions of people dependent on the almighty dollar. All we can do now is see what lies ahead. When we look at what is happening in China, South East Asia, Japan, Malaysia, the Middle East, we can see that these people also worship money, so it extends beyond the European.

Those who do not worship money in this day and age live off those that do, and therefore you are what you eat. Get it.?

Actually it is not money that is extracted from the forests. It is utensils, no different than utensil used to make spears, arrows, bows, bowls, baskets, clothing, shelter, boats, etc.

The Europeans, the Asians, the Africans the Australian aborigninals, as well as the first wanderers who emigrated to North and South America from other continents all used and continue to use the forests as well as other natural resources to develop products to make their lives better and cause their people to survive longer.

Some people simply appeared to be better at it than others. There is absolutely no indication that if left to their own devices that those peoples who came later would not have progressed in a similar fashion. In fact, there is every indication that they would have since societies which had no comunication developed in remarkably similar fashion in order to improve their lives by making their lives easier.

Some have now progressed to the extent where it is highly questionable whether some of the progress is actually an improvement to the enjoyment of life.

Others are setting themselves apart from that group and looking in from the outside are saying tht all would be perfect if all were like themselves.

A rather righteous point of view without any proof to offer.

My proposal:

Partner up a stove manufacture, with a small micro turbine manufacture. Build stove powered steam micro turbine plants that produce power that is stored in battaries to be later used at will through an inverter for off grid homes.

Sell small scale wood lots that are logged and managed sustainably by the wood lot owners, with debree chipped and used to power the micro-turbine. The log sales would provide a source of income for the wood lot managers, and owners.

A high end designs would be able to integrate into BC Hydro billing/purchasing arrangements. Other options could include built in hot water systems, with electric only used to maintain heat in the insulated hot water tank and the stove used to heat the water.

A good home design would have a small room built into the home to facilitate this stove-micro-turbine with the residual heat captured for additional energy efficiencies.