Forest Enhancement Society Supports Waste Utilization in Two Communities

After two years of stockpiling wood waste from logging, the Terrace Community Forest — a company owned by the northwest B.C. city of Terrace — has finally found a way to put the wood to use.  The company received a provincial grant of nearly $450,000 to process and transport wood waste to Skeena Bioenergy, which will turn it into wood pellets to be burned for bioenergy in Canada and abroad. The first shipment went to the pellet plant this week. While supporters of the project say it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use wood that would have otherwise been wasted, critics challenge the environmental claims and say such projects could promote wasteful logging. …The grant comes from the Forest Enhancement Society, a Crown corporation set up in 2016 to support B.C. forestry projects that make use of damaged or low-value forests, among other initiatives.

Grants for the Williams Lake First Nation from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC are helping to create jobs, fight climate change, and reduce wildfire risk near its community. To date, FESBC’s grants have supported the removal of 64,000 cubic metres of debris from forest fires and over the next two years, the figure will rise to 200,000 m3. The ongoing project will also create around 26 jobs for both the WLFN and the Tŝideldel First Nation, which has partnered to grind the debris on-site and ship it to local markets. The high-quality slash fibre is used by Pinnacle Renewable Energy to make industrial wood pellets. Lower-quality slash fibre is turned into ‘hog’ fuel, to be used by Atlantic Power Corporation’s biomass-fired generating facility in Williams Lake, to provide thermal electricity for the community’s energy grid.