StAtE of the INdUStRy Building on recent advances and overcoming challenges: here’s where biomass is headed in 2011. by Heather Hager B iomass has boomed over the past few years. While helping to support a limping forest industry, it has developed into an industry in its own right. This fledgling field continues to see new challenges, however, such as a steady decrease in the capital costs of solar-and wind-based renewable energy and continued low prices for natu-ral gas. As the Canadian forestry industry restructures and begins to pick up again, biomass must find and settle into its own niche. Optimism is high, with some newer technologies moving towards commercial production and hopes for biomass-related policy improvements. Economical Biomass Lumber and pulp and paper producers have long used biomass to provide heat and power for the manu-facturing processes. In fact, about 60% of power used in the forest industry is currently provided by biomass, says Avrim Lazar, president and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), and recent additions and upgrades have been made with funding support from the federal Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program. Biomass improves the economy of these operations because the fuel is on site and essentially free. For other potential biomass users, however, the low price of natural gas and its increasingly touted reputation as the “cleaner” fossil fuel con-tinues to be an obstacle. “The single biggest eco-nomic barrier—not just unique to forest biomass, but applicable to all renewable energy—is the low price of natural gas,” says Don Roberts, vice chair-man and managing director, renewable energy and clean technology, for CIBC World Markets. Large energy consumers, such as greenhouses, that once switched to biomass to save money are switch-ing to natural gas because of the cost and conve-nience. Even Ontario Power Generation, which must cease coal-fired power generation by 2014, has indicated that it’s now pursuing a conversion to natural gas, rather than biomass, at its coal-fired Thunder Bay generating station. Until fossil fuel Canadian BIOMASS 11
Canadian Biomass January/February 2011: Page 11
