B.C. wood pellet producers are facing tough times this year as European debt woes negatively impact exports and a new report questions how clean biomass technology really is.
According to the Massachusetts-based Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, the use of forest biomass to produce energy actually increases greenhouse gas emissions for a time before reducing them.
This is significant for pellet producers who often promote their product as a cleaner alternative to coal-fired North American power plants.
B.C. produces approximately 80% of Canada’s wood pellets, most of which are shipped to Europe and burned for power generation.
The Manomet study showed that burning biomass for power creates varying levels of greenhouse gas emissions over time in what’s called a “debt-then-dividend” model.
Overall, biomass energy can increase greenhouse gas emissions 3% when compared with coal power during the first 50 years of production. But 100 years on, when the forest returns and absorbs that carbon, biomass energy creates a 19% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared with coal.
Tom Walker, the team leader behind the Manomet study, said the carbon payback could be much sooner for B.C. producers who manufacture their pellets from dead pine beetle wood.
“That changes the carbon dynamics significantly,” Walker told BIV Monday morning. “The way to think about it is those dead trees would have given up their carbon in 10, 15, 20 years anyway, and burning has a much more rapid payback when that’s the case.”
In the end, said Walker, carbon emission levels will depend greatly on the type of wood used to create biomass and how it’s harvested.
“It is very difficult to generalize."
Check out this week’s print edition of BIV for more on B.C.’s wood pellet industry.