Canadian Biomass • July/August 2017 • Industry News

Ottawa is giving Canadians and Canadian companies a $2-billion incentive to reduce their emissions and make their homes and buildings more efficient.

Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, introduced the new fund as part of the pan-Canadian climate change framework announced last fall.

“We understand that a clean environment and a strong economy go hand in hand. The Low Carbon Economy Fund will deliver clean, sustained economic growth for years to come. It is seeking the best and most innovative ideas to reduce our emissions for the good of current and future generations. These projects will also reduce energy bills and create good, middle class jobs for Canadians,” McKenna stated.

The fund will also go towards supporting the forest and agriculture sectors to enhance stored carbon in forests and soils. Provinces and territories that adopted and made climate change commitments in the framework are receiving $1.4 billion of the $2 billion fund. Those projects will begin in the fall and summer.

The rest of the fund will be used for a Low Carbon Economy Challenge that will be formally launched this fall. Projects for the challenge can be submitted by provinces and territories, municipalities, Indigenous governments and organizations, businesses and both not-for-profit and for-profit organizations. Projects that support a switch to lower carbon fuels and programs for enhanced forest management were given as examples.

“Canada has great expertise and a proven history of innovation in our natural resource and energy sectors. This investment will help to build on this capacity, to create and capture new opportunities in the low-carbon economy across a broad range of industry sectors,” stated Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr.

Canada’s target is to reduce emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

BioAmber Inc. has launched BIO-SA pharmaceutical grade. This new grade of material provides a USP/NF and FCC Grade of bio-succinic acid manufactured under the United States Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) good manufacturing practices (GMP) for food and excipients.

The United States Pharmacopeia (USP), the National Formulary (NF), and the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC) are the public pharmacopeia standards for medicines, food ingredients, dietary supplement products, and ingredients.

These standards are used by regulatory agencies and manufacturers to ensure products are of the appropriate identity, strength, quality, purity and consistency.

“Having met the stringent requirements contained in the NF and FCC reflects BioAmber’s continued dedication to quality through our best-in-class production and purification processes. By achieving this new benchmark, our global customers in the food, pharmaceutical and dietary supplement industries can be assured BioAmber’s facility adheres to the rigorous quality control standards set by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA),” said Fabrice Orecchioni, BioAmber’s president and COO. “This grade will allow BioAmber to supply these high-value industries with commercial volumes of an FDA regulated bio-succinic acid, a grade previously unavailable to these

Wood pellet imports to Asia reached an alltime- high in the 4Q/16 when Japan and South Korea together imported 630,000 tons of pellets. Although import volumes were down slightly in the 1Q/17, they were still over 40 per cent higher than in the 1Q/16, as reported in the latest issue of the Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ).

South Korea is by far the main destination for pellets in Asia, and in 2016, the country was the world’s third largest importer of pellets, trailing only the United Kingdom and Denmark. Although import volumes to Japan have tripled from 2014 to 2016, the usage of pellets is still at a relatively low level (see WRQ for detailed trade data).

Consumption of pellets in Japan and South Korea has increased quite rapidly the past four years because of new government requirements which favour reducing carbon emissions and increasing the usage of renewable energy. The recent trend in pellet usage is likely to continue in the future and is driven both by incentives (subsidies) and regulations (renewable energy portfolio standards). With an urgent need to replace nuclear energy and generous feed-intariffs, it is expected that Japan will increase importation of wood pellets quite substantially over the next five years.

Vietnam has been the major supplier of pellets to the Asian market for the past three years, accounting for almost two-thirds of the shipments to Japan and South Korea in 2016. Canada was an early supplier to the Asian market, but its market share dropped from 22 per cent in 2014 to 14 per cent in 2016. However, in the 1Q/17, Canada increased shipments to Asia to the second the highest quarterly level on record and the market share was up to 21 per cent.

Import prices for pellets to South Korea fell dramatically from early 2014 to the summer of 2016, according to a recent WRQ Trade Snapshot report. The two-year long price decline ended in the 3Q/16, when prices slowly started to recover. The import prices continued their upward trend during the first four months of 2017 with Malaysian pellets increasing the most.