Tag: canada

From Princeton, for Princeton: our commitment to local wood pellet supply

10 October 2023

Sustainable bioenergy

As part of our commitment to support local communities, Drax has organized three community pellet sales days at our Princeton plant. These days are an effort to ensure our neighbours in Princeton can enjoy a safe and warm heating season.

At Drax, safety is our top priority. With our bagging line closing, we want to ensure that community members can access pellets to heat their homes in a safe manner.

“Drax is committed to producing local pellets for our local community,” said Liezl van Wyk, VP of Northern Operations for Drax. “We’re committed to producing for Princeton and working with the community to find a distributor to sell our pellets locally.”

Our community pellet sales days offer half tonne or one tonne totes of pellets at a wholesale rate to our local Princeton community. At our September 15 sales day our plant team sold over 60 units.

“The day was a complete success – the customers were great and our Drax team’s presence was a big part of why the day went so well!” said Princeton Plant Manager Richard White.

The interest was so high that many community members showed up before we officially opened and sold us out of the 24 totes the plant team had pre-filled the day before.

Our remaining community pellet sales days are scheduled for October 13 and November 17. Community members can purchase half tonne totes for $125 or one tonne totes for $250. Our plant team will assist our community members in loading the totes onto their trailers or pickup trucks.

Ensuring British Columbia’s forests offer a sustainable source of fibre takes collaboration and careful management

21 December 2022

Sustainable bioenergy

Diane Nicholls, Vice President of Sustainability for North America, Drax

Key takeaways: 

  • British Columbia is 94% provincial Crown Land, meaning its 55-60 million hectares of forest cover is publicly owned, rather than privately held.  
  • Government legislation and regulation exists detailing what forestry practises can take place, working alongside First Nations, to ensure forests are used for the benefit of all.
  • Sustainable forest management practises offer a source of fibre for forest industries while also protecting forests from disease and wildfire.  
  • Although the biomass pellet industry is relatively new to the province, it offers a use for forest residues that were previously burned or landfilled, and for sawmill residues.  

As a business operating in the Canadian forest industry, we have a responsibility to work collaboratively with local and national governments, communities, and First Nations to ensure British Columbia’s forests are sustainably managed, protected from disease and fire, and preserved for future generations.  

British Columbia is a vast and diverse landscape. The second largest of Canada’s provinces, it contains 14 different bio geoclimatic zones ranging from coastal forest in the west, to alpine meadows on the eastern Rocky Mountains, with bogs, wetlands, and even arid land in between.   

The landscape of British Colombia is home to a wide range of flora and fauna. With roughly 55-60 million hectares (550,000-600,000 km2) of land covered in forest, it is a vital resource. More than 50,000 British Columbians work directly in the forest industry and even as cities like Vancouver and Victoria grow, it remains a central source of social value to rural economies.  

Sharing forests between government and First Nations

British Columbia has a long history of stewardship and sustainable forest management practices. Forestry began in the region in the 1800s with Sitka spruce, harvested predominantly to support ship building. Since then, forestry has become a major part of the province’s economy and the province is a world leader in sustainable forest management and environmental practises. 

As 94% of British Columbia is provincial Crown Land, the government sets the rules and regulations about what forestry practices, or any other natural resource extractions, can take place. Under legislation, any land where forest harvesting occurs must be reforested and it is illegal for a company to deforest British Columbia or Canada.   

For many years, an increasingly important component of the Canadian forestry industry has been the contribution that First Nations are making. There are 204 First Nations across British Columbia each with traditional territories used for cultural and spiritual purposes, as well as day-to-day needs like hunting, fishing, trapping, and housing.  

Many First Nations have their own land use plans that are utilised in forest management planning in the province. First Nations are also consulted and collaborated with by the province on forest management decisions. This creates partnerships between First Nations, industries working in the province’s forests, and governments at the provincial and federal levels. 

Protecting forests from pests and fire

Forest infected with mountain pine beetle in British Columbia

Managing forests is crucial to their longevity and ensuring they remain healthy and useable for future generations. This includes forestry practices to protect them from pests and the growing threat of forest fires.  

In 2017 and 2019 we saw the largest catastrophic fires we’ve ever had in British Columbia. At times it felt like the whole province was on fire. More recently, 2020 was another terrible year. Factors like climate change and storms are increasing the number of fires we see, but the intensity of fires is also exacerbated by debris left on forest floors from relatively recent mountain pine beetle infestations and other insects or diseases affecting forest health.  

 In the 1990’s several relatively warm winters led to the mountain pine beetle becoming endemic, and over the next 15 years millions of hectares of pine forest were lost to the bug. The government increased the allowable annual cut (harvesting levels) to remove the debris of such infestations which become dangerous fire hazards if not removed. 

To protect from fires, pests, and diseases, it’s important to open up forests through managed removals. This process creates more space and less dense stands of trees. It’s also crucial to reduce what’s left lying on the forest floor after forestry operations, while ensuring that the right wood is left to encourage biodiversity, soil health and habitat needs.  

These sustainable management practises are important to help the resilience of the forest and biomass offers a use for much of the wood removed through these practices that is not able to be manufactured into lumber.  

Biomass and the wood industry

Compared to lumber manufacturing, pellet production is relatively new to British Columbia’s forest industry, but it offers a practical use for materials that are unmerchantable or unsuitable for sawlogs. This includes, but is not limited to, forms of forest residues such as low-grade wood, treetops, and branches that are left behind from harvesting activities.   

Removing forest residues can provide more growing sites for new seedlings and helps to prevent intense forest fires. Slash and other low-grade wood are often simply burned along roadsides, but pellets offer a way to turn this fibre into a source of renewable energy. 

Forest residues from harvests, like slash and low-grade roundwood, accounted for approximately 8% and 10% of the fibre used in our Canadian pellet plants in the first half of 2022. The rest of the fibre we use comes from sawmill residues, such as wood chips, shavings, and sawdust. 

Drax operates eight pellet mills across British Columbia and two in neighbouring Alberta, but doesn’t own forests or carry out harvesting or wood sorting. Instead, we partner with forest companies that operate sawmills. These companies are awarded forest tenures, which allow them to harvest certain forest areas (which are identified by the provincial government) to produce solid wood products, which lock in carbon for years. In return, we obtain their sawmill residues. The economics of the wood pellet industry means the main driver of harvesting is still demand for high-grade timber.    

Through collaboration with our partners across the province, we help ensure British Columbia’s forests offer resources that benefit local communities and are sustainably managed for future generations.  

Making the grade: The careful process of choosing what wood is right for biomass

16 December 2022

Sustainable bioenergy

Key takeaways:

  • British Columbia’s working forests are owned by the province and managed  to preserve the environment while supporting forestry industries and local communities.
  • When forests are harvested, professional, licensed scalers who are independent of logging companies or sawmills, evaluate the size and quality of wood.
  • The processes and assessments made by scalers are extensive and designed to ensure high quality lumber makes its way to commercial markets.
  • The careful process of grading wood ensures that only low-quality wood, unusable by lumber sectors is used to produce sustainable biomass pellets.

Healthy working forests are full of different species of trees that serve as essential commercial resource to rural communities. Within these forests are different qualities of wood and trees.

The lumber industry, which drives the commercial forestry in British Columbia, only uses high-quality sawlogs that can be processed into lumber and other valuable solid wood products. When forest companies and the provincial government identify areas of forest suitable for management, the materials are professionally, independently sorted, and selected by the logging operator according to specifications set by the sawmill and by merchantability specifications set by government.

 

This leaves a range of rejected roundwood trees and other materials that are unsuitable for lumber. Characteristics of rejected material can include undersized logs, rotting in parts, excessive twisting, cracks, large knots, or exposure to damage like fires. But that’s not to say the wood isn’t valuable.

The biomass industry emerged as a way to utilise wood and residues from forestry and sawmill processes. To sort through wood harvests and identify what wood is suitable for lumber, forest companies in British Columbia use a grading system.

The province’s Forest Act outlines that timber harvested from publicly owned Crown must be scaled (measured) and graded. This standardised system means all types of wood are utilised, and the full value of a harvest maximised for lumber and other wood products – ensuring forests remain valuable resources that are replanted and managed for future generations.

Making the grade

The policy of scaling and grading timber has been in action along British Columbia’s coastal forests since as long ago as 1902.  And while log grades have evolved and expanded with changes in wood utilisation and forest practices, today’s grading rules and conventions are very similar to those used more than a century ago. 

Timber scaling and grading can only be carried out by trained, licenced professionals, known as scalers. The processes and assessments they are required to carry out are rigorous and extensive, as outlined in a regularly updated Scaling Manual.

Scalers apply grading rules to determine: the log’s gross dimensions, estimate what portion of the log is available to produce a given product, and consider the quality of the product that could be produced from the log.

It’s the scaler’s job to assess the visible characteristics of each log and determine what can be recovered from the log given its size and quality characteristics. Results in British Columbia are reported in cubic metres, with one cubic metre of timber viewed as a cubic metre of solid wood (known as firmwood), free of any rot, hole, char, or missing wood. It’s then up to the manufacturer to get the best and most valuable product out of the available volume.

Grade rules typically include three components: minimum or maximum dimensions, a requirement that a percentage of the log’s volume must be available to manufacture a given product, a requirement that a percentage of the product manufactured from the log must meet or exceed a given quality.

By developing methods of taking measurements in British Columbia’s coastal and interior regions, meaningful data is generated to understand the health and quality of the province’s diverse forests.

Click to view/download. 

Grade code 1 – Premium sawlogs

The highest-quality and most valuable grade, a grade code 1 log must be 2.5 m or more in length and 10 cm or more in radius. It can also be a slab of wood 2.5 m long and 20 cm wide and 20 cm or more in thickness measured at a right angle to the growth rings.

For species like hemlock, cedar or balsam log or slab, at least 90% of the overall log can be manufactured into lumber, meaning it’s free of rot, chars, or holes, without too many knots or twists.

For other species, at least 75% can be manufactured into lumber. For all species, at least 75% of the lumber will be suitable for sale.

Grade code 2 – Sawlog 

Smaller than premium sawlogs, grade code 2 logs are also 2.5 m or longer but can be only 5 cm wide. Grade code 2 sawlogs can also be made from slabs of wood 2.5 m or more in length and 15 cm wide, with a 15 cm or more thickness measured at a right angle to the growth rings.

In species like hemlock or cedar at least 75% of the wood can be manufactured into lumber, while for a balsam logs, it’s at least 67%. For all other species, at least 50% of overall wood can be manufactured into lumber.

Grade code 4 – Lumber reject

Lumber reject is the grade given to a log or slab that’s higher in grade than firmwood reject, but not high-grade enough to meet the requirements for a sawlog, due to factors like rot, chars, and holes.

The reason there is no grade code 3 or 5 is because they were merged into the lumber reject category as the needs of forestry industries changed.

Grade code 6 – Undersized log

An undersized log is the higher in grade than firmwood reject but cut from a tree which was below the minimum diameter to be processed into high-quality, useable lumber.

Grade code Z – Firmwood reject

The lowest grade of wood, a Grade code Z log is not of a high enough quality to be made into lumber.

A log falls into the firmwood reject category if there is heart rot or a hole that runs the entire length of the log, and any firmwood around the defect makes up less than 50% of the overall log.

A scaler may also grade a log as Z if rot is in the log and they estimate the net length of the log to be less than 1.2 m. Sap rot or charred wood within a log where the residual firmwood is less than 10 cm in diameter at the butt end of the log also makes it Grade code Z.

Portions of healthier logs that are less than 10 cm in diameter or portion of a slab that is less than 10 cm in thickness, are also in this category.

Supporting healthy, resilient forests

Wood that is unsuitable for valuable sawlogs was once seen as a residual of forestry harvest and burned as a means of disposal, emitting CO2, and polluting local air. The biomass market, however, processes low-grade wood into a feedstock for renewable electricity, unlocking the full value of forest resources, as well as enhancing ecosystems.

Slash pile in British Columbia

Newly developed forest management practises aimed at mitigating against wildfires, enhancing areas of habitats for wildlife, or restoring fire or diseased-damaged ecosystems, typically generate high volumes of low-grade wood. Without a local biomass market that can purchase and make use of that wood there’s less incentive to carry out these kinds of activities.

As wildfires and pests, like the mountain pine beetle, become increasing threats for Canadian forests and the rural communities who depend on them for work and leisure, the biomass sector’s participation is key to supporting forest management that ensures healthy, resilient forests.

Click to view/download.