WPAC Report Nature and nurture Custom installations at a New Brunswick tree nursery and elementary school highlight the versatility of pellet heat By Gordon Murray, Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada The Herz 350 Firematic wood pellet boiler system is used at Hanwell Park Academy School, a new kindergarten to Grade 8 school in New Brunswick. The 10,500-square-metre facility burns about 70 tonnes of wood pellets annually. Photo: Mark Richard. T wo new installations for Biomass Solutions Biomasse (BSB) at Kingsclear Tree Nursery and near -by Hanwell Park Academy school use low-carbon, locally sourced wood pellets to help reseed tomorrow’s forests and ed -ucate future community leaders in central New Brunswick. “We’re helping to fuel the future… At the nursery, it’s the full cycle, grow -ing trees and using waste wood to help them grow. At the school, we provide a low-carbon heat source for New Bruns -wick children who will need a society less dependent on non-renewable energy,” said Jonathan Levesque, BSB general manag -er. “The potential of biomass to help our future in Canada is bigger than people imagine.” MAKING THE SWITCH FROM FOSSIL FUELS The New Brunswick Climate Change Ac -tion Plan aims to reduce the use of fossil fuels in public buildings. The province decided to tender a low-carbon biomass heating system retrofit at the nursery. The Kingsclear Tree Nursery, located in Island View on the outskirts of Freder -icton, grows and ships approximately 19 to 20 million tree seedlings annually for reforestation on Crown land and private woodlots. Martin Noël, nursery manag -er, said the BSB installation replaced nu -merous oil-fired boilers, including some equipment that was more than 45 years old. “We had redundancies, so we have more than one boiler in case one went SPRING 2025 8 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass Spring 2025: Page 8
