Levinson with Argus Media gave a glob-al overview of biomass power projects coming online, and their expected de-mands. The U.K. is still the largest con-sumer of pellets, she said, which is not likely to change in the near future. Brexit is on everyone’s mind, but it will be two years before it has any substantial effect. Speaking to biomass’ future in the Netherlands, Henry Pease with RWE Supply & Trading said there is an ex-pectation that government investments made between 2013 and 2020 will in-crease demand to 3.5 million tonnes. Pease stressed that attaining certifica-tions, including the Sustainable Biomass Partnership (SBP) certification, is be-coming increasingly important for pellet producers. FPInnovation’s Charles Friesen up-dated conference goers on the current state of Canadian fibre supply. Canada is a world leader in large-scale produc-tion of forest biomass, but transportation costs mean that much of that biomass is left in the forest. “There is lots of material if you are willing to pay,” Friesen said. He also noted that proactive measures to eliminate the mountain pine beetle will eventually dry up the ready supply of beetle-affected wood. Discussions then turned to Alberta and its Climate Leadership Plan. FutureMetrics’ William Strauss opened the talk by providing evidence that Alberta does indeed have potential for full-conversion of certain power proj-ects, but education is key. Utilities and policy makers, he said, need to know about the benefits of using wood pellets. Jamie Stephen, founder of Torchlight BioResources, made a strong point about how low natural gas prices have created a unique power generation station in Al-berta. Wind and solar, he said, are not the competitors to wood pellets in the province – the competition is gas. Ac-cording to Stephen’s models, using pure-ly wood pellets for large-scale power generation will be a hard sell to utilities when the operating cost of gas is so low, even after factoring in Alberta’s carbon levy. An alternative, Stephen said, would be to supplement pellets with low-cost feedstock. SAFETY SPOTLIGHT If attendees had just one takeaway from Day 2 of the conference, the WPAC’s Safety Committee would like it to be about process safety management. “Pro-cess safety management” was the buzz-word of the safety discussion at the con-ference, which kicked off with WPAC Safety Committee chair Scott Bax. “Safety is all about your people,” Bax said, who is the senior vice-president of operations for Pinnacle Renewable Ener-gy Inc. “We know the return to business from an engaged, active safety culture is incredible.” NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 22 Canadian BIOMASS
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