BCBusiness

April 2018 30 Under 30

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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ApRIL 2018 BCBusiness 19 So Mount Hog sits—an eyesore that serves no purpose, has no value and takes up prime real estate. "It's also a major fire hazard next to our mill," Woodman laments. Wood residuals manager Doug (Dirty) Hill's job is to ensure that the hog doesn't catch fire. Hill has moved the problem by trucking much of it about 30 kilometres west to a yard beside the Trans-Canada Highway, where the hope is that it will make its way to a cogenera- tion plant in Castlegar, Cranbrook or Armstrong. Hog isn't a headache for everyone. Turning wood waste into biofuel, biocoal and biogas is a global industry that is growing ever more advanced and efficient. Some of the best work is in Germany, Holland and Sweden, where energy costs are high, so mills look to cap- italize on wood waste as fuel alternatives. In Canada, the biggest players in lumber, such as Canfor Corp., Tolko Industries Ltd. and West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd., are looking to get more value out of residuals. Vancouver-based Canfor is in the early stages of develop- ing a technology that will turn wood waste from its pulp mills into mass quantities of renewable crude oil. "We will take biomass up to very high pressures and temperatures and take oxygen off the carbon and hydrogen compounds found in wood," says Martin Pudlas, Prince George-based VP of pulp and paper operations, nutshelling the company's catalytic hydrothermal reac- tor process. The aim is to create renew- able biocrude for the petrochemical industry that feeds into existing refining infrastructure, or fuels for marine and rail use. For those who can't do anything with hog here, why not just send it somewhere that someone can? "One of the largest factors with biomass is the cost of transportation," Pudlas says. "In many cases, the cost of transport to a facility that can efficiently extract the heat value from it becomes prohibitive." Another wrinkle: the province's pulp mills are major electricity producers, and several are at the end of 10-year power purchase agreements with the BC Hydro and Power Authority, notes Cornelius Suchy, a Revelstoke-based consultant with Canadian Biomass Energy Research. As those run out, with the U.S. market relying on cheaper fracked natural gas—not to mention the Site C dam coming online—BC Hydro will likely drop any high-cost electricity providers. For their part, pulp mills will produce only as much power as they need, Suchy reckons. Soon no one will pay for hog or even pick it up for free at mills such as Downie Timber, he says. The only hope is green-energy tax initiatives and regulatory changes. "The writing is on the wall," Suchy says, cit- ing the provincial government's strong preference for renewable natural gas. "The bio-gas market in B.C. is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, creating exciting opportunities to turn manure, food waste, yard waste and bio-solids into renewable energy." Downie's Woodman remains hope- ful. "At some point, government is going to have to show some leadership or give us some ideas where to go. It's a real challenge," he says of hog. "It does have a use. It's just figuring out what it is." •

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