When the 77-strong Canadian delegation stepped off the plane in Sweden, they knew they were in bioenergy country. “The whole Arlanda airport is heated with biomass,” said Paul Smallman, a woodlot owner from Prince Edward Island. Like many Canadian delegates on the trade mission to World Bioenergy 2008, the biggest biomass conference in the world, Smallman went to Sweden with a mission: to learn from the best, network and turn the experience into a viable renewable energy business back home. “The wood and forestry sector is going broke by relying on conventional markets, I want to set up a small pellet plant, and use large wood burning furnaces to make renewable heat and power and sell it here, in PEI, to local people. Scandinavians are world leaders in bioenergy technology and markets, and you if you want to do the same, you go learn from the best.”
“Our international colleagues knew we meant business when Canada brought the largest delegation to the World Bioenergy event,” said Doug Bradley, president of the Canadian Bioenergy Association (CANBIO), who organized the trade mission. Held in Jönköping, Sweden last month, CANBIO led a trade mission of 42 participants from six of the country’s ten provinces and another 35 delegates came independently. Participants came from the across the bioenergy sector, including forest owners, biomass-rich communities, researchers and technology providers. But everyone was there for the same reason: to do business.
International partnerships offer some of the best opportunities for Canadian entrepreneurs and municipalities to develop bioenergy. Finnish, Swedish and Austrian technologies and consultancies have been building sustainable bioenergy chains for the last two decades – and Canada, with its vast supply of forest resources – is well positioned to take advantage. Like its Scandinavian counterparts, Canada can utilize forest residues without competing with the pulp and paper industry for virgin fibre. Right now there are 16 million tonnes of excess tree bark sitting in “heritage piles” in Canada—enough energy to provide the needs of close to one million Canadians. Another 11 million tonnes annually of harvest waste is burned or left to rot every year. The massive pine beetle infestation in British Columbia has killed 450 million cubic metres of pine—six years’ worth of harvest at pre-infestation levels, and as a result BC has the largest amount of wood available for energy. .
World Bioenergy 2008 provided a lot of room to seed new bioenergy business ventures. Alexandra Volkoff, the Canadian Ambassador to Sweden, kicked off a popular Canada-Sweden side event that showcased Canada as a place for bioenergy business and partnering. Eighty five participants from 17 countries, including Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Spain, Brazil and Columbia came to the event, showing interest in Canada from the international bioenergy industry is high. Speakers, including CANBIO President Douglas Bradley and Board Members Bruce McCallum and Carl-Éric Guertin, gave presentations on biomass supply, sustainable forest management and regional bioenergy situations. All presentations can be downloaded at: http://www.infoexport.gc.ca/iei/Post.jsp?did=c20917&sitid=411
Another big draw was the site visits on offer. Roland Kilpatrick, Industrial Technology Advisor for the National Research Council, went on a full or half-day study tour each day of the five-day event. Kilpatrick, who moved to Northeastern Ontario five years ago, sees potential to shift its struggling forestry to a more profitable bio-based economy. He says the field tours were a highlight, allowing him to see state-of-the-art wood pellets and chippers, powering everything from a small farm to the town of Mullsjö, which has a three pellet boilers at three megawatts providing heating to 8,000 people. “We went to a school heated by a pellet boiler that sat in the schoolyard – it was so benign that you could see where the kids bounced their soccer balls on it,” said Kilpatrick.
He and other trade mission participants hope to bring some of the solutions they saw in Sweden back to Canada. Meeting prospective development partners on the trip will help with their task. “I heard talk of prospective development of large-scale projects with offshore partners, and a myriad of smaller-scale heat and power projects across the country – so keep your ears peeled for announcements,” said Bradley.
Delegates said some of the most promising business ventures happened between fellow Canadians. “Travelling with sixty other Canadians helped me to find new synergies and build relationships that could turn into significant bioenergy projects at home,” said Jamie Bakos, CEO of Titan Clean Energy Projects, a Saskatchewan- based biomass project developer. “I talked to a lot of potential customers from Canada interested in switching from traditional forestry to biomass for energy or renewable products,” said Luc Bernard of ALPA Equipment, a biomass machinery dealer in the Maritimes.
Bakos sees teaming up with either Canadian or Scandinavian business partners as the only way to ensure bioenergy takes off. “We need to look at bioenergy as a worldwide industry. We’re up against a long-entrenched fossil fuel industry and chemical giants, and if we think of ourselves as independent competitors, we’ll all lose. We need to think of the biomass industry as one big market and work together to make impacts.”
The Canadian Bioenergy Association’s annual conference is organized around creating bioenergy business opportunities. “Bioenergy: From Words to Action,” a two-day conference and one-day study tour, is taking place in Ottawa on October 6-8 and focuses on bringing together municipalities, entrepreneurs and corporations from around the world to develop new bioenergy projects. It’s the biggest bioenergy event in central Canada and one of the main aims is to promote package solutions for communities to utilize biomass for energy and strengthen their economies. A trade show will showcase the latest technologies from Finland, Austria and Canada, and other biomass equipment and project developers. On the last day, a one-day field tour is expected to visit the world’s longest-running fast pyrolyis plant, (a 100 tonne-per day facility in Renfrew, Ontario), a biomass co-generation plant at Abitibi-Bowater’s pulp mill in Gatineau and Les Broyeurs à Bois harvest waste operation. For more on the conference, visit www.canbio.ca/events.
Photo caption: Canadian delegates check out the biomass briquettes at the Vattenfall CHP plant. From left: Dan Sigouin, Hearst Economic Development Corp; Jonathan Savoie, Groupe Savoie; Robin Trembley, Cardinal Saw; and Claude Brisson, Ecoflamme.
“Our international colleagues knew we meant business when Canada brought the largest delegation to the World Bioenergy event,” said Doug Bradley, president of the Canadian Bioenergy Association (CANBIO), who organized the trade mission. Held in Jönköping, Sweden last month, CANBIO led a trade mission of 42 participants from six of the country’s ten provinces and another 35 delegates came independently. Participants came from the across the bioenergy sector, including forest owners, biomass-rich communities, researchers and technology providers. But everyone was there for the same reason: to do business.
International partnerships offer some of the best opportunities for Canadian entrepreneurs and municipalities to develop bioenergy. Finnish, Swedish and Austrian technologies and consultancies have been building sustainable bioenergy chains for the last two decades – and Canada, with its vast supply of forest resources – is well positioned to take advantage. Like its Scandinavian counterparts, Canada can utilize forest residues without competing with the pulp and paper industry for virgin fibre. Right now there are 16 million tonnes of excess tree bark sitting in “heritage piles” in Canada—enough energy to provide the needs of close to one million Canadians. Another 11 million tonnes annually of harvest waste is burned or left to rot every year. The massive pine beetle infestation in British Columbia has killed 450 million cubic metres of pine—six years’ worth of harvest at pre-infestation levels, and as a result BC has the largest amount of wood available for energy. .
World Bioenergy 2008 provided a lot of room to seed new bioenergy business ventures. Alexandra Volkoff, the Canadian Ambassador to Sweden, kicked off a popular Canada-Sweden side event that showcased Canada as a place for bioenergy business and partnering. Eighty five participants from 17 countries, including Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Spain, Brazil and Columbia came to the event, showing interest in Canada from the international bioenergy industry is high. Speakers, including CANBIO President Douglas Bradley and Board Members Bruce McCallum and Carl-Éric Guertin, gave presentations on biomass supply, sustainable forest management and regional bioenergy situations. All presentations can be downloaded at: http://www.infoexport.gc.ca/iei/Post.jsp?did=c20917&sitid=411
Another big draw was the site visits on offer. Roland Kilpatrick, Industrial Technology Advisor for the National Research Council, went on a full or half-day study tour each day of the five-day event. Kilpatrick, who moved to Northeastern Ontario five years ago, sees potential to shift its struggling forestry to a more profitable bio-based economy. He says the field tours were a highlight, allowing him to see state-of-the-art wood pellets and chippers, powering everything from a small farm to the town of Mullsjö, which has a three pellet boilers at three megawatts providing heating to 8,000 people. “We went to a school heated by a pellet boiler that sat in the schoolyard – it was so benign that you could see where the kids bounced their soccer balls on it,” said Kilpatrick.
He and other trade mission participants hope to bring some of the solutions they saw in Sweden back to Canada. Meeting prospective development partners on the trip will help with their task. “I heard talk of prospective development of large-scale projects with offshore partners, and a myriad of smaller-scale heat and power projects across the country – so keep your ears peeled for announcements,” said Bradley.
Delegates said some of the most promising business ventures happened between fellow Canadians. “Travelling with sixty other Canadians helped me to find new synergies and build relationships that could turn into significant bioenergy projects at home,” said Jamie Bakos, CEO of Titan Clean Energy Projects, a Saskatchewan- based biomass project developer. “I talked to a lot of potential customers from Canada interested in switching from traditional forestry to biomass for energy or renewable products,” said Luc Bernard of ALPA Equipment, a biomass machinery dealer in the Maritimes.
Bakos sees teaming up with either Canadian or Scandinavian business partners as the only way to ensure bioenergy takes off. “We need to look at bioenergy as a worldwide industry. We’re up against a long-entrenched fossil fuel industry and chemical giants, and if we think of ourselves as independent competitors, we’ll all lose. We need to think of the biomass industry as one big market and work together to make impacts.”
The Canadian Bioenergy Association’s annual conference is organized around creating bioenergy business opportunities. “Bioenergy: From Words to Action,” a two-day conference and one-day study tour, is taking place in Ottawa on October 6-8 and focuses on bringing together municipalities, entrepreneurs and corporations from around the world to develop new bioenergy projects. It’s the biggest bioenergy event in central Canada and one of the main aims is to promote package solutions for communities to utilize biomass for energy and strengthen their economies. A trade show will showcase the latest technologies from Finland, Austria and Canada, and other biomass equipment and project developers. On the last day, a one-day field tour is expected to visit the world’s longest-running fast pyrolyis plant, (a 100 tonne-per day facility in Renfrew, Ontario), a biomass co-generation plant at Abitibi-Bowater’s pulp mill in Gatineau and Les Broyeurs à Bois harvest waste operation. For more on the conference, visit www.canbio.ca/events.
Photo caption: Canadian delegates check out the biomass briquettes at the Vattenfall CHP plant. From left: Dan Sigouin, Hearst Economic Development Corp; Jonathan Savoie, Groupe Savoie; Robin Trembley, Cardinal Saw; and Claude Brisson, Ecoflamme.
