Fibre Use A demonstration facility in Colorado that deploys Rentech’s synthetic fuels technology has produced more than 150,000 litres of certified synthetic fuels. Photo: Rentech Inc. Big Plans for Fibre Here’s a look at some of the biomass-related projects that will go ahead with fibre awarded in Ontario’s wood supply competition. By Colleen Cross F or many Ontario mills and for-estry companies, the wait for fibre is over. The province has announced 41 successful proponents in its recent wood competition and has al-located more than 5 million cubic-metres/ year of merchantable and unmerchantable fibre. Some key objectives were to free up fibre from shuttered mills and put it to use, as well as to secure more aboriginal in-volvement in the forest industry. “In November 2009, we had a situation where the previous harvest was around 24 or 25 million cubic-metres/year in Ontar-io,” says David Hayhurst, acting director of industry relations for the forestry divi-sion of the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mining, and Forestry. “But because of the economic downturn… we were harvesting less than half of what had historically been harvested.” This led to “an awful lot of unused wood.” The competition was undertaken in 2009 to see if this wood, much of which was committed or licensed to existing fa-cilities but unused, could be put to other purposes. Of the 8.5 million cubic-metres/ year of wood supply available in the com-petition, about 5.6 million cubic metres/ year of wood was offered to successful proponents. Forty-one offers have now been accepted, one is still under consid-eration, and four were turned down for various reasons. Wood not offered in the competition is estimated at about 2.9 million cubic-me-tres/year, Hayhurst says. Because factors such as markets, forest companies, and wood use and availability have changed, the leftover wood supply that wasn’t of-fered via the competition is being re-viewed. Offers that were declined are not being re-allocated, he adds, but rather “de-allocated” in a process known as un-encumbering, or reverting back to the pre-vious licence holder. Among other purposes, the wood is being used to produce lumber, dimen-sion lumber, laminated strand lumber, pulp and paper, utility poles, synthetic jet fuel, naphtha, heat, electricity, mulch, fire-SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 32 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass September/October 2011: Page 32
