Fibre use, net calorific value, and consumption of forest-derived bioenergy in British Columbia, Canada

The lack of data about current bioenergy production in British Columbia severely limits stakeholder analyses of the true value and growth potential of bioenergy within the province and the forest industry's sustainability. Fifty-two facilities were surveyed to gather statistics on rates of fibre use for energy, thermal and electrical energy capacity and net production. We estimated that from 2000 to 2011, on average 9.4 Mt of wood fibre (oven-dry) was used annually to produce energy, which was about one-third of the total harvested biomass. However, bioenergy does not drive the harvest. Bioenergy uses residual fibre from other operations-primarily black liquor from pulp mills. In total, the forest sector produced approximately 118 PJ of thermal and electrical energy in 2011, based on the net calorific value provided by respondents. Based on these results, we concluded that wood-based bioenergy supplied approximately 10% of British Columbia's energy demands in 2011. Forestry sector commodity and economic statistics likely underestimate the more than 640 M$ worth of energy it produced. The survey results also showed a wide variation in the efficiency of energy production between different facilities. Given the large discrepancy between the theoretical high heating values and what the producers achieved, it may be prudent to use an operationally-derived net calorific value or low heating value for estimating energy supply from biomass, especially for policy or business development. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.