Wood chips to heat public buildings

The provincial government has tagged six public buildings, including three high schools, for conversion to wood-chip heating systems. “This initiative will help develop new, long-term markets for lowergrade wood by replacing imported oil with locally sourced wood chips,” Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin said in a release. A tender has been issued to five pre-qualified vendors for the design, construction and operation of modern biomass boilers that will use wood chips from private woodlots, replacing older oil-fired heating systems. The six buildings designated for the heating system replacements are Hants East Rural High in Milford, Memorial High in Sydney Mines and Riverview High in Sydney, along with Perennia Park Atlantic Centre for Agri-Innovation in Bible Hill, Bridgewater provincial court, and the Centre of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown, Annapolis County. Ray Plourde of the Ecology Action Centre says the conversion to wood chips is acceptable provided that the chips come from normal sawmill operations and are not produced specifically for the purpose of burning. “Generally, we are not in favour of burning our forests and chips are the least valuable products Nova Scotia has ever made from its forests,” Plourde said. “Given the reality that the sawmills desperately need a place for their chips now with Northern Pulp down, this is a better use than biomass for electricity and it also helps the sawmill sector. “If this is genuinely sawmill residuals that they are sourcing the chips from, I think we can live with it, recognizing it is helping those sawmills in a difficult time.” Plourde said biomass is not as green as solar or wind power but fuelling heating systems for public buildings can be an acceptable alternative for use of forest residuals. “I have to emphasize that this has to come from sawmills and other forms of residuals that are produced as a result of producing higher value products and there is no purpose-specific clearcutting for biomass.” He said if the efficiency rates of the heating systems are high enough, the plan can actually have a net benefit in terms of reducing greenhouse gases from fossil fuels either being used to produce electricity or in furnaces. A task team made up of 11 provincial departments and public sector agencies selected the initial six sites, which make up the first phase of a long-term effort to develop a new market for modern wood heating and eventually district heat. These sites were chosen for high likelihood of success after geotechnical and environmental readiness evaluations were completed. “Creating a new market for lowergrade wood will improve the economics of sustainable forest management, leading to healthier forests and a stable market for woodlot owners,” Rankin said. The New Democratic Party took the government to task for its plan to use a public-private partnership (P3) model for new heating systems. “While we support the implementation of recommendations from the Lahey report, P3 projects take control out of the public’s hands,” Susan Leblanc, MP for Dartmouth North, said in a release. “When we’re investing in public infrastructure we have to know that decisions will be made with the public’s interest at heart. Using a P3 model could mean that the public will pay for a new heating system, but won’t own it.” The New Democrats say the government has repeatedly used P3s to hide details about major infrastructure projects, including the QEII redevelopment project and the twinning of Highway 104. P3 projects have also been criticized in the past for being more expensive, less transparent, and less adaptable than traditional building models. Plourde stressed that the wood chips used in the new heating systems must be sourced from local sawmills and not trucked all the way across the province. He said biomass production projects to feed the big generators owned by Nova Scotia Power in Brooklyn and Point Tupper will never be acceptable. “We are dead set against those, we believe that those should never have been built and they should be decommissioned as soon as possible,” Plourde said. “The efficiency of those biomass burners producing electricity, not heat, is terrible, under 20 per cent efficient. “Even if they are hitting 20 per cent, that means for every 100 trees, 80 of them are burned with no capture benefit whatsoever and only 20 of them are captured in terms of produced electricity. Electricity is the worst thing we could do in terms of using residual or any other wood for biomass.” The tender closes March 5 for the public building boilers and the wood heat systems should be operating by the end of November, in time for the next heating season.