BIOMASS update ALBERTA LAUNCHES SINGLE ALBERTA INNOVATES Alberta Innovates Corporation, a consolidation of existing Alberta Innovates crown corporations, launched this week. The single corporation will continue to fund and drive provincial research and innovation – building on Alberta’s strengths in health, environment, energy, food, forestry/fibre, and emerging technology sectors. “We need to build an economy for the future. A consolidated Alberta Innovates will do even more to support our world-class researchers, entrepreneurs and academic institutions as we work together to create jobs and diversify our economy,” said Minister of Economic Development and Trade Deron Bilous. “Alberta Innovates is dedicated to catalyzing a strong innovation ecosystem that delivers 21st century solutions to Alberta’s most compelling opportunities and challenges,” said Judy Fairburn, chair of Alberta Innovates Board of Directors. The consolidation will also help ensure Albertans receive the best return on their investment in research and innovation, Bilous said. The corporation’s new executive moves from 20 to 11 positions, saving $2.5 million a year. The reduction comes with a one-time $1.5 million severance cost. A subsidiary corporation to Alberta Innovates, InnoTech Alberta Inc., also launches Nov. 1. It will provide research services to help test new technology on a larger scale across the province. VIRIDIS SELLS OKANAGAN PELLETS TO U.S. COMPANY Viridis Energy Inc. has closed on the sale of the Okanagan Pellet brands to American Biomass Corporation Inc. The sale includes all international trademarks, domain names, and other assets associated with the brand. The purchase, by American Biomass Corporation is on an earn out basis and will depend on the volume sold in the year following closing. “Okanagan Pellets have been extremely popular with our retailers and consum-ers alike,” said Christopher Robertson, CEO of Viridis Energy. “We are very pleased that American Biomass can now build on that history with the successful transition of Okanagan to them.” “We are excited to add the Okanagan Wood Pellet brand for our wholesale customers,” said David Nydam, CEO of New Hampshire based American Biomass. “Okanagan is one of the highest quality brands in New England with tremendous brand loyal-ty from both retailers and consumers. We are proud to be able to provide these super premium pellets to the retail-ers throughout New England and beyond.” American Biomass will be-gin offering these high quality softwood pellets to retailers im-mediately, just in time for the peak demand in wood pellets. “Interest in this brand has been extremely strong” added Nydam. “Retailers are delighted to have this strong brand with its strong consum-er following on their shelves this winter.” White paper compares pellets with natural gas A new white paper from FutureMetrics compares two scenarios for lowering carbon emissions in the power generation sector, one involving natural gas and the other wood pellets. The paper analyzes the net present value of the total costs for a new natural gas combined cycle power plant versus converting an existing pulverized coal power plant to run on industrial wood pellets. Those costs are used to calculate the cost of each avoided tonne of CO 2 emissions. The paper shows that when comparing the two sce-narios, and when factoring in the reduction in CO 2 emis-sions from each technological solution, the solution that provides significantly higher CO 2 reduction at a lower net monetary cost per avoided tonne is by repurposing existing pulverized coal power plants to run on industrial wood pellets. The paper also offers some thoughts on policy. The pa-per is accompanied by a new dashboard that allows the user to experiment with the assumptions used in the model. This white paper and dashboard and other white pa-pers and dashboards can be freely downloaded from the FutureMetrics website at www.futuremetrics.info. 6 Canadian BIOMASS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
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