PINNACLE AND DRAX BIOMASS REBRAND TO DRAX In February, Pinnacle Renewable Energy Inc. and Drax Group’s U.S. pellet business Drax Biomass Inc. announced they rebranded as Drax in a move that supports the group’s growth strategy, climate goals and relationships with people – including colleagues, com-munities, partners, customers and suppliers. Drax Group acquired Pinnacle last year. Drax’s existing opera-tions in the U.S. South were known as Drax Biomass. Drax Group has 17 pellet plants and developments in the U.S. and Canada, which use byproducts from sustainably managed working forests, such as sawmill and forestry residues, for pellet feedstock. The pellets are used at Drax Power Station in England to generate renewable electricity for millions of UK homes and businesses or are sold to customers in Europe and Asia seeking to decarbonize their power sectors to meet their climate commit-ments. Drax is also developing a pioneering negative emissions tech-nology – bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) which permanently removes millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The world’s leading climate scientists at the UN’s IPCC say BECCS is critical to addressing the climate emergency. Photo courtesy Drax. Drax plans to increase its annual pellet production capacity to eight million tonnes by 2030 from around four million tonnes cur-rently and is doubling global pellet sales to four million tonnes by 2030 to meet an expected increase in global demand for the low-carbon fuel. RESOLUTE PURCHASES QUEBEC COGEN FACILITY Resolute Forest Products Inc. signed an agreement on Feb. 11 with Boralex for the purchase of a co-generation facility in Senneterre, Que. “The purchase of the 34.5-megawatt co-generation facili-ty, adjacent to our Senneterre sawmill, builds on our signif-icant investments in the region, including the ongoing proj-ect toward a new planer and associated equipment we announced last summer, as well as operational improve-ments recently completed at our Comtois sawmill,” said Remi G. Lalonde, president and chief executive officer of Resolute. The co-gen facility will maximize Resolute’s use of biomass from its regional operations, generating green power and providing a platform for future growth and enhanced com-petitiveness in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, Lalonde said. Resolute will add 30-plus employees of the co-generation facility to its team. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and cer-tain closing conditions and expected to close in the first half of 2022. NATURE ENERGY TO BUILD BIOGAS PLANT IN QUEBEC Nature Energy announced in March it has acquired land in Farnham, Que., to build its first North American biogas plant. The Danish company plans to establish a large-scale facility to convert biomass from local agricultural production, industry and institutions into renewable natural gas (RNG) for the Que-bec electricity grid. Nature Energy said in a news release it looks forward to working with large and small agricultural producers in the re-gion. The use of organic biomass (manure, slurry, etc.) helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing consumers with a clean source of energy. “We are looking forward to working with Quebec farmers on this circular economy and green transition project,” said Ole Hvelplund, president and CEO of Nature Energy. “Reducing the environmental impacts of human activity requires a global effort and we look forward to helping make a concrete differ-ence in the green transition in Quebec by supplying RNG to the natural gas grid.” In addition to adding value to biomass produced by agri-culture, industries, businesses and institutions, Nature Energy’s project represents an investment of approximately $100 mil-lion that will create more than 200 jobs during the plant’s con-struction phase and 15 permanent jobs once it is in operation. The company said it plans to establish other biogas plants in Canada. 6 Canadian BIOMASS SPRING 2022
Canadian Biomass Spring 2022: Page 6
