BIOMASS: ALTERNATIVE POWER SOURCE?

For a number of years since my involvement in creating an alternative waste recovery and recycling industry from composting municipal solid waste for New Brunswick, with Moncton's municipal waste processing center now operated by W-A Waste Commission, I have, as many tired and bored friends will attest, been raving about the use and promise of biomass for energy production. Energy production here in New Brunswick

Home grown fiber cartel to make New Brunswick less dependent on the tyrants who happen to be sitting on oil and gas reserves in the sand, while we happen to be sitting on blueberry fields and peat bogs here. They get the gold and we get the shaft to recall a regrettable C & W song.

Now a study in the US confirms that Biomass production on available land is feasible in the US and the ratios should hold true in New Brunswick.



Following is my "Short version of New Brunswick's possible energy independence strategy.

New Brunswick would grow its own fuel source from harvesting hybrid tall grasses and 5-6 year mature cycle weed trees ( hybrid poplar trees ), and then converted in a series of regional centralized capture points the fiber would be converted to power. The NB Energy Commission would pay NB farmers to grow the field fiber and woodlot owners operating poplar high growth plantations a premium harvested price for their raw fiber. The existing infrastructure of boom trucks and transports now plying our highways for pulp and saw mills would have another cash crop to haul.

The generating stations set out in a rationalized network to provide the majority of power to City, Towns and Villages across New Brunswick would purchase their first 50% of power from the local generation and contract with NB Power for the remaining 50% plus a coverage fee for maintenance of standby capacity and transmission. The Provinces production of biomass based fuel would be primarily converted into biomass fuel for electricity generation consumed in local community markets for a made in New Brunswick price point.

Existing power or surplus power capacity generated from foreign oil or hydro would continue to be sold where and when possible to export markets to offset the made in New Brunswick cost of power.

This is not an exact science of pricing, rather it is an idea that is based on helpless debt. If we are to be burdened with a huge energy tax levy or fee for our need for energy, then lets pay ourselves first and get off our dependence on foreign sources. This is not based on debt reduction. As an idea it is based on since we are in an impossible cost and supply of energy problem and facing mounting capital debt for whatever decision we take, then lets take one where the spin off is domestic inside New Brunswick, and be hostile to world market prices.

NB Power would be directed by its owners ( we the people ), to purchase this power at a significant price against the displacement of international oil cartels and wanna be ethnic terrorists and quasi dictators who pose as crude oil producers, brokers, and who are collecting a tax levy on every New Brunswicker today, as well as the industrial World.

Right now, I am only concerned about New Brunswick and the capacity to convert our dormant landmass that is not growing potatoes or wood pulp into a source of high grade premium priced fuel stock, and let someone else bury Lepreau's nuclear rods in their backyard.

The report below is a harbinger of potential economic change and encouragement to people like me to keep harping and promoting new thinking for tired economies, such as New Brunswick is enduring right now. To fully understand the economic issues facing New Brunswick in a reasoned and intelligent manner, read It's The Economy Stupid, by David Campbell in LocalintheKnow's Local Perspective Section here.

At some future point, I will commit that hour long rant to reasoned print and logic about why this Province should be targeting 30% conversion of its energy consumption from fossil fuel to alternative energy source combinations. For now, I commend this report to your reading.

What brings this potential to biomass for New Brunswick's future to mind is the following newsletter account of a recent study recommending that the US get on-board with a BIOMASS energy alternative production strategy.

One thing that I did learn in pioneering the composting of municipal solid waste in Canada using modern, computer controlled manufacturing processes, was that the engineers and researchers at Oak Ridge Labs are formidable innovators and research labs. They came to life as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority that helped nurse the US rural areas out of their 30's Economic Great Depression and today they are a leading source of agriculture and economic development initiatives.

So when this week they released the following commentary, I decided to add this my Blog for your reading convenience. A link to the full printed report is below or by clicking on the title of this post.

Growth In Biomass Could Put U.S. On Road To Energy Independence

4/27/2005 Oak Ridge, TN — Relief from soaring prices at the gas pump could come in the form of corncobs, cornstalks, switchgrass and other types of biomass, according to a joint feasibility study for the departments of Agriculture and Energy.

The recently completed Oak Ridge National Laboratory report outlines a national strategy in which 1 billion dry tons of biomass – any organic matter that is available on a renewable or recurring basis – would displace 30 percent of the nation's petroleum consumption for transportation. Supplying more than 3 percent of the nation's energy, biomass already has surpassed hydropower as the largest domestic source of renewable energy, and researchers believe much potential remains.

"Our report answers several key questions," said Bob Perlack, a member of ORNL's Environmental Sciences Division and a co-author of the report. "We wanted to know how large a role biomass could play, whether the United States has the land resources and whether such a plan would be economically viable."

Looking at just forestland and agricultural land, the two largest potential biomass sources, the study found potential exceeding 1.3 billion dry tons per year. That amount is enough to produce biofuels to meet more than one-third of the current demand for transportation fuels, according to the report.

Such an amount, which would represent a six-fold increase in production from the amount of biomass produced today, could be achieved with only relatively modest changes in land use and agricultural and forestry practices.

"One of the main points of the report is that the United States can produce nearly 1 billion dry tons of biomass annually from agricultural lands and still continue to meet food, feed and export demands," said Robin Graham, leader for Ecosystem and Plant Sciences in ORNL's Environmental Sciences Division.

The benefits of an increased focus on biomass include increased energy security as the U.S. would become less dependent on foreign oil, a potential 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and an improved rural economic picture.

Current production of ethanol is about 3.4 billion gallons per year, but that total could reach 80 billion gallons or more under the scenario outlined in this report. Such an increase in ethanol production would see transportation fuels from biomass increase from 0.5 percent of U.S. consumption in 2001 to 4 percent in 2010, 10 percent in 2020 and 20 percent in 2030.
In fact, depending on several factors, biomass could supply 15 percent of the nation's energy by 2030.

Meanwhile, biomass consumption in the industrial sector would increase at an annual rate of 2 percent through 2030, while biomass consumption by electric utilities would double every 10 years through 2030. During the same time, production of chemicals and materials from bio-based products would increase from about 12.5 billion pounds, or 5 percent of the current production of target U.S. chemical commodities in 2001, to 12 percent in 2010, 18 percent in 2020 and 25 percent in 2030.

Nearly half of the 2,263 million acres that comprise the land base of the U.S. has potential for growing biomass. About 33 percent of the land area is classified as forest, 26 percent as grassland, 20 percent as cropland, 13 percent as urban areas, swamps and deserts, and 8 percent as special uses such as public facilities.

The report, titled "Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply," was sponsored by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Biomass Program. Lynn Wright and Anthony Turhollow of ORNL, Bryce Stokes of the USDA Forest Service and Don Erbach of the USDA Agriculture Research Service are co-authors of the report.

The complete report is available at: http://feedstockreview.ornl.gov/pdf/billion_ton_vision.pdf. Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

I am going to attempt to study it further and will share highlights from it in future posts to this blog.

My question would be, is anyone in New Brunswick even thinking about identifying how our dormant rural land mass of alder growth and vast wasted spaces of cleared lands and stripped forest woodlot floors could be converted to production of a cash crop?

Biomass is a potential rural economic cash crop that does not need a concrete bunker to store the waste bi-product as nuclear waste does now.

MORE SIGNS-ALBERT CO. GAS

New Brunswick Well to Test Large Gas Accumulation

It may come to pass that the Albert County mytholody holds and that there are riches in them thar hills.

The announcements regarding significant gas deposits keep coming in. This just in from Houston, regarding the Hiram Brook area that is aout 25 miles - as the crow flies in Albert County back the Pine Glen Rd in Riverview.

By OGJ editorsHOUSTON, Apr. 19 -- Corridor Resources Inc., Halifax, said it spudded the C-67 well in western McCully field in New Brunswick, which is estimated to contain more than 1 tcf of gas in place in the Hiram Brook member of the Albert formation in the Mississippian Horton Group.

Projected TD is 2,325 m to the base of the Hiram Brook. Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, the landowner and gas purchaser, elected not to participate in the well.

The new drilling is part of an effort to eventually connect the field to the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline to New England after proving more reserves.

McCully's two producing wells have averaged more than 1 MMcfd of gas for 2 years. This "excellent performance" demonstrates the potential for the field to supply larger markets in New Brunswick and beyond, Corridor said.

TAXPAYERS AS SHAREHOLDERS

Commentary Saint John LNG Plant- Part II

Commentary Saint John LNG Plant - Part I

This subsequent post on economic development is in response to the previous posting concerning a Dell Computer Manufacturing plant deal in North Carolina, which is now the subject of several articles in follow up as the repercussions for this deal involving substantial government funds and tax breaks works its way through the economic development industry in the US and Canada.

Area Development Magazine-February-March Issue

These developments in how the economic development game is played is the new marketplace reality for Moncton.

The coverage details in these articles from Area Development Magazine is why this on-line magazine is featured so prominently here because the issues discussed and the financial facts about how US State deals are being assembled for tax incentives and the reports on it are of pertinent relevance to the previously discussed tax break for the Irving's LNG terminal plant in Saint John. These trends are going to influence future deals that New Brunswick will be involved in as it tries to expand its provincial economy.

Following is my overview of where this is leading us in New Brunswick and why.

I've known personally three previous Premiers of New Brunswick from my community publishing and political volunteering efforts, as well as an assortment of Cabinet Ministers, and senior bureaucrats now safely retired including several adherents to the fortunes of federal politics in Ottawa.

I have little personal knowledge of current Premier Lord other than what I read in the papers and from anguished friendly members of the provincial Tories who wish he would live up to his potential. They say this only in the privacy of their own Scotch and I must say that hope springs eternal in them the more of it they have. Some even dream of the Hatfield days. Its bad.

To a man and a woman, they say and said in their time, the same thing differently.




"Give us a break".

New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada need a level playing field if we are to be continuously denied access to car manufacturing plants, and oil and gas reserve royalties here.

Alberta gets to celebrate debt free days and moral tupor superiority, while Bernard Lord hacks away finding chump change for personal tax relief in a declining economic marketplace called New Brunswick.

"Stake us one car plant and we will not need DREE"-( Premier Richard Hatfield circa 1974).

Ottawa's DREE was the then precursor to what is now ACOA and several other alphabet soup named Federal Government Agencies over the years that have poured millions into Atlantic Canada and during the Romeo LeBlanc days- the lion's share of funds in New Brunswick. They were the salad days it turns out.

I think of this every time I drive by the glass plaza building at the first Bouctouche turnoff, a sample of Federal largess run amuck at the time. It is a story within a story, but not for today.

DREE then, like ACOA now, was missioned to bring Atlantic Canada into economic wealth generation in league with central and western Canada.

The then Premier Hatfield, who did valiantly try for a car plant on his own ( Oh Bricklin), when the big three US car giants would not share their federal and Ontario and Quebec Government sponsored financial inducements to travel further east than Quebec City to build a car plant, was fond of reminding Ottawa that stake him(NB), a car plant, and he would stop calling Ottawa for financial and economic development help.

Everyone knows that when car plant locations were being handed out in the 60's and 70's with huge dollops of Federal Government cash and tax paper funded grants to locate or expand within central Canada, the Maritimes got none. That effectively sealed our fate to never have real economic growth beyond transfer payments or guilt money from successive federal governments that know that without the automotive industry-even Ontario's economy would be well on its way to being toast.

Ontario, where one in six jobs is directly related to the free, tax subsidized flow of vehicles from Canada's colonial car assembly plants to the US marketplace, has what passes for a booming balanced economy. The Pearson Auto Pact of the early 60's is up for renewal and toast status is but a decision away.

That economy staked by the automotive industry is now attracting all the immigration numbers and this further reduces the chance Maritimers have of future economic growth from population growth and new investment talent from immigration.

History hinges are 50 year events in which one decision to locate a rail center or an infrastructure like a major new highway,( ask any bypassed community), changes not only the current decision, but decisions to come as they aggregate around the original opportunity. Cars built Ontario and created endless jobs attracting immigrant populations who are attracting more immigrants, which in itself becomes self fulfilling economic development.

For then Premier McKenna, ever the realist and not afraid to speak his considerable mind - hang on Washington there's a new mouth in town, - well he stated in characteristic straight talk fashion that were New Brunswick afforded a natural gas or oil reserve royalty similar to that powering the Conservative and Reform minded politicians of Alberta, then he too could wax philosophical about the part time economy of eastern Canada and the moral need for federal equalization payments.

In short, spare us the sermons on developing an economy not dependent on transfer payments from free marketplace Pope (Premier) Ralph Klein. Economic Development for New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada is not a morality play.

Tomorrow's next election and probably those for the next decade until the Reform Party aka Conservative Party wins, will be fought by ConservativeReformers on the notion that cutting off equalization funds to Atlantic Canada will be no different that cutting junkies off their drug supply.

Watch for it.

Premier Robichaud played 60's NB politics like a riverboat gambler and was always trying to invite foreign players to come in and set up shop in the woodlands and remote mining areas of New Brunswick. He did this because the emerging giant that was then K.C Irving even before their pervasive hold over the Province's Woodlands of today was in place, would have someone to hedge the Province's bets against. The recent deal at St. Anne Nackawic, one of Robichaud's greatest economic development announcements and moments among many, also died on the same month that he did.

Recent announcements of the re-opening of the plant in another product line will give another 30 year shot at tax generation and new truck sales in that part of New Brunswick.

Of course Robichaud really never meant any of his opposition to Irving the Elder, and by the time he himself passed recently, the surviving and now flourishing Irving family members paid him their due as a worthy and honored adversary. Much of the Irving families economic growth is based on those K.C negotiations and deals made in the 60's hay days, at least by today's economic standards.

An adversary in politics only, because at the end of the day, it was always about economic expansion and job creation. Robichaud knew that what was good for Irving was always good for New Brunswick, because unlike other international resource developer giants, the Irvings lived and procreated here and would never move to another location-du-jour in the future. What Robert Irving is creating in tissue fibers and boxboard is a dream economic development extension and spin off of those 60's deals by his grandfather.

Any woodlands industry New Brunswick enjoys today is largely because of the marketing expertise and risk investment of the Irving family.

This commentary is in light of follow up conversations and a number of emails regarding the concept of tax relief and public funds being used to stimulate economic development. Tax incentives was the main focus of the previous post and we have more information as well as valuable links available on better evaluating Saint John's LNG Terminal tax cap deal. The World of government economics for community development is changing.

In Moncton, there is the downtown development deal that involves some jockeying of position to create more growth in buildings and facilities in Downtown Moncton. Again public funds are at play.

These decisions and those upcoming need to be made in light of the information coming from a US magazine that focuses on the industry niche called Community Economic Development or Location Development. The graphics here are used to allow you to link to the site and following the links to the articles



The new information is a further reporting on the Dell Computer deal for a manufacturing plant in North Carolina that was announced in the same week that the modest by comparison deal was announced for a new brewery in Greater Moncton by the Molson-Coors company.

To read the more commentary on this Dell Deal, click on Up Up and Away on the February issue of Area Development Magazine.

The implications of the Dell deal, while a US deal are indicative of the global stakes in attracting new industrial infrastructure into any community.



A second article from the same economic development magazine read by economic developers around the World and in North America in particular, interestingly lists the available and public incentives that State governments are now assembling into tax incentive to get on the short list of locations where new manufacturing and service depots are prepared to invest.

It is a sobering read.

There is even some hand wringing over the eventual cost to the taxpayers of those respective areas and the fact that negotiators for States are requesting that their legislators provide them with secrecy provisions to make better deals happen.

The third article of interest is the Whose Cashing In on government incentives and who is not and the implications that these non-direct and indirect benefits that accrue to shareholders of often publicly traded companies are going to be handled on their SEC filings.

If Government in competitive situations find a way to do a deal with out full disclosure of the terms, can they then see their privacy completely shattered by the SEC filings and annual reports where public companies are forced by their Boards to reveal to shareholders just what the incentives mean for their anticipated bottom lines. This is going to get interesting yet and will find its way back to Moncton.

Last night in Moncton Council, Brian Hicks a councilor who is not easily tricked on any financial matter or internal political bargaining schemes was denied the request to make public the terms of a parking deal for a downtown call center relocation- a boon to Downtown Moncton development, nor the terms of a land assembly deal with Veridoc-Generation Place for the future deal on a Convention Center. He will be back. Count on it and so will this issue.

Economic Development is becoming the new stealth industry of Governments because every government is now a competitor to every other government in every country.



The new reality is that business is demanding that governments who have their hands in their corporate tax pockets and in the pockets of the labor force they employ must now pay up front to have a long term tax play and cash flow from private capital's effort.

Like it or not, governments are equity players in every deal of size today without the benefit of stockholders status. After all, when you do the math at the 5 year out date from the day the plant starts, governments are gaining up to 30% of the pre-tax earnings of the whole economic pie through corporate, property capital equity, and personal as well as consumer income tax recovery.

Without the plant, there is no revenue, so the argument is compelling that the taxpayer gives up nothing in actual dollars since the financial pump will not be there unless they(governments) are a true economic partner.

This is a topic that we will continue to comment on as it is the future economic platform decision that is facing New Brunswick in Point Lepreau among many other major development decisions today that will impact on the New Brunswick of 2050, which is where we have to be focused.

The original article that prompted this second post.

Commentary Saint John LNG Plant - Part I

For even more commentary on economic development issues in New Brunswick, follow the blog commentary of David Campbell's It's the Economy Stupid as he offers some of the clearest commentary on economic development approaches for New Brunswick and about New Brunswick.