Biomass a missing link for Canada’s future sustainable economy?
Source: David Dodge & Kay Rollans · GREEN ENERGY FUTURES · | July 1, 2020
There are an estimated 120 million tonnes of waste and residue biomass in Canada right now — waste that could form the cornerstone of a green COVID-19 recovery effort that fights climate change by building the sustainable economy we need.
So says Jordan Soloman, President of Ecostrat, a Canadian company that sources and supplies biomass and helps businesses understand the potential of this “waste” as a valuable resource.
“Biomass is technically anything that was once alive and now could be utilized to form or create a biochemical or a biodiesel or a biofuel,” Solomon says.
For many, the word “biomass” calls to mind trees, plants, and possibly animal products. In the context of the biomass industry, however, the term is often used much more broadly. For companies like Ecostrat in particular, the focus in not on the virgin resources themselves, but on organic wastes from other industries that use those resources.
In other words, “[we’re] not talking about the tree itself, but … about what’s left in the forest when one harvests the trees: the branches bark, the tops,” says Solomon.
This biomass waste includes everything from bark and saw dust from pulp and lumber mills to residue or straw left over in the fields once a crop is harvested to animal manure to the mixed bag of organic wastes that, unless diverted, end up in our landfills and garbage streams.
And all of these wastes add up to an untapped and exceedingly diverse resource that could be used to make renewable natural gas that can fuel trucks, school buses, and even planes.
Alberta Pacific Forest Industries pulp mill in Boyle, Alberta uses waste biomass to generate 40 megawatts of electricity to run the mill. Photo David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
132,000 Canadian jobs
Around the world, biomass is already big business. Neste, the Finnish national energy company, produces 3.4 trillion liters of renewable fuels each year, 80 per cent of which comes from waste and residues. Meanwhile, Germany has 7,600 biomass energy systems running around the country.