Canadian Forest Industries Magazine

15 pellet mills anyone?

The really big news at the first day of CANBIO's annual conference yesterday came from Jane Todd of Ontario Power Generation (OPG), who spoke on the public utility's growing plans for co-firing biomass to replace all or a portion of the coal it currently uses for a large part of its power generation needs. OPG has been running co-firing trials at its four coal-fired plants, including four hours of using 100 percent biomass at its Atikokan facility, and various levels at North America's largest coal-fired power plant in Nanticoke, ON. According to Todd, the trials have been much more successful than even OPG's best-case expectations, with both power generation and emission standards more than acceptable.

Building on this success, and an aggressive provincial policy to phase out coal by 2014, OPG plans to quickly ramp up biomass firing, and is talking of 100 percent conversion at Atikokan, which currently uses a lower-quality lignite coal and has direct rail access. The fuel of choice is wood pellets, as they allow the utility to use existing assets, such as pulverisers, with a minimum of modifications. The target announced yesterday is 2.5 terrawatts, which if my math is right (600,000 tons of pellets per TW) requires 1.5 million tons of high quality pellets. For an idea of the effect this power giant could have on the solid bioenergy market, Canada currently produces slightly more than 2 million tons/year. If the economics and politics work out, OPG could create a biomass support industry all its own.