pulp and sawmill sectors maintain their monopoly over B.C.’s public forests. Boiler Feed Systems solutions Ruggedly built and dependable pneumatic and mechanical boiler fuel feed systems by Jeffrey Rader ® , a brand of TerraSource ™ Global, combine the best of our storage, reclaim, conveying, and feeding equipment. We work closely with our customers to ensure that our designs meet the storage, metering, and feed rate requirements of the boiler, whether it’s feeding 100% biomass or co-firing biomass with coal. Phone: Email: Web: (864) 476-7523 [email protected] www.terrasource.com As the landlord and custodian over B.C.’s public forests, the B.C. government needs to take an active role to help solve the pellet industry’s difficulty in obtaining a secure supply of affordable fibre to ensure that our sector reaches its potential. The time for promises and rhetoric has passed. The following would help: 1. Recognizing that the business-to-business approach to obtaining fibre is inadequate and that it is neces-sary to become actively engaged in helping the pellet sector to obtain access to a long-term supply of af-fordable fibre. 2. Mirroring a similar style of commitment provided to the harvesting sector by requiring that tenure holders enter into long-term replaceable contracts with wood pellet producers for a component of their sawmill re-siduals. 3. Including the wood pellet sector alongside the pri-mary forest industry on the Bio-economy Transfor-mation Council and any other committees that have the mandate of developing fibre access strategies and policy. 4. Implementing a carbon tax on slash burning that cre-ates an incentive for major tenure holders to make slash piles available to wood pellet producers and eliminates the opportunity for tenure holders to burn material without consequences. Slash burning should only be allowed to occur if all other options to use the slash have been exhausted, and the requirement should be for the primary tenure holder to prove that burning is the only viable option to eliminate harvest residues. 5. Making available to the pellet sector timber that has a true economic value – not just the marginal econom-ic stands that are currently envisioned for the sector. This would enable pellet producers to bargain on an equal footing with primary tenure holders by trading access to sawlogs for sawmill and/or forest residuals. The wood pellet sector has a proven record of accomplish-ment over the past 15 years. While second-and third-gener-ation biofuels are sexy and exciting, they have not yet been proven to be viable. We are not asking that new technologies be abandoned. We are merely asking that the wood pellet sector be given at least the same priority – so that we may begin to regain some of the ground that we have lost to our U.S. and Russian competition. Gordon Murray is executive director of the Wood Pellet Association of Canada. He encourages all those who want to support and benefit from the growth of the Ca -nadian wood pellet industry to join. Gordon welcomes all comments and can be contacted by telephone at 250-837-8821 or by e-mail at [email protected]. Handling a World of Materials The brands comprising TerraSource™ Global (Gundlach Crushers, Jeffrey Rader, and Pennsylvania Crusher) are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Hillenbrand, Inc. (NYSE: HI) © 2013 TerraSource™ Global. All Rights Reserved. For more on pellets, visit www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca JULY/AUGUST 2013 10 Canadian BIOMASS
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