Suddenly, everyone's talking about waste wood—not just in the B.C. forests, but everywhere. But not everyone agrees that the solution is chips with everything.
At the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, longtime forestry journalist Ben Parfitt has published a new report, Shortchanged: Tallying the Waste in B.C.'s Logging Industry.
Parfitt argues that we've left enormous quantities of usable wood rotting in the forests:
"By squandering this resource, we’re seriously shortchanging ourselves. If all that so-called 'waste wood' had been brought into mill towns and processed, I calculate that we could have generated another 2,400 jobs each year in this province’s forest industry.
"...If you look at all the carbon stored in those abandoned trees and convert it to CO2, it translates to a 5% increase in BC’s greenhouse gas emissions. That’s got significant implications for our climate policy. There is a myth that BC has cleaned up its act, environmentally speaking, from the bad old days of the 80s and 90s, but this research suggests otherwise."
Last month, megawatt, the British Columbia renewable energy blog, reported a B.C. Hydro "bioenergy call":
Under Phase II, BC Hydro will conduct a two-stream call process. The first stream is a competitive call for larger-scale biomass projects. Any form of biomass will be eligible and it will include wood waste sourced from new forest tenure enabled through provincial legislation in May 2008. The target is to acquire 1,000 GW/h per year of energy through this stream. Good news for all of that roadside debris.
The second stream will focus on innovative, community-level electricity supply solutions using biomass. Through a request for qualifications (RFQ), BC Hydro will seek to identify at least two such projects that can provide cost-effective electricity for ratepayers, as well as other quantifiable, local benefits such as improved reliability.
Over in Britain, George Monbiot is not impressed:
We have a bottomless ability to disregard the laws of economics, biology and thermodynamics when we encounter a simple solution to complex problems. So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new miracle. It's a low-carbon regime for the planet which makes the Atkins Diet look healthy: woodchips with everything.
Biomass is suddenly the universal answer to our climate and energy problems. Its advocates claim that it will become the primary source of the world’s heating fuel, electricity, road transport fuel (cellulosic ethanol) and aviation fuel (bio-kerosene). Few people stop to wonder how the planet can accommodate these demands and still produce food and preserve wild places.
The Hook suspects the debate will continue.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
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PeteL
3 years ago
Let the chips fall where they may
I understand one of the reasons all the paper and kraft mills are down is the significant cost of fibre / chips. with less milling of lumber and more export of raw logs there remains less by-product of that milling is chips.
Its easy for us in Vancouver, why should we give a crap? But if you live somewhere around , Port Alice, Campbell River, Naniamo, Squamish, Crofton ... your town and its infrastructure and business and livelihood relies on the 300 - 600 jobs those mills create. Not to mention all the ancillary workers who drive the trucks and run the tugboats and so many other jobs.
It is high time this government DOES SOMETHING for this industry that creates jobs that support families.
sunshine coast girl
3 years ago
This government cares nothing
for this industry. In the past 8 years all they have done is create that stupid roundtable and issue a half-assed request for federal money. Period. Full stop. Turf the bums!!
Janie Jones
3 years ago
It's not the trees, its the soil.
Could have, should have, would have . . .
It is is said that the real resouce in the woods is not the trees. It's the soil that grows them. "Waste wood" is future forest soil and better left where it is than hauled away. Chipping's not a bad idea but only if it were sprayed back into the clearcut from whence it came.
It's true there's been mega waste. During the 60s & 70s, the glory days of truck logging on the coast, they only hauled the top dollar logs out of the woods. The rest they used to bulldoze off the landings into the creek draws. The pickup sticks piles have since rotted and sunk, damming and destroying the creeks or coming down all at once during torrential rainstorms, taking out bridges and killing people.
AFAIK the mills PeteL is talking about are pretty well all shut down now. The two in Squamish certainly are. All of the guys I know there who used to work in the forest industry are either doing something else, working seismic in the oilpatch or drill & blast, transmission line cutting or running heavy duty equipment on the IPPs.
What has happened in the coastal forest industy is what was said was always going to happen - the falldown - too much wood was cut too soon. This reality was ditched in favour of the myth "sustainable" forestry however and the people of rural BC were cleverly manipulated into supported bogus creations like the BC Forest Alliance.
The people of rural BC realize that it was all a lie, a lie that was used to elect the Liberals in 2001, when a large number of their candidates rose through the Share group ranks into the Legislative Assembly.
Once their jobs, their lifestyles were paramount to the corporations so the corporations could get the last of the top dollar wood and now, thanks to Bill 30, they don't even have a say.
Couple that with the on going privatizations and everyone in Victoria thinking its a great idea to turn our home and native land over to 30 new privately owned fiefdoms er chiefdoms and the mood is not good in BC towns.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
Janie, living in the forest,
Janie, living in the forest, I have seen it all. The destruction and waste, most of it caused by the overcapitalization of the industry to get rid of workers, and fully agree with you.
The problem is that the people who have been and are suffering the most will re-elect this same government, as they will have the best propaganda machine and make the best promises for "jobs,jobs,jobs", while selling off the land and resources from under their and our feet.
After another 4 years under the present government they'll have followed and fulfilled the long standing demands of the
advertising agency by the name of the Fraser Inst. and will have sold off all the Crown lands, rivers and lakes, always preferring foreign buyers .
Ed Deak. Big Lake.