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News and Ideas About Life and Living in the Monashee and Okanagan
A second pellet plant appears to be emerging along the Highway 6 corridor, this time within the Village of Lumby.
Global Bio-Coal Energy (GBCE), a Vancouver-based company announced the construction and operation of its first commercial  scale facility in British Columbia.

The company is publicly stating that it will go into full production in late fall 2015. GBCE says it has chosen Lumby to host its first production facility and secured a 29-acre site for purchase. It states that the site has ample room for biomass storage and to increase its production to meet anticipated demand.  The company has secured sufficient fibre for a minimum 20 years.  The site is fully developed including a CN rail spur line running through the property and has been used for local logging and chipping operations for a number of years.

GBCE is listing a number of partners in the effort including Gudeit Logging which it claims, “brings to the project a long history of logging and hauling in the Central Okanagan to fulfil his commitments to supply fibre directly or indirectly through other operators and areas outside the Lumby forest region.  The company is well connected with local First Nations groups to meet our fibre requirements. GBCE has secured the services of a professional forester to identify and manage fibre sources throughout the region.”

GBCE has also negotiated with several potential fibre suppliers in the region from a variety of sources, it states, “…including First Nations, community forest operators (loggers), sawmills and chipping operators and log debarking companies.” They state, “This approach allows GBCE to obtain its fibre requirements from diverse sources ensuring security of supply and competitive pricing.”

Currently, Gudeit Logging operates a chipper in the village and have been accumulating and storing a large number of open sawdust piles along the Lumby Salmon Trail. There is no mention specifically of the Lumby Community Forest being a partner whin this effort. The Community Forest located within RDNO Area D is a partnership between the Splatsin Indian Band and the Village of Lumby.

GBCE claims that the plant is the first of its kind in the world that will convert woody biomass and hog fuel, using a State of the Art proven technology, into bio-coal and bio-char products to serve the existing and emerging European, North American and Asian markets.
Can
we
trust
them?
There’s every reason to believe that the North Okanagan may become home to more pellet plants. This is because the Okanagan Highlands/Plateau offers easy access to “fiber” that is well suited for pellets and waferboard. The industrial extraction from clearcutting techniques will turn these remote ecosystems to wastelands and will severely impact our water.
biocoal
“Having a plant design that can be easily used in a multiple number of locations will then be less costly for others buying into the Global Bio-Coal business framework because they won’t need to repeat a lot of work.”
According to other media reports they had been unsuccessful in building plants in both Terrace and 70 Mile House. The company selected the Wyssmont Turbo-Dryer technology and has obtained the exclusive right to use and market their torrefaction unit. The Wyssmont unit is unique; it can both dry and torrefy the wood fibre while tailoring the Bio-Coal to clients’ specification.

Biocoal is described as a solid fuel made from biomass by heating it in an inert atmosphere. The result is either charcoal, or if the process temperature is mild, a product called torrefied wood. Torrefaction is a thermochemical treatment of biomass at 200 to 320 °C. It is carried out under atmospheric pressure and in the absence of oxygen, i.e. with no air. During the torrefaction process, the water contained in the biomass as well as superfluous volatiles are released, and the biopolymers (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin) partly decompose, giving off various types of volatiles. The final product is the remaining solid, dry, blackened material that is referred to as torrefied biomass or bio-coal.


During the process, the biomass typically loses 20% of its mass (dry bone basis) and 10% of its heating value, with no appreciable change in volume. This energy (the volatiles) can be used as a heating fuel for the torrefaction process. After the biomass is torrefied it can be densified, usually into briquettes or pellets using conventional densification equipment, to increase its mass and energy density and to improve its hydrophobic properties. The final product may repel water and thus can be stored in moist air or rain without appreciable change in moisture content or heating value, unlike the original biomass from which it is made.

When GBCE was planning on opening a pellet plant at 70 Mile House in 2012 it had agreed to purchase 15.6 acre site, a former sawmill with buildings suitable to house three torrefaction units that combined will produce 300,000 tonnes of Bio-Coal per year for 20 years. According to industry advocates, bio-coal has been growing in popularity among European coal users because it is considered less environmentally hazardous than regular coal and because few modifications would be required to burn it at existing coal-fired energy-producing plants.

In August 2011, GBCE viewed its proposed Terrace plant as the first of many across the province. The company stated, “We are designing what you might call a turn-key operation. The design will be such that it essentially remains the same.”

They added, “Having a plant design that can be easily used in a multiple number of locations will then be less costly for others buying into the Global Bio-Coal business framework because they won’t need to repeat a lot of work.”

For residents of Lumby and RDNO Area D, serious questions need to addressed regarding air quality and the handling of potentially toxic materials. There are also questions regarding the storage and transport of large amounts of sawdust, hog fuel and biocoal as well as potential leaching of dioxins and possible toxic compounds into the groundwater and wetlands. For the wider region, residents need to ask about the number of pellet plants that might be in our future?

For residents of the entire Okanagan and beyond, it remains important to begin a wide public conversation that considers our role in global climate change. Are we willing to deplete our forests and destroy ecosystems so that wood can be burned for fuel by cities in Europe and China? 

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OPINION:
The Ministry of Environment and associated provincial ministries approved the pellet plant in Lavington without an environmental assessment.

Did those same ministries know that there was a biocoal plant proposed and even secured in Lumby, when they approved the Lavington plant, which is only a few kilometers away? If so we might just see resignations or even dismissals happen within five days of this story – because someone, or some people will have to take responsibility for a serious error in procedure.

During a public process, government officials are required to come clean on issues of overlapping developments that might impact public safety and perhaps threaten the environment.

The two plants within close proximity, raise serious questions as to the future health of the air-shed in the North Okanagan. The boggy eastern reaches of Coldstream meet with those of White Valley making for a lowland that has historically hosted a major inversion where smoke settles in and stays, like the fog that is natural to the area.

In fact, Lumby Council has encouraged an anti-idling bylaw to help deal with the air quality issue, but now with a biocoal plant looming - all bets are off.

There’s every reason to believe that given the lack of long-term planning and transparency that the North Okanagan may become home too as many as five or even ten pellet plants. This is because the Okanagan Highlands/Plateau offers easy access to “fiber” that is well suited for pellets. The industrial extraction from clearcutting techniques will turn these remote ecosystems into wastelands and will severely impact our clean water supply.

Lavington residents now need to join forces with Lumby residents and together they need to build bridges with people and groups wanting to preserve forests. The pellet issue is clearly linked to clearcutting and will require significant volumes, which means the removal of “timber” not just “waste”. These companies and politicians don’t seem to understand the importance of wood being left on the forest floor – and given what many of us have seen in remote areas – there is little regard for forest stewardship.

Global Bio-Coal Energy (GBCE) is the company seeking to build the plant in Lumby, they had previously failed in Terrace and 70 Mile House. The process of making these pellets involves collecting volatiles during the torrefaction process where water contained in the biomass as well as superfluous volatiles are released, and the biopolymers (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin) partly decompose, giving off various types of volatiles. Needless to say, pellet plants will generate toxic emissions, and while on paper companies can initially prove “clean” emissions, on the long run, as systems and equipment become fatigued toxins are then airborne and leach into the soil and groundwater. Who will monitor these industrial activities – and can we trust that process?

Our governments now seem to treat these industries as profit centers which will provide revenues into government coffers, sadly what agency now offers the due diligence to insure that these other agencies don’t leave scorched Earth in their quest for profits?

Bio-Coal can be produced at BTU values which allow it to be used as a direct substitute for coal, and which can be easily micronized for use in existing coal-fired boilers. Which makes this fuel an important commodity for places trying to clean dirty energy like coal. What we are witnessing in Coldstream and now Lumby is part of a global effort to transition energy through the discipline of “industrial ecology” which is to a large part based on the implicit assumption that if “we just get our technologies right”, the problems of environmental pollution and unsustainability will be solved. This is the reason why most current research in industrial ecology is focused on technological innovation, such as improvements in eco-efficiency, design for environment, material flow analysis, etc. This simplistic view has been recently questioned by Michael Huesemann, a PhD research scientist with a special interest in sustainability and critical science. He has demonstrated that negative unintended consequences of technology are inherently unpredictable and unavoidable, that most current techno-optimism reflected in industrial ecology is unjustified, and that modern technology, in the presence of continued economic growth, does not promote sustainability, but hastens collapse.

So the question remains – who or what is representing your best interest on the long term?

There’s another important observation that we all need to take notice of. Clearly many residents believe that local government is not on their side. There are stories of distrust and even bullying. One should note that one of the partners GBCE appears to have is the Vitol Group which is one of the largest energy investment houses in the world – but to environmentalists they are infamous. A 2001 article in the Observer stated that in 1995 Vitol had secretly paid US$1 million to Serbian war criminal Arkan to settle a deal with a Serbian Oil company, Orion. Vitol has denied all charges, arguing that no government agency has ever prosecuted the company in this respect.

In 2007, Vitol pleaded guilty to grand larceny in a New York court for paying surcharges to Iraq's national oil company during Saddam's regime and circumventing the UN oil-for-food program. Vitol subsequently paid $17.5 million in restitution for its actions.

According to an article in the Financial Times, Vitol was the company to organize the first controversial sale of Libyan rebel oil to Tesoro Corporation in early April 2011. According to the Financial Times, the company was approached by the Qatari national oil company to sell a cargo of crude oil supplied by the Libyans in exchange for technological supplies and fuel for the National Transitional Council of Libya.

In September 2012, and article in Reuters alleged that the company had bought and sold Iranian fuel oil, bypassing an EU embargo against Tehran. Vitol bought 2 million barrels using a ship-to-ship transfer off the coast of Malaysia from a National Iranian Tanker Company vessel and sold it to Chinese traders. The article stated that as Vitol is based in Switzerland, which did not implement Western sanctions, Vitol had skirted the charges.

In 2013, The Telegraph alleged that the company had been using for over a decade an Employee Benefit Trust, avoiding paying income tax for its UK staff.

The residents of Lavington and Lumby who have a deep knowing that there is something seriously wrong here, must find their courage – they need to know that history already reveals that small groups of people, will be the ones who will find a way to clear the air.


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Did the BC Gov know that there was a biocoal plant proposed and even secured in Lumby, when they approved the Lavington plant?
" For residents of Lumby and RDNO Area D, serious questions need to addressed regarding air quality and the handling of potentially toxic materials."