The University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) has just opened its new bioenergy plant, which will heat campus buildings using Vancouver-based Nexterra Systems Corp.’s biomass gasification technology.
The plant will use Nexterra’s technology to convert wood waste products such as bark, branches, sawdust, leftover wood from nearby mills and pine-beetle-killed wood into a synthetic gas – syngas – which burns as clean as natural gas for one-third the cost, according to Nexterra president and CEO Jonathan Rhone.
“The difference between what [people are] paying for natural gas and the lower cost of fuel is really what drives the economics for these projects,” he said.
UNBC received $15.7 million from the federal and provincial governments towards its biomass gasification system.
Rhone said Nexterra has already sold its systems to major institutions such as the University of South Carolina, the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. healthcare facilities as well as Canadian customers.
“We’re growing quickly and demand is high.”
The company, he said, is honing in on universities, hospitals, municipalities and industrial facilities – a market it assesses as being worth $20 billion.
He said that communities don’t need to have mills and forestry activity, like Prince George, to generate enough wood to use the technology.
“All urban areas have a lot of wood and it’s often gone to landfills, so it’s not just for areas that have a forest industry,” he said. “We’re selling into municipalities and cities across North America.”
Rhone said the technology also cuts down significantly on greenhouse gas emissions. The UNBC project is expected to reduce the university’s annual emissions by 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes – the equivalent of taking 1,000 cars off the road every year.