ery public building within Yellowknife was heated by wood pellets, the demand would be 200,000 tonnes per year. A further 1.5 million litres of heating oil could be dis-placed in government buildings throughout the NWT.” John Carr, a spokesman for Arctic En-ergy Alliance, said the regulatory system is still learning and there have been some questions about building code compliance. “There has been a learning curve, but everyone is getting familiar with it. They see now that it works, that it’s safe and economical.” The government has invested $60 mil-lion in weaning as many of the Northwest Territories’ 45,000 residents off fuel oil as possible, providing incentives to busi-nesses and homeowners to convert to pel-let boilers. A recent government study found that pellet fuel consumption in the Northwest Territories is approaching 18,000 tonnes/ year – still well short of the estimated 30,000 tonnes needed to support a pellet mill, but Yellowknife’s plan for a district heating system could fill the gap. The city signed a memorandum of un-derstanding with Corix Utilities last sum-mer for a $60.4-million community ener-gy project that would heat 39 downtown buildings with a mix of wood-pellet boil-ers and geothermal heat from a defunct gold mine. The territorial government plans to convert as many of its buildings to pellet heat as is practicable, and Northern Prop-erty REIT, the territory’s largest landlord, is taking the same course, boosting demand. The current need for pellets in the ter-ritory is met by mills in La Crete, Alberta, and northern British Columbia, where the forest industry is harvesting trees de-stroyed by insects. The NWT Biomass Energy Strategy two years ago released aims to “work with the private sector and Aboriginal development corporations to identify viable business models to produce pellets and/or wood-chips in the NWT.” Producing wood pellets at a competi-tive price would help stabilize the territory’s supply of pellets, said Jim Sparling, manager of climate change programs with the North-west Territories department of Environment of Natural Resources. “If you’re buying in bulk [pellets] from La Crete, you can get them delivered in Yellow-knife for about the equivalent of 60 cents/ litre for heating oil right now. But there are some concerns about the long-term sustain-ability of that,” said Sparling. Environment minister Michael Milten-berger said “as we convert ... more govern-ment and commercial buildings, and as the price of oil goes up, it will be more and more attractive. We just have to make sure that it’s done in the right way in the right place where we have sustainability of supply.” Two Fort Simpson businessmen hope to create the first made-in-the-Northwest Territories supply of wood pellets. Wayne McKay and Ivan Simons have a $100,000 grant from the government to build a 1,000-tonne-capacity mill. Elliott’s company, Arctic Green Energy, brings three B-trains of pellets a week to Yel-lowknife from La Crete, and he has looked at the economics of manufacturing pellets. “Thirty per cent of round wood is lost to drying, so it’s not really profitable un-less it’s run with a sawmill,” said Elliott. Quality pellets, guaranteed. For perfect pellets the entire production system must work together flawlessly. Bühler enables total process control by providing a complete process design package and key equipment for drying, grinding, pelleting, cooling, bagging and loading. This, combined with Bühler’s integrated automation system, unrivaled after sales support and training provides a seamless solution, guaranteed. Visit us at the International Biomass Conference & Expo -Booth 213 April 16 th -19 th , 2012; Denver, CO. Bühler Inc., PO Box 9497, Minneapolis, MN 55440, T 763-847-9900 [email protected], www.buhlergroup.com Innovations for a better world. Quality_Pellets_(CanBiomass)2012.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS 3/6/2012 11:12:54 AM 21
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