CORNER BROOK — There is a lot of room for growth in the wood pellet industry in Newfoundland and Labrador and that’s why the Department of Natural Resources is working to promote the use of wood pellets as a fuel and heating source.
Staff from the provincial department presented a talk on Bio-Energy in Newfoundland and Labrador during a brown-bag lunch session at College of the North Atlantic in Corner Brook on Tuesday. The event was held as part of National Forest Week activities taking place in the city.
Steve Hounsell, a value added forester with the department, lead the presentation.
He said bio-energy is energy that is derived from recently living organisms and their byproducts.
Hounsell said it is a renewable form of energy that is considered organic and can come from farm and wood waste.
The bio-energy field is being driven right now by the European market that has a goal of reducing emissions by 20 per cent and having 20 per cent of its energy come from renewable resources by 2020.
The demand for bio-energy sources far outweighs the available European resources and opens up potential for exports from this province.
Bio-energy in Newfoundland and Labrador comes in three forms — the solid wood form, including fire wood and hog fuel used by Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Ltd., wood briquettes and wood pellets.
Natural Resources sees wood pellets as the biggest area with potential for growth.
About 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of wood pellets are produced in the provincial annually.
However, Gary Forward, supervisor of industry services with the department, said following the presentation that with a third wood pellet production facility now on stream in Roddickton there is now a potential to produce some 63,000 tonnes of pellets in the province per year. The Holson Forest Products facility has the capacity to produce 50,000 tonnes of pellets per year.
Forward said right now most mills are meeting local demand, but with the increased capacity the mills will be able to take advantage of more opportunities to sell its products to other markets like those in Europe.
He said from the perspective of his department, supporting the production of wood pellets makes sense for a lot of reasons.
It supports the local sawmill industry by providing another product to generate revenue just through the consumption of residue. Those residues would most likely end up in a landfill, so the process also reduces environmental costs.
“It’s a plus all the way around.”
Still despite the benefits of using wood pellets as a fuel source — cleaner burning, less costly than oil, less work and no mess, contains no chemicals or additives — people in the province have been slow to get on board and switch to pellet stoves as a source of heat for their homes.
Forward said more public awareness is needed and perhaps some mechanism to offset the cost of the stove.
The province did offer a program that started in 2008 and ended this past March offering a 25 per cent reimbursement to those who purchased and installed a wood pellet appliance.
Only 562 applications were approved with the average rebate being about $582.
Forward thinks the use of wood pellets will increase, but that it will be dependant on what happens to the price of fossil fuels.
“As the fossil fuels increase I think there’s going to be more people considering wood pellet stoves. People are nervous about their energy costs and I think as their energy costs continue to rise they’re going to be looking at alternate sources and wood pellets is one of those alternate sources.”
He said wood pellets give consumers another option when it comes to energy sources.
We had a wood pellet stove installed in February of last year and absolutely love the heat. The wood pellets provide an efficient source of heat, are clean and available at many hardware stores. We would highly recommend it.