Atlantic Forestry May 2024

Getting to net zero

by David Palmer

Conferences and workshops tend to be bundled into the dragged-out months of March and April, providing a welcome break from self-imposed semi-isolation at that time of year. It’s a chance to renew old acquaintances, meet new people with different perspectives, and enjoy a meal out of town. At the Canadian Woodlands Forum (CWF) Spring Meeting, which ran March 26-27 in Moncton, N.B., two of the most delightful people I met were nine-year-old Tommy Brophy and his 88-year-old grandmother Faye Brophy. Tommy’s father Adrian and his uncle Calvin received the CWF’s 2023 Outstanding Trucking Contractor of the Year Award. He proudly told me that he went to the woods every day but three last summer. Faye, who retired from a 35-year teaching career in 1989, has been working for the family business ever since – and is still going strong.

At Forest NB’s AGM, held March 13-14 at the Crowne Plaza in Fredericton, one of the standout presenters was Dr. Jamie Stephen, of Torchlight BioResources. I had assumed his dinner address, titled “Only the Forest Products Sector Can Deliver Net Zero for New Brunswick,” would be another shop-worn rehash about how forests will save the planet from climate disaster. But as the presentation got rolling, the 150 diners ceased clinking their wine glasses and crumbling their cheesecakes, and Dr. Stephen captured the attention of the room. “Policy makers and politicians have underestimated the cost and scale of transitioning to a low-carbon future,” he stated bluntly. “The idea that we are going to meet our carbon-reduction goals and breeze past a 45 percent reduction in GHG emissions is fantasy land.”

Climate change is a numbers game, and big projects are required to put a dent in it. What Stephen proposed is to capture the carbon coming out of existing stacks and put it permanently underground. The concept is not without precedent; “carbon capture and storage” has been around for a while, but it’s very expensive, so it depends upon having a buyer for the carbon. A coal-fired power plant in Estevan, Sask., was able to capture 90 percent of the carbon from its flue by cleaning the acid gases (sulphur), purifying them, concentrating them, and piping them 60 kilometres to an oil-extraction site where they were pumped underground, increasing oil recovery by 20 percent. In the absence of a direct economic benefit like that, somebody must underwrite the project. “It’s not the be-all and end-all,” said David Cameron, a Fredericton engineer who worked on the Estevan project, “but it can be a part of the tool bag.”

There are already some massive projects underway, most notably the Northern Lights project in northern Europe, which would capture carbon dioxide from two big biomass plants in Copenhagen and Stockholm, ship it through a pipeline to coastal Norway, put it on one of four purpose-built ships, take it out to the middle of the North Sea, and pump it into carboniferous deposits that have been supplying oil and gas for decades.

Stephen’s scheme for decarbonizing New Brunswick would capture the carbon dioxide from the six biggest emitters in the province: Irving Oil, Belledune, IPP, AV Nackawic, AV Atholville, and Twin Rivers. The gas would be concentrated, and piped or shipped to an offshore Sable Island facility where it would be pumped underground, creating an extensive deposit of saline Perrier. Targeting these six industrial sites would scrub 12.6-13.3 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) from the atmosphere, thereby cancelling out the province’s 11.2 megatonnes of emissions.

The Belledune Generating Station, which currently burns coal, has been ordered by the federal government to convert to another fuel or shut down by 2030, to meet national climate targets. According to Stephen, it would be a prime candidate for carbon capture and storage, especially if it were first converted to a renewable fuel such as biomass.

According to Monica McKendy, a business investment advisor for NB Power, that’s precisely what the utility is planning to do. In her presentation at the CWF meeting, she sketched out the company’s plans to switch to torrefied (black) pellets. She said NB Power has “put out an RFP to supply from 500,000 to 1.3 million tonnes of these high-energy, water-resistant pellets annually.” As of late March, they were testing torrefied pellets from a Quebec supplier called Airex Energy, and a steam-treated type from Norway.

One of the big advantages of dark pellets is the fact that they can be stored outside and substituted directly for coal without making upgrades to the plant or building expensive storage (at an estimated cost of $300 million). They also have a high BTU value, giving the plant a capacity of 430 megawatts (MW) – compared to 450 MW with coal, and considerably more than the 340 MW if white pellets were used. However, they are more costly and currently less widely available than white pellets, and require more energy to produce.

It’s too bad the plant can’t use either white pellets or wood chips. According to Denis Caron, CEO of the Belledune Port Authority, who spoke at the Forest NB AGM, this facility ships about 500,000 tonnes of New Brunswick white pellets annually, as well as wood chips. White pellets are also available from the Great Northern Timber (GNT) plant in Upper Musquodoboit, N.S., which currently exports them via Halifax. According to Veselin Milosevic, a GNT executive who spoke at the CWF event, the company also ships about 550,000 tonnes of wood chips annually from its facility in Sheet Harbour, N.S.

The chip business has changed dramatically. There are now very few long-term contracts; shipping and insurance costs are out of control; and more wood tracking requirements are being imposed by customers, including not just the PID of the lot where the wood came from, but the actual satellite position. Chip plants are often used to bridge a pulp supply shortage, as GNT did in 2023 when it shipped three boatloads to mills in Maine. A collaboration with NB Power’s Belledune plant could be a sweet deal for GNT, providing a stable, long-term market just around the Cape. Alas, NB Power wants black pellets, not wood chips.

Jamie Stephen thinks the best solution would be for the Belledune Generating Station to buy wood chips and gasify them – an option that NB Power likely considered but rejected because of the high conversion cost. Money for capital projects is in short supply, as the utility faces expensive upgrades to other facilities, while struggling with a stubbornly high debt load.

Jordan Solomon, CEO of Ecostrat, told CWF delegates about a new biomass feedstock rating system called the Bioeconomy Development Opportunity (BDO) Zone Initiative. With companies around the world looking for reliable sources of feedstock for new or expanding product lines, and potential suppliers seeking a market outlook for their material, the BDO Zone rating, like a dating app, helps find a match. Until now, there has been a scattershot approach, with biomass companies making inquiries by phone, while potential suppliers pitched themselves at trade shows, used government intermediaries, or waited for that random call. The assessment uses three main criteria to establish a rating: quantity (minimum of 50,000 bone dry tons per year), presence of committed suppliers, and strength of the infrastructure. A BDO rating puts suppliers on the map for companies interested in setting up shop.

“There are so many places around the country that have excess biomass feedstock. This system narrows down the search,” said Solomon. “Without a rating, a lot of opportunities are lost.”

The audience included half a dozen New Brunswick marketing board reps – people who have experienced chronic low-grade market problems for many years – and you could see the wheels turning as they thought about the possibilities.