6,000 tonnes of pellets a year would be trucked in; burned using incinerators
Frances Bula
Sun
Sometimes, the greenest technology doesn’t seem very green at first sight.
That’s what Vancouver’s Olympic village planners are saying as they consider the idea of trucking in 6,000 tonnes of wood pellets a year and burning them in high-efficiency incinerators as the heat source for the neighbourhood’s 15,000 future residents.
“When I first came on board and I heard about that option, it surprised me a little, to be honest,” says Chris Baber, the young city engineer in charge of what’s being called the neighbourhood energy utility or NEU.
After looking at all the information, he realized that the biomass, a.k.a. wood pellets, idea actually was the greenest feasible option for space heating and hot water, compared to other options.
The others included using electricity (an expensive and short-supply source that condo builders have favoured in recent years), burning natural gas (used by many residents and North Vancouver’s district heating system), or capturing heat from the neighbourhood’s sewer lines (a good idea, but technically challenging).
But local residents and the developer building the village are less than enchanted with the idea of trucks of wood waste being hauled in and burned in central Vancouver (along with trucks of ash going out), especially in the middle of a neighbourhood that will be marketed as cutting-edge green.
“They go on about greenhouse gas emissions and then they do this,” said Arthur Brock, a commercial real-estate manager who is on the False Creek South Residents Association’s planning committee.
“Why would you build a wood-waste incinerator in the heart of Vancouver? Come on. The more people who hear about this, the more they’ll be scratching their heads.”
He said condo owners in Concord and particularly Citygate, the block of towers at the east end of False Creek, will likely be equally upset about it.
“We’ve talked to Citygate and they’re incensed. The prevailing wind is southwest and it would blow the effluent right to them.”
The False Creek association decided this week to hire its own consultant to look at the idea, after residents got notices from the city inviting them to open houses March 13 and 15, where options for the district heating system will be presented before council votes on it in late April or early May. The city has also applied to the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s director of air quality for a permit. That process also takes public input into account.
In the meantime, Roger Bayley of Merrick Architecture, who is coordinating the complex project for the developer Millennium, has sent a public letter to mayors, business groups and those on his firm’s mailing list urging them to oppose the city’s application at the regional district. Bayley’s letter said the wood-waste incinerator was “not in keeping with the sustainable objectives of the community, represented a significant and unwarranted increase in emissions, was not in the public interest and would adversely impact the image and character of the community.”
And, he added, “the use of a purchased and trucked product was not in keeping with the standards of sustainability for the community that sought to use ‘local’ and cheap sources of energy available at the site.”
Bayley and his team are pushing for what the city was planning originally, to capture the heat off wastewater flushed through the sewer lines in the project. That’s done by having water from showers, sinks, dishwashers and washing machines go through a heat exchanger that extracts the heat and recycles it.
But Baber said there are significant technical problems with that new technology. Only three similar plants exist in the world, and there is only one manufacturer of the needed heat pumps, in Switzerland.
As well, he said, sewage flow varies through the day, which makes it difficult to generate a steady heat supply.
“And then there’s the solids that need to be filtered out,” said Baber.
The city’s information material claims the wood-pellet-burning system has many advantages. It’s considered carbon neutral, since burning wood waste doesn’t produce any more greenhouse gas than if the wood were left to deteriorate naturally. The environmental concern it does raise is particulate production. But much of that gets removed with a precipitator, says Baber.
A large amount of B.C.’s wood waste is shipped to Norway and Sweden, where it is burned in urban wood-waste incinerators.
TURNING WOOD INTO ENERGY
False Creek Community Energy Centre
Project to supply heat and hot water to 15,000 residents of False Creek using biomass energy with natural gas backup.
Source: City of Vancouver Vancouver Sun
WHAT IS BIOMASS ENERGY?
Biomass energy is produced by burning natural material such as wood pellets (pictured). Although the process creates carbon dioxide, the amount is no greater than what would be produced from natural decomposition. The energy needed to produce the wood chips is minimal compared to the amount of energy produced.
Wood pellets are produced from forest industry wood waste — essentially compressed sawdust. B.C. pellets, most of which are exported, are considered the best in the world for their high density and clean burning.
ADVANTAGES
– Relatively low greenhouse gas emissions.
– Availability and ease of use.
– B.C.-produced, supports the local economy.
DISADVANTAGES
– Produces particulates, but at a rate 250 times less than air quality guidelines require.
– Delivery by train and truck from the Interior would create 40 to 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
– Burning wood pellets would produce about 200 tonnes of waste ash per year. Might be usable as fertilizer or compost.
Source: City of Vancouver Vancouver Sun
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
