Beetle-infested B.C. wood could power 300 megawatt plant
The BIOCAP Canada Foundation and the government of British Columbia will unveil a report today detailing the feasibility of building a 300-megawatt biomass power plant that would operate on dead and rotted trees. No thanks to the dreaded Mountain Pine Beetle, it’s estimated that B.C. has enough infested trees to supply such a biomass plant for the next 20 years or more.
The power plant itself — a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) steam cycle plant — would be carbon-neutral and would harvest dead trees to make room for reforestation of healthy species. It would also create jobs in a forestry industry that has been hurt by the beetle infestation.
In researching this report, BIOCAP sent a team to Finland to study what’s recognized as the world’s largest biomass plant. (Click here for details of that visit)
“Note that if a suitable host can be found for low quality heat, the plant could be developed as a cogeneration facility, with improved economics,” the report states.
“In summary, MPB killed wood provides a unique opportunity to convert otherwise wasted biomass in B.C. to useful electrical power at reasonable cost, a project that would sustain jobs, contribute to a clean environment, potentially help Canada meet its obligations under the Kyoto accord, and put Canada at the forefront of biomass utilization.”
An intriguing idea.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
