October 3, 2006
Kamloops Daily News


When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And when nature
gives you pine beetles, make electricity. The destruction
of B.C.'s forests is a disaster for the pulp and lumber
industry but a potential boon for BC Hydro.

By the year 2013, the ravenous bugs will have destroyed one
billion cubic meters of wood. This means more cheap wood
will flood the market and depress prices even further.
There will be so much dead wood on the market that
traditional industries will never be able to use it.
Instead of letting it rot on the ground, we should put the
wood to good use in generating power.

According to Professor Flynn of the University of Alberta,
we could build twenty 300-megawatt power plants and run them
for twenty years, meeting one-half of all of B.C.'s
electricity for that time. We would have surplus
electricity to sell on the North American market.

This is not high technology: light a fire under a boiler to
produce steam and use the steam to drive electrical
turbines. Of course, efficient and clean burning requires
modern design but such plants already exist. Finland has
built an efficient 240-megawatt power plant that burns
either coal or wood.

Burning trees is a green source of electricity because there
is no net contribution of greenhouse gases. The carbon
dioxide produced by burning the trees is equal to the carbon
dioxide taken in by the tree as it grows.

In contrast, the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon
dioxide that has been stored for millions of years.

There is no good time for the death of a forest but the
timing of the arrival of the beetle is as good as it gets.
North America needs electricity now. We are not going to
get a fair deal for selling softwood.

The U.S. may not listen to reason when it comes to trade
agreements involving softwood but they can't avoid the
marketplace. The laws of supply and demand speak louder
than trade laws. As Alberta has learned, the sale of energy
is a profitable venture.

We need to plan what species of trees to grow once the
beetle-killed wood is gone. The trees that we plant now
will meet future needs. If we plant trees for lumber, we
can expect more of the same U.S. obstinacy. If we are going
to plant trees for a future of electricity, we must select
varieties specific to that need.

Regardless, the trees that we plant must be resistant to the
pine beetle. The advantage of planting trees for
electricity is that a wider variety can be selected.
Species like willow and poplar grow quickly for harvest.

Trees that absorb carbon dioxide are a possibility. Some
prairie grasses have the ability to store carbon in soil
through their root system. Trees could be bred to do the
same.

Coal could be burned in the same generating stations until
we have a good supply of trees. The carbon dioxide produced
by burning coal could be offset by the carbon dioxide
absorbed by the selected trees.

B.C. already has the infrastructure in place for collecting
wood to pulp and lumber mills. Power plants could be built
in similar locations, close to electrical lines for
transmission of power to large centers and to markets.

If we don't use the trees for electricity, we could use them
for other fuels such as ethanol. Cars can now burn 15 per
cent ethanol and with some modification, up to 85 per cent.

The U.S. corn Industry wants to make ethanol from corn but
that doesn't make sense. Why take a food produced on prime
agricultural land and turn it into fuel? Converting food
to fuel doesn't make sense and the conversion is not
efficient. And the fertilizers and pesticides used pollute
groundwater.

Non-food crops make more sense because they can be grown on
marginal land that require no fertilizer.

Trees and grasses are a better source of ethanol. The
process uses enzymes discovered in Guam (the original
jungle-rot) to break down cellulose into sugars for easy
conversion to ethanol. A demonstration plant in Ottawa uses
non-food cellulose to produce 3 million liters of ethanol a
year.

Nature has just dumped a huge supply of fuel at our
doorstep. We must decide what to do with this gift now.


David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca

go back to my Columns in the