By Chuck Tobin on October 26, 2018
Bewilderment may not be the wrong word to describe the feeling of those in the know who don’t understand why the Yukon isn’t jumping head-first into biomass energy – energy from wood chips and other similar wood products.
They just don’t get it.
Bewilderment might not be the right word, but it’s not far off.
David Dubois of Fink Machine Inc., a company which supplies biomass boilers, emphasizes Sweden provides 40 per cent of its heat and electricity with some form of biomass, 40 per cent for a country of 10 million people.
Dubois was among the handful of supporters at Thursday’s demonstration of a working Hargassner biomass unit imported from Austria by Chris Schmidt of ACS Mechanical.
Raven has been saving about $25,000 annually in heating fuel while displacing tonnes of green house gas emissions by burning mostly discarded wooden freight pallets.
Schmidt says he’s known about the potential of biomass for some 40 years, since the days as a young lad in Germany, when he and his dad were messing with the technology. It was a little bit hit-and-miss back then.
But there have been 40 years of advancement, Schmidt points out.
He says the community of Teslin has fostered a shining example of how wood chips can provide district heating and employment. (See separate story, this page.)
Biomass energy displaces greenhouse gas emissions and keeps the money local, instead of paying to have heating fuel hauled up the highway.
Schmidt says he’s been pushing the idea of biomass for 20 years, since his days living in Ross River when he remembers trees cut down as part of a fire smart program were burned. That wood could have been recovered and used for energy, he said. (See Teslin story.)
One of his colleagues in the push to adopt biomass has estimated if Whitehorse was fire smarted to the degree recommended, wood recovered could provide 40 years of energy for the city.
Schmidt figures his biomass unit on display in the empty lot next door to Lumel Studios could probably heat 10 Whistle Bend homes, given the energy efficiency standards required of new houses in Whitehorse. (See Teslin story.)
Schmidt, Dubois, others who know biomass, who understand the potential, just don’t get why the Yukon hasn’t taken a bigger bite of such an obvious opportunity just sitting there. It’s a no-brainer, as one fellow put it. (See Teslin story.)
Dubois points out greenhouse gas emissions from a biomass unit are some 90 per cent lower than a diesel-fired unit.
Some $60 million or $70 million to purchase home heating fuel leaves the Yukon every year, according to statistics.
Dubois says there are literally hundreds of thousands of biomass units in use in Europe right now.
But the number of biomass units in the Yukon – outside of Teslin – can almost be counted on one hand.
They just don’t get it.