Home

Subscribe


Rural Delivery

Atlantic Forestry

Atlantic Beef

Horse & Pony

Employment Opportunities

Books

Links

Advertising

Buy Local Beef: a directory

2009 Green Pages
Free Listing Form


2008 Farm Book
Free Listing Form

POST
CLASSIFIEDS

SUBMIT EVENTS & NEWS

HORSE & PONY SURVEY

 

Atlantic Forestry, July 2008

A Word or Two (editorial comment)

Wood briquettes ­
a new way to be sustainable?


Saw a news item recently about communities in northern Canada spending a fortune to produce electricity with diesel generators. Since my return from the World Bioenergy conference in Jönköping, Sweden, the solution seems perfectly obvious. Even above the tree line, wouldn't it be better to bring in wood chips from forestry operations in Ontario and Quebec to run small cogeneration plants? It's not a new idea, but maybe the time is right.
Closer to home in Nova Scotia, a forest fire this June in the Porter's Lake area forced thousands to evacuate and destroyed a couple of homes. It seems likely climate change is contributing to dry conditions in the woods ­ and maybe also increasing the frequency of "extreme weather events." I wonder, would a robust biomass industry in Halifax County have ensured that forest stands damaged by hurricane Juan were salvaged, providing revenue for landowners while reducing the fire risk associated with downed timber?
These connections were hitting me even before I left Scandinavia. During a stopover in Copenhagen ­ an elegant city that has embraced district heating stacks and huge wind turbines as part of the urban landscape ­ I went to the Frihedsmuseet, a museum dedicated to the Danish resistance. And there, in all its black iron glory, was an Imbert generator ­ a wood gasification unit of the type widely used to power cars, trucks, and buses in the early 1940s. Perhaps at that relatively early period in the petroleum age going back to wood wasn't such a big deal, although certainly it was a compromise. What struck me was how energy sources and technologies can sit on the back burner for many years, to be brought forward and refined in times of need.
Across the canal in Christiania, Copenhagen's once-idealistic but increasingly seedy "alternative community," I saw members of the anti-establishment crowd gathered around a barrel fire, that universal symbol of protest. But their fuel of choice was not scrap lumber or busted pallets; it was wood briquettes ­ tidy and uniform, conveniently packaged in a clear plastic bag. Maybe the commercialization of forest fiber biofuel has been so successful in Denmark that it has no cultural significance. It's just the best stuff for making a fire.
That's what Peter de Graaf says about briquettes. "You can use any wood-burning device, whether it's a campfire, stove, fireplace, or furnace," he told me. "I've even barbecued steaks over these suckers."
De Graaf is marketing chairman of the Community Wood Briquette Project, in the Sussex area of New Brunswick. The idea is to build a small plant to produce these artificial logs. There's a volunteer steering committee of about a dozen people with diverse backgrounds, including woodlot owners, machinery experts, and community activists. By mid-June it looked like the Fundy Model Forest was going to come through with project funding for a technical study and a marketing strategy.
In an effort to jump-start the local market, he has been distributing briquettes purchased by the tractor-trailer load from a Quebec manufacturer that uses the same process the Sussex group has its eyes on. They're packaged 10 briquettes to the 30-lb. bag, selling for $6.95. One analysis of the cost per BTU concluded it's like getting oil for $0.80/liter. That might be on the optimistic side, "but it's definitely under a buck-a-liter oil," said de Graaf. "It's obviously less expensive to heat with this product. It makes economic sense."
There's no thought of replacing firewood, which is cheaper. In fact the briquettes may even be distributed through firewood suppliers. With so many wood-burning households in this part of the world, briquette demand will be plenty strong if just a small percentage of them will pay the extra for fuel that is easier to store and cleaner in terms of handling and emissions.
Since the days of cheap sawdust and shavings are long gone, the briquette project is looking to purchase low-grade roundwood. That means having a debarker, a chipper, and a hammer mill set up in front of the main machine that produces hexagonal extrusions. Still, it's likely to be just a one- or two-person operation, running 24 hours five days a week, producing 6,000 or 7,000 tonnes a year to start.
The group envisions offering shares for about $250, so people can get in with a small investment. Larger players will be welcome too, but the business structure will be designed to maintain local control. That is very much the point. This is no mega-project. Yes, there will be some jobs and spin-offs, but it's more a case of bolstering economic stability and community self-determination.
De Graaf believes the plant could easily be operating within two years. "We don't need to rely on Venezuelan crude or Lepreau II," he told me. "We've got the trees, we should use them. There's scads and scads of wood that's not being harvested. And by providing a market for the low-end stuff, that's a good way to promote sustainable practices."
The issue of fiber supply may be a little more complicated than that, but the modest scale of this proposal makes it seem an appropriate community project. It doesn't hinge on the vagaries of export markets. It doesn't depend on infrastructural investments or progressive government policy or even radical changes in consumer behavior ­ all of which need to happen soon. This is not the revolution advocated by bioenergy boosters in Jönköping, but it's one example of a good start.
David Lindsay


Correction

My apologies for not having included Robin Barrett and Donna Hurlburt as members with forestry backgrounds on the Voluntary Planning Committee holding public consultations on a vision for natural resources management. That error was in the "Word or Two" editorial, May issue. DvL






SUBSCRIBE NOW TO ATLANTIC FORESTRY



BACK

Copyright 2007 DvL Publishing Inc.

Rural Delivery | Atlantic Beef | Atlantic Forestry | Atlantic Horse & Pony