Ontario heats up ’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but even I’ll admit the new year brings feelings of new beginnings; fresh starts. And I imagine for some Ontario bio-mass project developers that feeling has been brewing for the past few months as Ontario announced long-awaited funding recipients of its first-of-kind forest biomass program. The province launched the $19.6-million program in May last year, and in Decem-ber doled out the first $1.5 million to 15 projects. In late January, they announced another $9.4 million to be shared among 14 recipients. Ontario is at long last ponying up to support its forest bioeconomy. I spoke with Ontario Forest Industries Association’s executive director Ian Dunn last summer, not long after the forest biomass program was announced, and we touched on the pro-gram’s potential for industry. While any increase in the use of On-tario’s forest biomass is good news, Dunn said electricity and energy consumption or production is currently the most deploy-able and scalable technology that exists. The federal government agrees, as we saw late last year with the move to include biomass for heat and electricity generation in the Clean Manufacturing and Clean Electricity Investment tax credits. Five facilities in Ontario use forest biomass to generate electricity and sell it to the grid, together totalling around 270 MW. Many other forestry companies pro-duce energy for their own consumption. “There’s all kinds of opportunities and emerging products for forest biomass,” Dunn said. “We’re also seeing the poten-Volume 24 No. 1 Reader Service Province’s forest biomass program starts paying out by Maria Church tial for pairing that technology with car-bon capture and storage to generate nega-tive carbon emissions. I think that’s really exciting.” Many of those emerging technolo-gies will get a boost thanks to the for -est biomass program. Renfrew County sawmillers Ben Hokum and Son, for example, received near-ly $120,000 for a project to use underutilized and unmarketable timber and forest biomass to produce advanced bioproducts such as pyrolysis oil, insulation, and bio-plastics. Some funded projects are purely practical, and that’s good to see, too. True North Trucking out of Thunder Bay is receiving $250,000 for a new truck and self-unloading trailer to deliver forest biomass from suppliers to customers in Northwestern Ontario. On a personal note, it’s wonderful to see Whitesand First Nation, Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation, and Lake Ni -pigon Forest Management Inc. among the latest round of funded projects – all three I’ve written about over the past few years. As many readers are aware, White-sand’s project has been in the works longer than this magazine has been printing. Their team is receiving a healthy $1,289,573 from the forest biomass program to prep the site of their wood pellet plant. As long-time Whitesand project champion David Mackett said on the Scaling Up stage in Ottawa last Novem -ber, “Why should a First Nation not have access to develop and create power from their own forests? Biomass carbon reduc-tion in Indigenous communities can lead to poverty reduction.” • WINTER 2024 Print and digital subscription inquiries or changes, please contact Angelita Potal, Customer Service Ph: (416) 510-51 13 Fax: (416) 510-6875 Email: [email protected] Mail: 1 1 1 Gordon Baker Rd., Suite 400 Toronto, ON M2H 3R1 Acting Editor -Haley Nagasaki Ph: (519) 410-0600 [email protected] Contributors -Gordon Murray, J.P. Antonacci, Joel E. 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