Are Wood Pellets a Good Idea?

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New Ideas About Life and Living in the Okanagan

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at its best?

Does Coldstream care?

Does anybody in Canada care?

Attached to the City of Vernon’s eastern boundary is the District of Coldstream a municipality that mixes orchards and sandy beaches with a meandering suburb and small farm holdings. Surrounding the northern shores of Kalamalka Lake this place has become one of the choice places to live in the Okanagan which means its one of the choicest places to live in Canada and for many locals they know it as they remind the world that Coldstream is “Rural Living at its Best”.

But there is a disturbing force that is unfolding within the eastern part of the district in Lavington as an industrial area anchored by the forestry giant Tolko begins to expand into neighborhoods held by small farms, orchards and acreages. We should all be paying attention to this because the events in Lavington are raising important questions regarding the future of our forests, rural communities and our role within global climate change.

This event began when Pinnacle Renewable Energy completed construction of a pellet plant at Tolko’s Lavington sawmill. The plant came about very quickly with the two companies claiming that there was a “significant consultation and review process, and permit approval from the Ministry of Environment (MoE) and the District of Coldstream”.

“Co-locating the plant here at Lavington will bring a number of benefits. It will allow us to deal with the excess of sawdust and shavings that has been collecting, on site and at other locations in the Valley, since Domtar Kamloops reduced its operations in 2013. It will also help us to create more efficient rail and trucking logistics and improve the level of both emissions and fugitive dust control. This is a good project for the community and the mill, and one that supports the long-term viability of the Lavington sawmill,” said Troy Connolly, General Manager of B.C. Lumber.

But locals are unhappy, in the background of the new “big” green technology banter are serious questions that seldom get reported in public because the story tends to get a bit longer than a sound byte can manage.

The Pinnacle Pellet Plant is up and running next to Tolko and near Lavington Elementary School and concerns have now evolved into realities of noise, traffic, light pollution and particulate matter.

Stephanie Hoffman, who has been fighting the plant for more than a year now told the Vernon Morning Star, “There is a clear misrepresentation happening from what was proposed to what we have been given…this is our home and we demand that council raise the bar on acceptable practices.”

But local council which previously sided with the corporate narrative now seems nervous and recently agreed to make their own demands on Pinnacle and the Ministry of Environment to help its residents quite literally sleep at night.

Residents are scrambling to get an air quality monitoring system up and running and are pushing the province for an Environmental Assessment, which was never originally ordered in advance of approval.

The Vernon Morning Star was in attendance at a council meeting where Jason Hoffman stated, “Our main concerns through this has and continues to be air quality… there is more than just water vapor escaping the stacks. My eyes, nose and throat tell me otherwise. We want proof of a healthy living environment.”

While Pinnacle has stated that it is just steam coming from the drying stacks, residents have witnessed and documented brown smoke as well as a grey/blue smoke on certain days.

“The pictures we were shown today look a lot different than steam,” said Coun. Pat Cochrane.

But those pictures are not representative of what is happening right now, according to Trevor Seibel, chief administrative officer.

“There was a period when something was being omitted but that has been corrected,” said Seibel.

And it is within this statement that Mr. Seibel introduces the very story that continues to be untold because our institutional memory is so short – history tells us that what we often think is safe today, simply isn’t the case in the future – and on the long haul we discover that many things that have been omitted, are often not corrected because few people are actually watching and even fewer are empowered to fix things.

Industrial Living: The Brownfield Landscape

A few kilometers east of Lavington in the Village of Lumby an industrial area lays largely vacant in a scrubland landscape. Once home to a number of large sawmills the village was infamous for the layer of fly ash that would coat parked cars – but to locals it was not the smell of smoke that they would banter about, but the “smell of money”.

By the environmental, health and safety standards of the day, the mills were considered safe and received the blessings from every level of government. Eventually, in Lumby the mills had become fewer but larger. Bell Pole had arrived on the scene and was in the pole treatment business in a serious way. If you travel on Shuswap Avenue south of the four-way stop towards Whitevale, you will drive through Bell Pole’s property. On the right hand side is the West Yard where poles were treated using creosote from 1931 to 1971. Then on the left side of the road in the East Yard, poles were treated with pentachlorophenol (penta) from 1968 to 1990. Preservatives like these were used for over a century in the Lumby, Lavington and Cherryville areas. Nearly every mill was engaged in treating wood with preservatives, most of the mills were cutting railway ties, which demanded such treatments.

Bell Pole was similar to other mills in the treatment business. Large dip tanks held the oily chemical and lifts of lumber, timber or poles were dipped into the tanks and then stacked throughout the mill yard where the chemical would drip and spill into the soil. Often the tanks were drained and workers were sent in to clean them or provide maintenance, these same workers were often the ones supervising the dipping process day after day.

At the time, nobody knew that creosote and penta were toxic. Most considered it like any other oil or solvent - hazardous, but if you were careful, not that hazardous. There are people who can recall that they themselves or a family member came home from the mill at the end of the day, drenched in black oily penta.

Eventually it was discovered that the penta not only leached into the soil but also into the human anatomy where it may deliver a vast number of health risks; exposure is associated with carcinogenic, renal, and neurological effects.

Pentachlorophenol represents a residue that defines part of this regions history and it still remains trapped in the landscape. It defines the darkest part of a legacy left behind by a hard working generation who were not told of certain dangers – because they trusted certain people who at the time believed they knew everything.

By 1990 clean up or remediation of both Bell Pole yards was well underway. It was suspected that creosote from the West Yard may have created a path of groundwater flow to Duteau Creek. By 2008 nearly 20 years after the discovery of the contamination, that particular remediation work was still being carried out. Within the East Yard, remediation activities included the interception of contaminated groundwater and then treatment and release to Harris Creek via a permitted discharge under the Environmental Management Act.

Theses toxic industrial landscapes have become known as brownfields and the toxins they hold can still poison the Earth and it is up to us to fix these toxic leftovers from the past – but more than anything, its up to us to make sure we don’t repeat such events again.

For the residents of Coldstream the idea that they may be creating a future brownfield in a rural residential neighborhood may not be occurring to them, but it is in fact a real possibility.

Our Challenge: Local and Global Responsibility

Residents are told that the majority of pellets from Lavington will be bound for China where they will be used as biofuel. This begs the question, “By approving the pellet plant have we made a local decision that will have negative planetary implications?”

This answer is yes. In fact burning wood pellets can release as much or even more carbon dioxide per unit than burning coal

Burning wood pellets to produce electricity is on the rise in Europe, where the pellets are classified as a form of renewable energy. But in the U.S., where pellet facilities are rapidly being built, concerns are growing about logging and the carbon released by the combustion of wood biomass.

The companies also state that the plant employs technology, which significantly advances the manner in which pellets are produced in Canada. Well-known in Europe, the drying technology has a low operating temperature, which translates into both a lower emission concentration and minimized fire risk. This in combination with the election to proceed with the implementation of bag house filtration on both the pellet plant and Tolko fibre delivery systems will improve the overall air quality in the Lavington area.

Tolko’s CEO Brad Thorlakson said, “We want to acknowledge everyone for their work throughout this process. Thanks to the combined efforts of the MoE, the community and our planning team, we’re moving forward with an exciting project that will be good for the community and the environment.”

Leroy Reitsma, President and COO of Pinnacle Renewable Energy, said, “We’re looking forward to becoming a valued member of the local community. As we begin the next phase of this project, we look forward to hiring local service providers and keeping the local community informed about the construction progress.”

In 2011, Enviva — the United States’ largest exporter of wood pellets — opened its flagship pellet-manufacturing mill in Ahoskie, North Carolina. The plant annually converts 850,000 tons of trees and waste wood into tiny pellets that are shipped to Europe and burned in power plants for what is being touted as a renewable form of electricity.

Two years later, Enviva opened another mill 50 miles away in Northampton County, North Carolina, and by 2016 the company is expected to operate eight wood pellet mills from Virginia to Mississippi. Elsewhere in the southeastern United States, other companies are planning or rapidly building facilities to produce wood pellets. A mill planned by Biomass Power Louisiana in Natchitoches, La., will produce up to 2 million tons of the pellets annually. Drax, a British utility that’s taking steps to transform itself into a predominately biomass energy generator, has said it will open four of its own large mills to produce pellets in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana.

Demand for this purportedly green form of energy is so robust that wood pellet exports from the United States nearly doubled from 2012 to 2013 and are expected to nearly double again to 5.7 million tons in 2015. This soaring production is driven by growing demand in the U.K. and Europe, which are using wood pellets to replace coal for electricity generation and heating. The European Union’s 2020 climate and energy program classifies wood pellets as a carbon-neutral form of renewable energy, and European companies have invested billions to convert coal plants to plants that can burn wood pellets.

But as wood pellet manufacturing booms in the southeastern U.S., scientists and environmental groups are raising significant questions about just how “green” burning wood pellets really is. The wood pellet industry says that it overwhelmingly uses tree branches and other waste wood to manufacture pellets, making them a carbon-neutral form of energy. But many environmentalists and scientists believe current industry practices are anything but carbon-neutral and threaten some of the last remaining diverse ecosystems in the southeastern U.S., including the Roanoke River watershed surrounding the Ahoskie, N.C., plant and longleaf pine ecosystems near the large Enviva wood pellet mill in Cottondale, Fla.

“They are cutting them down and burning them to produce energy in Europe — a practice that both degrades critical forest habitat and increases carbon emissions for many decades to come,” says Debbie Hammel, a senior resource specialist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Less than a year after Enviva’s Ahoskie plant opened, the NRDC began monitoring how the facility was impacting nearby forests and what kinds of trees were being used to produce pellets. As the demand for wood to manufacture more pellets increased, the NRDC noticed forested wetlands in the Roanoke watershed begin to disappear.

This excerpt was developed from “Wood Pellets: Green Energy or

New Source of CO2 Emissions?” by Roger Real Drouin and published in Yale Environment 360.

Roger Real Drouin is a journalist who covers environmental issues. His articles have appeared in Grist.org, Mother Jones, The Atlantic Cities, and other publications. Previously for Yale Environment 360, he wrote about growing concerns surrounding fracking wastewater and efforts to reduce methane leaks associated with fracking.

Read More: Yale Environment 360

In the opinion of Hammel and others, burning wood pellet biomass to produce electricity is far more harmful to the environment and the climate than renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.

Burning wood pellets releases as much or even more carbon dioxide per unit than burning coal. Residual wood, such as tree thinnings and unused tree parts left over at timber mills, is the best material for wood pellets but not enough of such waste wood exists to feed the growing demand for wood pellets.

So the industry has turned to whole trees. When a mill consumes nearly a million tons of wood a year, it’s difficult to track where every single tree comes from. If the timber industry in the southern U.S. gathers up all the branches, roots, and other tree waste and uses that wood to make pellets, William Schlesinger, who is president emeritus of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and a biogeochemist who studies carbon cycles, wouldn’t have a problem with it.

The problem, he says, is when pellets are made from virgin growth and second-growth hardwoods.

“The best evidence we have is that not all the pellets are coming from wood waste, and that creates a carbon deficit,” says William Schlesinger, who is president emeritus of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and a biogeochemist who studies carbon cycles; he was one of the scientists who wrote a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency calling on the agency to create strong pollution standards for biomass energy.

A study of the Ahoskie plant commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center and National Wildlife Federation found that more than 50 percent of the likely sourcing area for the Ahoskie facility is forested wetlands. More than 168,000 acres of wetland forest are at high risk of being cut down for manufacturing wood pellets at this single plant, the study said.

Schlesinger says recent calculations using U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and International Energy Agency (IEA) data show that burning wood pellets results in major impacts on forests for very modest quantities of bioenergy. For instance, the IEA projects that to produce 6.4 percent of global electricity from burning wood biomass in 2035, the global commercial tree harvest — all trees felled except for traditional firewood — would have to increase by 137 percent.

The Laws of Unintended Consequences

We have burned wood for heat and energy for a long time, but when we industrialize the process we tend to not understand the limitations that good stewardship demands and we don’t seem to comprehend what the future might bring either. The massive use of charcoal on an industrial scale in Early Modern Europe was a new type of consumption of western forests; even in Stuart England, the relatively primitive production of charcoal had already reached an impressive level. Stuart England was so widely deforested that it depended on the Baltic trade for ship timbers, and looked to the untapped forests of New England to supply the need. Each of Nelson's Royal Navy war ships at Trafalgar (1805) required 6,000 mature oaks for its construction. In France, Colbert planted oak forests to supply the French navy in the future. When the oak plantations matured in the mid-19th century, the masts were no longer required because shipping had changed.

Norman F. Cantor's summary of the effects of late medieval deforestation applies equally well to Early Modern Europe:

Europeans had lived in the midst of vast forests throughout the earlier medieval centuries. After 1250 they became so skilled at deforestation that by 1500 they were running short of wood for heating and cooking. They were faced with a nutritional decline because of the elimination of the generous supply of wild game that had inhabited the now-disappearing forests, which throughout medieval times had provided the staple of their carnivorous high-protein diet. By 1500 Europe was on the edge of a fuel and nutritional disaster [from], which it was saved in the sixteenth century only by the burning of soft coal and the cultivation of potatoes and maize.

In Coldstream, if the local council does not take care of its residents, then who or what will? We know that the industrial presence found in Lavington will eventually end because the natural resources will no longer economically sustain those operations – and the energy landscape will change as well.

What will the community be left with?

The cost from the loss of habitat and biodiversity; and the long-term cost of cleaning up brownfields as well as the negative health impacts on generations of people are not factored into the supply cost for wood pellets as biofuel; just like the environmental damage from nuclear waste, fossil fuels and fracking are not factored into the supply costs of those energies.

Environmental and social impact studies that have a local and global view that considers not just a 30 year view but a 300 year view should be standard procedure.

"Burning wood pellets releases as much or even more carbon dioxide per unit than burning coal. Residual wood, such as tree thinnings and unused tree parts left over at timber mills, is the best material for wood pellets but not enough of such waste wood exists to feed the growing demand for wood pellets. So the industry has turned to whole trees. When a mill consumes nearly a million tons of wood a year..."

As we clearcut our forests in the North Okanagan we are supplying biofuel to China and increasing carbon emissions for many decades to come in that country. The cost from the loss of habitat and biodiversity; and the long-term cost of cleaning up local brownfields as well as the negative health impacts on generations of people are not factored into the supply cost for wood pellets as biofuel; just like the environmental damage from nuclear waste, fossil fuels and fracking are not factored into the supply costs of those energies.

Environmental and social impact studies that have a local and global view that considers not just a 30-year view but a 300 year view should be standard procedure for every level of government.

Written and Compiled by Don Elzer

Top Photo: Air Quality in China

In Europe, wood pellets are classified as a form of renewable energy. But in the U.S., where pellet facilities are rapidly being built, concerns are growing about logging and the carbon released by the combustion of wood biomass.

Update: 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. Read the Story...