By Joel McKay
There’s a new swagger in Jonathan Rhone’s step these days.
Over the last six months, the president and CEO of Nexterra Systems Corp. has seen his company enter a period of unprecedented validation.
In June, the clean-tech venture won a BC Technology Industry Association award for the gasification system it built for Kruger Products LP’s New Westminster tissue mill.
Then Catawba County in North Carolina and the University of British Columbia (UBC) placed orders for individual biomass heat and power systems.
Last month, the company said it would open new sales offices in Philadelphia and Atlanta.
It followed that up with a report that said carbon emissions from its gasification systems were 2% lower than conventional biomass plants throughout the U.S. and Canada.
“What’s changed for us in the last year is we really have reached this inflection point in being able to demonstrate and show customers that our technology does what we say it’s going to do,” Rhone told Business in Vancouver.
The company’s proprietary gasification technology transforms wood and other solid fuels into a syngas that can be burned to produce heat and power.
Aside from Kruger, Nexterra has installed its technology at the Dockside Green residential development in Victoria and a plywood mill near Kamloops, and is building a system to provide heat at the University of Northern British Columbia’s (UNBC) campus in Prince George.
That system was one of the main reasons why UNBC won a top award last month from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a North America-wide college and university sustainability organization.
The award was shared with one other school across the continent – Harvard University.
“I think it’s a validation of bioenergy,” said UNBC spokesman Robert van Adrichem.
He added that it’s probably the biggest award the school has ever won: “for bioenergy to be the technology behind this award is a great development for Nexterra, for UNBC and for the industry as a whole.”
Rhone said Nexterra’s 2010 sales have increased 300% when compared with 2009’s, though he wouldn’t provide exact numbers. Although wind power and run-of-river hydro projects remain leaders in B.C.’s renewable energy sector, he said biomass power is catching up and shedding its reputation as an “eyesore” technology that requires massive piles of wood fuel.
But aside from all the good news, he pointed out that Nexterra has at least one challenge at home – BC Hydro.
Rhone said Nexterra’s technology does not qualify under BC Hydro’s current power purchase agreement rules, meaning it can’t propose power projects to produce electricity for the grid.
“It’s the craziest thing because we can sell our technology in many other jurisdictions around the world, but here at home we’re restricted to just thermal projects, because we don’t qualify in terms of their definition of being ‘commercial’ technology,” Rhone said.
BC Hydro couldn’t comment on the issue, though the Phase 2 bioenergy power call it issued in May lists “commercial reputation and record of the proponent and its affiliates” among its criteria for power project proposals.
Rhone said the system Nexterra will build for UBC supplies heat and power and is evidence the company’s partnership with GE Power & Water has taken its technology to new heights.
“That technology could be replicated and we could build small, high-efficiency, low-emissions power plants all over British Columbia … but unless there are changes to procurement at BC Hydro, it’s just a waste of time to think about it.”
Paul Kariya, executive director of Clean Energy BC, wouldn’t comment on the issue but said BC Hydro has done a good job of including biomass technology among its clean power calls.
In addition to the Phase 2 bioenergy power call, which aims to see bioenergy projects produce 1,000 gigawatt hours of power per year, the utility has also launched a community-based biomass power call.
That program is intended to encourage community-sized biomass projects no larger than five megawatts.
Said Kariya: “We can all as industry grouse and complain about how difficult it is and whether the different pieces of making this happen are pulling together be it government or [BC] Hydro, but overall I think we have a good framework.”