Biomass Projects in Canada

We have compiled a selection of projects from across Canada that profile local projects using biomass for renewable heat and power. These projects have been successfully completed and are currently operational. We hope these case studies will help to create optimism, energy and bring awareness to a growing biomass industry.

Commercial Boilers

Quality Hardwoods Ltd. – North Bay (ON)
In 2008, in response to rising oil costs, Quality Hardwoods installed a biomass system, including two biomass boilers, to generate heat for their lumber drying kilns and warehouse. The conversion cost approximately one million dollars to implement but saves the company approximately $227,000 per year in heating costs.

Nakusp Secondary School – (BC)
Nakusp Secondary School had a combined wood and solar heating plant implemented in 2007. This option offered significant cost savings to the school district and met the province’s air emissions standards. When the 100,000 square-foot school was heated with liquid propane the total annual cost was $38,000. The system uses wood pellets as fuel, although it can also burn chips. Nakusp has contracted for pellets to be delivered at $120/tonne.

North Slave Lake Correctional Facility – Yellowknife (NWT)
In 2006, North Slave Lake Correctional Facility’s heating plant consisted of two oil-fired boilers, which could not supply sufficient power in the event of a failure, so a third boiler was to be installed. With an $80,000 incentive payment from the Renewable Energy Deployment Initiative (REDI), the facility switched to a wood pellet heating system. By switching to biomass heating, initial estimates of savings included $225,000 from the original third boiler that would no longer be needed. In addition, reduced fuel costs in the first year were approximately $57,000.

Chisholm Lumber – Tweed (ON)
In 2004, fire consumed two drying kilns operated by Chisholm Lumber. Using the opportunity to build from scratch, Chisholm installed a dual heating system: an oil-burning boiler alongside a waste-wood boiler to heat the two drying kilns. For three cold months at the start of 2005, the oil system ran while the waste-wood system was still being installed, and the oil bill for those three months was $42,000. Now that the wood fueled system is running, the company factors in just $18,000 a year in wood fuel.

Madsen’s Custom Cabinets – Edmonton (AB)
In 2003, Madsen’s installed a wood waste system that now heats its entire 30,000 square foot facility. Virtually every ounce of wood waste the operation produces is used as the fuel that the heating plant burns. The plant is spotlessly clean all the time and the air quality is much better. The company now lists its fuel costs as zero. However, the real cost is actually negative because wood waste no longer needs to be hauled away at a cost. The benefits to the company far outweigh the upkeep needed.

Greenwood Forest Products Ltd. – Penticton (BC)
In 2000, Greenwood Forest Products installed a new vacuum system and biomass combustion unit to burn their sawdust waste and provide heat to the production plant. Greenwood paid about $300,000 for its biomass unit, which has allowed them to turn the cost of disposing its dangerously flammable sanding dust into a substantial benefit, as well as almost being able to ignore the fluctuating costs of natural gas.

Opeongo Forestry Service – Renfrew (ON)
In 1997, Opeongo Forestry Service, a specialty lumber producer, installed a biomass boiler for the purpose of providing heat to the sawmill shed and two drying kilns located inside a lumber storage building. The biomass system is fired by wood waste from the plant, which makes it very cost effective. This is due to the availability of wood waste that would otherwise have to be disposed of at a cost of $17/tonne.

District Heating

Revelstoke (BC)
Since 2005, the City of Revelstoke has been home to the first district energy system in BC using wood residue. It uses sawdust and hog fuel from the Downie sawmill, a sawmill that was faced with potential closure due to air pollution from a beehive burner. The project started in 2001 when local volunteers created a wholly owned subsidiary of the city – the Revelstoke Community Energy Corporation (RCEC). The goal was to divert the wood waste at the Downie sawmill from the beehive burner to a clean burning district energy system resulting in a number of benefits. These included improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gases, displacing the need for trucked in propane, creating alternate sources of energy, increasing city revenue and adding value to a resource that was locally processed. Through this project, wood waste has been diverted to the 1.5 MW biomass boiler, which provides heat to several downtown buildings.

Charlottetown (PEI)
Canada’s largest biomass district heating system has been in operation in Charlottetown since 1986 and heats the city’s commercial centre and large buildings. In 1998, the system was further expanded when the city’s Civic Centre switched from three stand-alone oil-fired boilers that were in need of repair, to the existing biomass-fired district heating system. The central plant is currently a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant, which generates about 85% of its energy output from wood and municipal waste with the remainder being produced by oil. The estimate for fuel oil avoided each year by using this system is 16,000,000 litres.

Geraldton (ON)
Since 1997, the town of Geraldton, a community of approximately 2,600 people, has had a district heating system, which serves two schools, a small office building and a warehouse. As the town is actively involved with community forest management and sustainable forest industries, they were interested in using local biomass for energy. Wood waste is supplied free of charge (with the exception of transportation costs) from the community forest program and local sawmills. The final cost for the system was $1.6 million.

Ouje-Bougoumou (QC)
Ouje-Bougoumou is a village located in northern Quebec with a world-renowned district heating system. In the early 1990’s, the Band Office was planning a new community and contacted CANMET Energy to determine whether a biomass-fired district energy system would be cost-effective. In 1992 construction started and by 2000, biomass provided 89% of the energy used to fuel the district heating system. All heat consumers, from individual houses to public facilities such as offices, schools, etc. are connected to the central heating plant through underground hot water pipes. The sawdust used in the boilers is purchased from a local sawmill and transported using trucks owned by the village.

Truro (NS)
In the late 1980s, a wood fueled district energy system caught the attention of the provincial government of Nova Scotia. The system was installed at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, a small, public college in Truro. The college’s biomass plant provides heat and hot water to 65,000 square meters of the campus. Comparing chip and oil prices for each year of operation, since 1988 the wood chip system has saved the college a total of $4,244,000.

Montague (PEI)
The Kings County Memorial Hospital has been heating with wood chips since 1982. The system provides heat, steam sterilization, and hot water to the hospital and the seniors’ home next door, totaling about 46,000 square feet. In 27 years of operation the refractory has been done over once, as well as the feed augers. This was the first wood boiler installed on Prince Edward Island.

Cogeneration

Taylor Lumber Company Ltd. – Middle Musquodoboit (NS)
Taylor Lumber Company produces 8-10 million board feet per year of kiln-dried and heat-treated lumber. In 1993, the company decided to expand by creating a wood-fired power plant that not only supplies steam to the kiln, but also produces all the power required for the operation. Any surplus energy is sold to a local utility company.