May 6, 2008

It's quite a list. We have dead trees going to waste,
unemployed forestry workers, and a shortage of electricity.
What can be done?

We could leave the beetle-killed pine trees to rot. That
option will produce large amounts of greenhouse gases,
according to Natural Resources Canada. Once the trees
decompose they will produce as much carbon dioxide over the
next 20 years as Canada's entire transport sector does in 5
years.

It's a bitter irony that B.C.'s fabled forests were once
promoted as carbon dioxide sponges, not sources of
greenhouse gas. "The impact of the mountain pine beetle on
B.C. is so large that the release of carbon dioxide in the
affected areas is greater than the uptake of all the forest
of B.C. together," said NRC scientist Werner Kurz.

We could retrain unemployed forestry workers for
service-sector jobs. Of course, they would make less money
and would likely have to move from the towns where they now
live. Without well-paying jobs to support families and
communities, towns would wither like the red pine trees that
surround them.

Forestry is important. Wood products are B.C.'s largest
export. The 80,000 workers earn $3 billion according to
statistics from NRC (2005). The industry contributed $14
billion to in the economy and taxes collected paid for our
social programs.

We could continue to buy expensive electricity from Alberta
and the U.S. We now import about 15 per cent of our annual
needs.

The B.C. government has been looking to the private sector
to come up with solutions which include run-of-river
generators and wind power. River generators work fine where
the flow it constant year-around, where they don't interfere
with fish habitat, or hinder river recreation. But they
have become so controversial that the province has had to
force municipalities to accept them.

Also, river and wind generators require construction of
transmission lines often through parks and sensitive areas.
The government had to cancel river generator plans for the
upper Pitt River because power lines would have cut through
Pinecone Burke Provincial Park.

Or we could develop a new forestry product: electricity.
Burn the trees in biomass generators. They would release no
more carbon in the production of electricity than if they
were left to rot.

Unlike wind and river generators, biomass generators are
more flexible in filling power needs. They fill in peak
electrical loads from hydro generators. The two nicely
complement each other because they both represent a natural
reserve of energy; just as water behind a dam represents
potential energy, so do standing dead trees.

The amount of potential electricity that could be generated
has been calculated by Professor Flynn of the University of
Alberta, which I originally reported in this column in
October of 2006. If we burned all the dead wood, it could
run twenty 300-megawatt power plants. There is enough fuel
to supply electricity for twenty years, meeting one-half of
all of B.C.'s electricity. In preparation for the end of
that supply of fuel, fast-growing trees could be planted
now.

Not so fast, says Marvin Eng, Manager of Special
Investigations for the Forest Practices Board in Victoria.
He says my figures are wrong. In his email to me, he
questioned Flynn's statistics because: "His estimate of 20
plants is based on being able to use ALL of the beetle
killed wood for biomass energy. This clearly will not
happen."

OK, let's assume that only one-quarter of that wood is used
to build five plants to meet one-eighth of our needs for
twenty years. That's still enough power to make up for any
current shortfall and leave some for export to the North
American market, assuming that other generators will be
built.

The cost of building biomass generators is comparable to
river and wind generators, according to BC Hydro. But the
big advantage is that the transmission lines don't have to
be built - - they are already in place at saw mills. The
transportation system for hauling the trees to mills is
already there. Workers are waiting to be employed to cut
the trees down.

All that is needed is for generators to be built at the
sites of lumber mills so the power can be delivered into the
electrical lines that once powered the mills.

One way or another, the forests will release carbon dioxide.
We might as well employ the forestry workers, burn the
trees, and make electricity.


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

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