Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 6 - Evidence - Meeting of June 3, 2010
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:04 a.m. to study the current state and future of Canada's forest sector.
Senator Percy Mockler (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning and welcome, honourable senators and witnesses. I declare this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry in session. I am Percy Mockler, from New Brunswick.
This morning, we will hear witnesses from four organizations: Nicolas Mainville, from Greenpeace; Trevor Hesselink, from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society; William Sammons, from EcoLaw; and Emma Cane, from the Sierra Club.
[Translation]
I would like to thank our witnesses for accepting our invitation to appear. Your presence here this morning is very important.
The committee is continuing its consideration of the current state and future of Canada's forest sector with special emphasis on biomass.
[English]
Before I ask the witnesses to make their presentations, I would ask senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Mercer: I am Terry Mercer from Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: I am Fernand Robichaud from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: I am Frank Mahovlich, from Ontario.
Senator Plett: Good morning, I am Don Plett, from Manitoba.
Senator Eaton: Hello and thank you for coming. I am Nichole Eaton, from Ontario.
Senator Ogilvie: Kelvin Ogilvie, Nova Scotia.
Senator Kochhar: I am Vim Kochhar, from Ontario. I replace Senator Michael Duffy today.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: I am Michel Rivard from the province of Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, senators.
Our witnesses today have handed copies of their presentations to the clerk of the committee. They are in one official language only. Do I have agreement and permission to distribute the copies to the committee?
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: Mr Chairman, I would, however, like to request that a translated version of the documents be provided to us.
The Chairman: I would ask the clerk to take care of having these documents translated.
[English]
Presentations will begin with Mr. Mainville, followed by Mr. Hesselink, Dr. Sammons and Ms. Cane. After the presentations, senators will ask questions.
Mr. Mainville, please proceed.
[Translation]
Nicolas Mainville, responsible, Greenpeace Forest Campaign: Before I begin, I would just like to point out that my presentation was organized somewhat at the last minute and therefore, I will provide a summary of my statement in French electronically.
I am very pleased to be here this morning to talk to you about biomass, which is a hot button issue of some concern for us since it appears to be benefiting from a certain amount of positive press.
I am a biologist with a Master's degree in environmental science. My special field of interest is forests.
I am going to talk to you about Greenpeace's concerns over forest biomass and the solutions envisaged in this rapidly growing area.
First of all, I think it is important to clarify the concept of forest biomass. The term is widely used but we have noted that it is the source of some confusion. With a view to clarifying the issue, I would like to focus on provincial programs, and more specifically, on the 2008 Quebec program, which states that forest biomass is pretty much everything that grows in a forest including unharvested commercial trees, non commercial trees, partially burned trees as well as trees affected by insect infestations and forest residue. All of this is covered by the umbrella term forest biomass. We should not forget that it also includes sawmill waste. There is a whole range of resources covered by the term biomass.
It is important to understand that biomass-oriented felling, or in other words, the harvesting of trees to be processed into chips and then burned has a direct impact on the forest.
We would like to make it very clear, from the outset, that biomass is not in fact residue as it is often called. Actual residue comprises branches left behind on the forest floor after a tree is harvested. We should never lose sight of the fact that this is what feeds our forests. We are not talking, for example, about hydrocarbons or coal that has been held in the ground for millions of years but rather about an ecosystem producing living wood biomass that all sorts of organisms depend on for survival. It is very important to consider this interaction.
Generating energy from a living substance has a major direct impact on life. Let us focus on the first but, by no means, the least impacted area: a forest's soil. Harvesting biomass, felling trees and removing wood from a forest has a major impact on the soil, and more specifically, on its acidity. When biomass is left on the ground it acts as a chemical buffer to reduce soil acidity.
We have all been aware of the issue of acid rain for some time now. The situation has improved over time but continues, however, to be an issue in Southern Quebec and Ontario. Removing biomass from forests raises soil acidity, which in turn, jeopardizes the long-term productivity of our forests. We should remember that.
Second, I would like to address the issue of carbon. This is the focus of a great deal of climate-related concern. Biomass is considered to be a green solution and is often referred to as being carbon neutral. You will hear the buzzword carboneutrality used, but unfortunately it is a myth. Harvesting and burning branches, trunks, whole trees, bushes and leaves to produce energy will never be carbon neutral. This myth must be dispelled.
When forest lumber is cut and hauled out to build roads and when it is harvested, dried and processed to produce energy, it takes the ecosystem 60, 70, 90 years before it recovers and becomes a carbon sink again.
As you know the carbon cycle is the following. Trees are felled and burned. Carbon is emitted into the atmosphere. Over time, the trees grow back and start to capture carbon again through photosynthesis. This process is represented in simple terms as renewable energy or a neutral cycle. However, in reality, we have to take into account the energy used to fuel cogeneration plants, which, for example, burn 10, 15, 20, loads of biomass per day to transport, dry and burn the fuel for the plant. The soil and forest affected during the harvesting process will continue to emit carbon until the forest regains it productivity. In my opinion, this is an extremely important issue.
Greenpeace is concerned by the fact that there is no precautionary principle for the time being. As far as this is concerned, we should draw on the lessons learned from the popularity of agrifuels. Bill C-33 ushered in the use of ethanol, specifically grain corn ethanol in the production of energy. We have now observed the environmental footprint associated with the use of agrifuels as well as the rise in prices across the world and food crisis that it caused. We must, as a society, give serious thought to the impact of the mass use of biomass particularly when planning to convert coal-fired power plants to biomass.
Biomass is currently being used and it is possible to do this in a smart way. You only have to look at current provincial programs to see that there is major environmental slippage. However, there are steps that can be taken to prevent that. For example, restrictions could be placed on harvesting. Currently, there are none. The only restriction on harvesting now is the inability of machines to remove all the biomass. Approximately 30 per cent of biomass is left behind. This is not acceptable to Greenpeace.
A greater proportion of biomass must be left to ensure the forest is able to regenerate. If we want to avoid environmental slippage, we have to promote the smart use of this highly valuable raw material. The current situation in Quebec, because the forest sector is heavily subsidized, is that there is no minimum price for biomass. Prices are set based on supply and demand.
Given that demand is still relatively weak compared to supply, the price of biomass, which is so important to forest health, could possibly be very low for several years to come. However, we are dealing here with productive public land and a commodity with the potential to generate major economic spin-offs.
As far as the image of the forestry industry is concerned, a three-year agreement was reached between the main environmental groups and 21 major companies. The agreement is designed to promote the conservation of the Canadian boreal forest as well as improved forestry practices.
It is clear that a societal initiative to use forest resources to generate energy raises questions. Is this really the right approach? Should we really be harvesting our forests on a massive scale in order to produce energy?
It is worth pointing out that wood was in fact humanity's first source of energy and the large-scale use of biomass is not the way of the future but in fact a return to the past. It is important to remember that wood is not an efficient energy source. Wood in fact contains a dense amount of water and other components in addition to the carbon required to produce energy.
There are several energy-generation alternatives available to Quebec and Canada. As things stand now, biomass is only appropriate for a small number of initiatives, including the conversion of existing oil-heated buildings. It would be an appropriate alternative here because biomass would offset the use of hydrocarbons.
Small-scale heating systems and forest co-operatives should be given the go ahead. However, Greenpeace believes that large-scale electricity production using biomass is a non sequitur as far as the climate and environment are concerned. We feel this needs to be flagged because biomass-based electricity-production is not environmentally friendly. It is important to think about that.
New biomass-based electricity production programs have been developed in Canada. For instance, in Quebec, an additional 125 megawatts of electricity are being produced. However, 97 per cent of Quebec energy is hydroelectricity, which is particularly clean in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
Why develop a type of energy production that emits large amounts of greenhouse gases, which will ultimately have a major impact on forests, when there are already much more promising alternatives? A comprehensive analysis of the biomass life cycle raises the issue of biomass's carbon footprint as well as its impact on the soil, biodiversity and growth cycle.
I would like to point out that forests are under stress and have been intensively harvested for the past few decades. Therefore, the question is really whether large-scale harvesting is really desirable.
[English]
Trevor Hesselink, Director, Forests Programs, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society: Thank you very much. I will be speaking in English; I wish my high school French was better.
I have circulated a publication of mine that is a fairly high-level conservation critique or perspective, but I am not planning on getting into many of those details as they overlap with those of my colleague Mr. Mainville. I put that on the table for education and further consideration.
I will now go through a brief presentation that responds to your challenge to look for pros and cons to the biomass opportunity. There are limits to that opportunity — and Mr. Mainville has indicated many of them — and we must respect these limits. There is a general understanding of this, but I will try to frame that in a little more detail.
The invitation concerned pros and cons of using biomass and biofuels, and that will be my focus. I am a professional generalist and a policy analyst. Whenever you ask a question of technical policy types, the answer is always, ``It is complicated,'' or ``It depends.'' There are a lot of details and it is a complicated arena.
In the biomass bandwagon that Mr. Mainville was describing, we are seeing a full range of applications being proposed in all the provinces and across the country. It includes a huge raft of project types that I would call the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of the projects are a good use of the opportunity; others are not. To try to paint it as being a black and white situation is dangerous for that reason.
If we are looking at how to scope down our investment opportunities, we need to parse out the good opportunities and separate them from the ugly. To do that, we will have to dig down into application-level merits; that is, we must figure out which portions of the sector are worthy of investment.
I would suggest four useful scoping criteria: source, application, effects and purpose. I will now walk through those in sequence.
I will leave a copy of this presentation behind later, as I will be going through it fairly quickly.
In terms of ``source,'' where does the forest biomass come from? That is an important consideration. If we are talking about more intensity of removals, there is a whole basket of concerns, and Mr. Mainville covered many of them. If we are basing it on current removal levels and current silviculture practices, we must remember that we are in the first rotation in many places. In some cases, we are going into primary forests in Canada; in some places we might have second and even third generation. However, with respect to comparing against agriculture with multiple rotations under our belt, we are not there yet with forestry. It is a different animal. Current removal levels have not yet proven to be sustainable. That is because it takes a long time, so it is important to carefully consider time.
On the issue of biomass logging versus conventional logging, we are seeing early indications — and there is a photograph here from Nova Scotia — of some of the practices from biomass-focused loggers that are coming in that are not conventional loggers. There is a good deal of learning curve because they do not necessarily have a history of sustainable practice under their belt. That is something that we need to keep our eye on. That integration is a better place to go and we can learn from the experience.
Similarly, in terms of sourcing our wood, basing it on silviculture mistakes, such as regrowing low-quality hardwood in otherwise pure conifer situations, is problematic. To consider them to be sustainable is problematic. Do we want to perpetuate mistakes as part of a supply chain? That is a concern.
More positively — and the committee has indicated this in the document here, among other categories — the idea of sourcing from postproduction mill waste is sound and an integrated area that has received a lot of attention. It has already been integrated in the conventional stream in a lot of cases. That area is far less problematic, as is anything that diverts biomass from landfill, such as bark-type operations and other areas worthy of consideration. Health criteria and other things need to be addressed, but from a sourcing/forest ecology perspective, those ones are preferable.
Some red flags are as follows: sources that are far from the application being considered, requiring significant transport; sources that can be used for higher values or better uses; and sources that are removed from the forest either more frequently or more intensely through volume. Those are things to watch for. The green lights on the graphic are the flip side of those things that I have already mentioned.
Application is the second criterion. How do we propose to use the forest biomass? ``Application'' considers what we are trying to do with it. For example, heat versus energy is a more efficient output. Scale of activity is also important, especially on a low productive forest. Large operations have to go very far and also require a lot of volume. Volume, distance and scale are all important in considering the viability of the operation.
Another factor is how fussy an application is with respect to quality of inputs. Is it looking for stem wood off the forest versus being able to use other parts of the tree, for example?
Is a lot of energy required to transform it into a useful energy source? For example, 20 per cent of a wood pellet's energy, about a fifth of its volume, is used to compress it and dry it out to the point of being a pellet, or something in that area. You can quote me, but I will give you the citation.
The productivity of the source forest is important as well. The farther north we go, the lower the productivity of the forest and the farther you have to go to feed the same unit of application. That is very important. In Canada, we do not have highly productive forests. The trees take a long time to grow and the ecosystems are slow in sequestering carbon. It is important to look at that.
This graphic gives you the spectrum of application efficiency. Within that one sub-criterion of application efficiency, there is an array of efficiency levels, ranging from 75 per cent on the process heat side, all the way down to the 20 per cent range for a 20-megawatt power plant that is just producing electricity.
On the application side, the red flags are as follows: large volume requirements; centralized operations that would require large supply radiuses or distance from supply; high-quality fibre that needs stem wood; requiring a lot of energy to process; and producing electricity at a low efficiency. Those are the red flags and it is the converse for the green lights, with heat energy perhaps being the focus there.
The third criterion is effects: What are the predictable effects? Effects are important because it is from this knowledge that we can realize how confidently we can go forward in understanding an application. The key is being able to predict the effects. There are always opportunity costs and unintended consequences to consider, but we also have many tools to predict the effects and we have the literature to support many of them. Some of the effects are as follows: ecosystem services; value; jobs; biodiversity; and climate. The publication I have circulated gets into these, as well as a raft of others.
The ability to analyze cumulative impacts is important when dealing with ecosystem impacts because they can happen slowly or incrementally. It is difficult to understand these effects without looking at them in a systems model.
The other filter is, of course, time. Forests are unlike agriculture in that the rotation can be long, especially when in relation to primary forests, which might have taken 150 to 200 years or more in a boreal condition to get to that state.
We use tools like full life cycle analysis, for example, to make the argument that embodied energy and using wood products in buildings is a direction we want to go. It is a useful and necessary way to look at the problem to make that set of decisions.
It is very important to have a full life cycle analysis to examine our biomass energy projects as well. It is important to dig deeper than the concept of carbon neutrality and look at the different carbon transactions involved. A recent article in Science suggested it is far easier to count emissions at the one side and then work on the terrestrial landscape on the other side of the ledger. That is the honest way of addressing the accounting problem created through the Kyoto framework, which is an accounting framework of convenience, not a technical or science framework.
The last item in my suggested scoping criteria is purpose: Do the effects we are achieving meet the public interest or goals over the long term? We have a long-term duty to the public interest. We must be aware at the outset that actions can have unintended consequences, can warp markets and can have many spillover effects. It is important to consider that we have a long-term time scale, for example, seven generations of governance, or whatever your useful frame is. Those time scales are not only appropriate, but they also line up better with the time scales of forest development.
In a policy arena, the concept of sustainable, forest-derived benefits is important and central to the concept of forest biomass. Whether the benefits are economic, social or both, they are intrinsically reliant upon long-term ecological sustainability. This premise is important because there is a priority sequence in terms of the three legs of the sustainable and development stool.
One action that will certainly always be a smart one to take in that case is to build up our natural capital and invest in those forests from which we are deriving the benefits for that reason.
This graphic is a comparison of two ways to look at the same three spheres, and there is a critical difference if we frame our thinking one way versus the other. It is a balancing approach versus a reliance approach, or a deep ecology model approach. The balancing approach in practice — and I have seen this on the ground in Ontario — can blur the necessity of having ecosystem health as a priority. That blurring can actually shift the natural flow of natural capital to benefits for future users. That is pretty important framing.
Time is one of those critical variables that we cannot speak enough about, and I want to leave it with you.
Climate change mitigation is one of the primary reasons we are considering many of these biomass energy projects, and it is important, therefore, to look at the time reference. The fact that we already have a carbon-laden atmosphere is the state of play, and the situation in the terrestrial landscape is another part of the state of play. We also have an action window of decades, but that is not a long window. We are talking about forests that take hundreds of years to get into a state of optimal carbon sequestration. That goes well beyond the action window right now.
Similarly, if we are using the same amount of carbon for combustion to produce energy that would otherwise go into two-by-fours or other wood products, we must talk about time, and carbon over time, in terms of the carbon stored in this committee table, for example. If we are going to burn that instead for energy, there is an opportunity cost to that choice. Those are the important parts of these life cycle conversations.
To sum up, there is a four-criteria tool to help sift through the good, the bad and the ugly out there. I hope this presentation has been useful, and I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, sir.
The next presenter is Dr. Sammons.
Doctor William Sammons, EcoLaw: Good morning and thank you for having me here. I spent a good part of my childhood in Canada and I have snowboarded here and fished a lot. As a physician, I am an admirer of your medical system. I wish our Congress had paid more attention to it in the last year.
I will talk about biomass combustion at the scale of commercial electricity generation. Currently in the news, the Massey coal mine disaster and the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are fair warning that if we do not take into account the risk involved when making policy, the consequences can be dire.
One thing that is rapidly changing in the medical world is the appreciation of the significant impact of particulates. Biomass combustion is a particularly high generator of particulates, so that is where I will focus most of my attention today.
The data that we have been looking at over the last couple of years clearly shows that biomass combustion is dirtier than burning coal per unit of power produced in terms of CO2 production and the production of particulate matter. I will show you figures in that regard. As was just mentioned, it will not be carbon neutral within any kind of time frame that makes it supportable or meritorious in terms of a climate change solution.
Finally, we need to pay attention to the potential health impacts, whether in Canada or internationally, of the added emissions, especially the particulate emissions, because they add to the secondary external costs to be accounted for in terms of policy making.
This is just an example of what we put forward before a number of committees, the U.S. Congress and a series of meetings with the EPA. Before generating this, no one had looked at the emissions from these plants. I will be happy to send you an enlargement and the supporting documents. The red lines represent three proposed biomass plants in Massachusetts. We have figures comparable figures on about 50 other plants in the United States. We have compared the proposed plants to Boardman, a coal-burning plant in Oregon, and to PVEC, a natural gas burning plant in Massachusetts. The CO2 column shows that, in general, per megawatt of power produced each year, the CO2 production is roughly one third greater than it is when burning coal. It is not clean.
Furthermore, and more distressing to me as a physician, if you look at the far right-hand column showing particulates, you will see that the numbers are as much as 186 per cent higher than those produced by burning coal. The particulates produced at the Palmer Plant are lower because it is a construction demolition burning plant and the required controls are significantly greater at that plant in Massachusetts than at the wood burning plant.
In anticipation of a question, this was done with every control turned on. The numbers are from company documents and are not calculations or models. They are from their own air permit applications. This is the maximum benefit, so to speak, that we can expect.
Going back to the one of the things used to promote these plants is their claim to be clean energy. I hope you see from these figures that the raw data on stack emissions shows they are anything but clean.
This will be a significant problem. I have been trying to do some research in Canada on how many plants are proposed, but I cannot come up with a hard number. The U.S. Department of Energy projection for 2020 is that if we hit 20 per cent renewable energy, about 60 per cent of that energy, which is supposed to be clean and green, will come from biomass combustion. Conservatively speaking, that will generate more than 700 million tons per year of CO2. The real number is about 850 million tons of CO2.
The following is a key piece of information. I believe that this still holds true in Canada, although we did get agreement from the EPA two weeks ago tomorrow that they are about to change this policy. Biomass plants are allowed to report their CO2 emissions as zero. Everybody is trying to pretend that this number will not exist. The U.S. will spend in excess of $100 billion to subsidize these plants in the next five years to get them built. However, in doing so, we will actually accelerate climate change and the problem of CO2 emissions release. This has an important impact in terms of the environment. We are seeing that rising CO2 levels have an augmentative and additive effect on other health effects in terms of exposure to both particulates and NOx ozone levels.
The EPA said last April that with respect to all the CO2 currently emitted, 50 per cent of it will take 30 years to reabsorb. The number they talked about two Thursdays ago is about 45 years. Another 30 per cent will take centuries to reabsorb and 20 per cent will take thousands of years to reabsorb. The time window for action that we need to address is very short in terms of both health care policy and climate control. In fact, when you burn wood on that scale for commercial electrical power generation, you can expect a time window for carbon neutrality of 200 years, as stated by Dr. Hamburg in a New York Times editorial last week. This man wrote the original IPCC policy — the accounting model for biomass.
Even though the emissions of carbon dioxide from burning wood are higher than from burning coal per unit of power and even though it is not carbon neutral, we still report zero CO2. I do not know how you will address this in terms of Canada's policy situation. Perhaps you will not let it be called biomass and perhaps you will not have tax subsidies if the CO2 is not accounted for and/or these plants run at low efficiency. Most of them run at 23 to 24 per cent efficiency, whereas most coal plants run at 33 to 35 per cent efficiency. To qualify for financial subsidies, the definition of biomass might also include that it be used in a way that is energy efficient.
Mr. Hesselink quoted this paper before but I added other references from the October 23 Science article. Basically, it says that we can no longer afford to exempt CO2 emissions.
I will talk now about particulates. This is a booming area of medical research. When I first started to look at this subject about a year ago, I found that there have been more than 3,000 articles since 2006 regarding particulate emissions.
Particulate emissions come in three types. Generally what is measured and accounted for in most of the air permits in the United States, Canada and the world is PM 10. PM 10 refers to 10 microns, which is about one tenth the diameter of a human hair. It is an abrasive that produces health consequences when it is breathed in. It makes you cough and it irritates your throat. The very important particulates are PM 2.5 ultrafines, nanos and aerosols. They are all major health hazards, which I will explain briefly. The important thing to remember is that most of the current technology, including ``baghouse'' technology that is generally used to control particulates in biomass combustion, does not capture effectively any of these particles. They are released into the atmosphere.
I found an article on air and waste management from a few years ago that basically says the same thing. We do not have a good way to control the release of these finer particles, which are the health hazard. This summary chart before you shows some of the effects of PM 2.5. I will go into the nano and the ultrafines because they are more significant. The important thing to remember is that not only does it affect healthy individuals, but it has a very significant effect on adults who have cardio-respiratory disease and it has a maximal effect on children growing up exposed to these levels over periods of time. It has now been shown that not only does it make disease worse, it actually causes disease.
When I was going to medical school 35 years ago, they taught us that exposure made people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease more symptomatic. They have now been able to show that children exposed to higher and still legally safe levels of particulates over time have a much higher incidence of new asthma cases; it has been shown that the current levels we expose children to cause disease.
This slide is a reference to the various types of particulates. It explains, in a bit more detail, that the health hazards are significant for the finer, smaller particles that we do not measure, regulate or effectively control under the current permit process.
Most people assume that the air permit process will affect human health, but the fact we are not measuring or controlling the particulates means we will not be protective of human health, certainly as far as I can see in the Canadian permit process and definitely in the permit process in the United States.
How serious is this situation? The EPA's own Clean Air Act Advisory Committee came out with a statement three years ago which said that the current so-called ``safe threshold'' is not protective of human health. However, we are still involved in discussions with EPA to try and get them to regulate this. We are making headway but we are still not there. As far as I can tell from the Canadian regulations, no one has established a safe threshold for exposure to PM 2.5, let alone nano particulates or ultrafines. Read the piece in red on this slide. It says:
The relationship between PM 2.5 and adverse health effects was linear and without a discernible lower ``safe'' threshold.
This came from the American Cancer Society and looked especially at risks to children and carcinogenic long-term risks to children.
The American Heart Association produced a review article last November in which they said that the real effects of particulates are likely to be even stronger than previously estimated. The literature from the 1980s and 1990s on which most of the current regulations are based looked only at the short-term effects of exposure for a day or two.
When you or a child is exposed, the effect on your heart and lungs lasts for about five days. Two days later, when they tell you the air is better and they lift the air warning, there is still a significant physiological effect on the body. People start going out and exercising, and that is when we see a lot of heart attacks that are not accounted for in the medical literature in the 1980s, 1990s and the early parts of the 2000s.
Now, the current literature is showing a dramatically increased effect and risk. Again, biomass combustion is one of the single highest sources of particulate generation in the whole economy.
The American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Association have all come out with statements similar to this, saying that we need even stronger controls and that the current standards are not protective of human health. There is no discernible threshold below which particulate matter concentrations pose no health risk to the general population.
I cannot give you a number saying, ``Limiting it to X will be safe.'' This is a very rapidly evolving area. I do not know whether the EPA will be able to set a number in the next year or so, but that is what we are trying to work toward with them; we want to say where the threshold is.
Another thing to remember is that, right now, the threshold is set up at 80 micrograms per cubic metre of air. They have now shown that you can be at 40. However, if you get an air inversion and have a sudden rise from, say, 35 to 45, that has the same kind of significant effect in terms of disease causation and increased morbidity as if you are above the threshold. It is not just where the absolute number is in terms of the air you breathe, but ensuring you do not set conditions in climatic situations where you get a sudden increase in particulates.
We now have statements from medical organizations totalling 70,000 physicians. They have come out in opposition to building biomass plants in their local communities or states. I will be happy to send the committee copies of this.
Basically, biomass combustion as commercial power generation is not a solution; it is a risk to the climate and is definitely a health hazard. I do not want to come across as just saying ``no'' about things, so I will give an example. We are working in Washington State to oppose a number of these plants. If 2 million families switch three incandescent bulbs to three CFL 60-watt bulbs, the need for one 50-megawatt plant would be eliminated. That is pretty simple math. There is a choice here.
Right now, one of the important things about biomass combustion is that we are not certain about how much new base-load electrical generation capacity we actually need. In the United States right now, most of the projections are flat for the next five to six years, so we do not need to build these plants. There is a big push because it is supposed to be clean and green energy, but we know it is not clean and not really carbon neutral.
We ought to be looking at sustaining other choices to make it more energy efficient and we ought to reduce demand so that we do not have to expose ourselves to this significant health risk, and it is significant.
Emma Cane, Biologist, Sierra Club: Thank you for inviting me, senators. It is my pleasure to present Sierra Club of Canada's views on biomass fuels.
With many of our natural resources currently at their carrying capacity and world population projections exceeding 9 billion by 2050, the need to prudently manage environmental resources is a global responsibility. As part of these considerations, reducing our dependence on non-renewable resources is crucial. Steadily rising demand and cost of fossil fuels, coupled with increasing public environmental concerns, has sparked major investments in the renewable energy sector.
The use of forest biomass as an energy source is a viable consideration because it is a second-generation biofuel which is different from a first-generation biofuel. It lacks the controversy of using agricultural resources which could be used to grow human food and it is direly needed by the human population.
In the forest, branch/top wood is considered to be the best source of biomass for fuel production, as is needles. Potential processes from which biomass can be harvested include the thinning of forest plantations, below-grade trees, rejected biomass from pulp and paper, and bark and stump collection where root systems are not prohibitive — such as in a spruce forest.
Forest biomass fuel is often considered to be carbon neutral because boreal forests are disturbance-driven ecosystems, and everyone has mentioned this as an issue. In the boreal ecosystem, carbon regularly cycles between standing, stored, terrestrial and free atmospheric carbon in the transition from regrowth to maturity, decline, decomposition or destruction and regrowth. A strong argument in favour of forest biofuels is that the removable of biomass emits fewer greenhouse gases than when the forest decomposes naturally because methane is produced in this process. The residence time of methane is 21 times longer than carbon in the atmosphere on a 100-year scale, so although forest biomass as a fuel emits carbon, it is viewed by many industries as less destructive from an atmospheric perspective as it reduces the amount of methane emitted.
Sierra Club Canada recognizes this as a positive argument for the development of biofuels as an industry, especially in the context of dwindling fossil fuel resources. However, considering the potential for overuse and lack of information on available feed stocks of forest biomass, our support for biofuels is conditional.
We support the production of biofuels as an alternative fuel from currently managed forests, but we see the potential for mismanagement without strict preliminary assessments and guidelines.
Sierra Club Canada considers our over-reliance on energy as the real issue to be considered in the context of climate change and maintains that alternative fuel production must be sustainable and coupled with energy conservation.
I was asked to outline the pros and cons of biomass as a fuel source. I will briefly go through the pros as we see them and contrast those with the cons.
In favour of biomass for energy production, logging operations are a prerequisite for biomass harvesting. Trees need to be grown and harvested to create what is called slash. Once the operation has been completed, a third of the mass of all coniferous trees and more for deciduous trees lays on the forest floor because the resource has relatively no value in current markets. With rising energy costs, this once-unwanted biomass can provide increased revenue and employment opportunities for local contractors and forest communities. As such, Sierra Club Canada supports the procurement of forest biofuel on existing forest tenures.
The removal of slash from forests can significantly reduce the risk of forest fires. Usually, if not collected for pulp and paper, slash is collected and burned in the open air, which releases particulate matter and creates the need for forest management and monitoring. Slash harvesting for biofuel production can be a way to utilize slash, especially in areas with no-burn ordinances. Although some residual slash is necessary to maintain nutrient levels in the soil, too much can result in insect populations being driven to infestations in some cases. This is of particular concern for areas under threat from wildfires, such as in British Columbia, and Sierra Club Canada supports initiatives in this context.
The use of woody biomass feedstocks could generate carbon offsets if the fuel is derived from dedicated energy plantations, dedicated silvicultural activities that increase forest productivity from the wood waste that would otherwise generate methane emissions through anaerobic decomposition in landfills, or carbon dioxide emissions through the prescribed burning of forest harvest residues.
Sierra Club Canada supports the generation of carbon offsets but maintains that they should not be used in a way that justifies excessive or superfluous emissions.
Although the construction and/or conversion of generating stations would require huge capital investments in terms of boiler retrofits and more stringent emission controls for particulate matter, the combustion technologies are well established and, as such, the biggest risk element, as far as Sierra Club Canada sees, is associated with the long-term procurement of a feedstock.
Last, another point in favour of biomass as an energy source is that biomass burning overall is said to have less greenhouse gas emissions than other fossil fuels such as lignite or coal. We obviously disagree there.
I will now talk a little bit on the converse side of things, problems associated with biomass as an energy source. Competition with current forest users and the potential loss of value-added opportunities have been identified as potential concerns with respect to the procurement of biomass from forests. The theoretical demand for forest biomass to fully satisfy in-mill energy requirements has, in some cases, been found to be in excess of the amount of forest biomass that is actually available in certain regions. Fuelling generation stations with forest biomass could result in a decrease in net capacity owing to the physical limitations associated with firing forest biomass as it is a relatively low energy density feedstock as compared to lignite, coal or natural gas.
Sierra Club emphasizes that these limitations of biomass as an energy source must be considered to limit the exploitation of the resource as a replacement for high-density energy needs. Biomass cannot be considered as a replacement for fossil fuels but must be viewed as an alternative with an appropriately defined role as a fuel. We have discussed also the applications for heating, and the efficiencies for that application have been found.
Deforestation is one of the leading causes of climate change. The removal of forest biomass releases sequestered carbon and reduces the forest ecosystem services of nutrient and hydrologic cycling. The development of an industry based on forest biomass could exacerbate the effects of deforestation, if not contribute to an increase in deforestation rates as market demand for biofuel emerges and increases.
Therefore, the development of a biofuel industry, based on forest resources for energy production, would eventually require expansion of forestry operations to meet energy demands. It is the position of Sierra Club Canada that consideration of such an industry must be limited to involve only lands under current forest management tenure.
Forestry operations advocate that organic matter on the forest floor hinders forest regeneration and that the removal of biomass with the machines that they sell is necessary for high yields. However, this woody forest ``waste,'' which includes harvest slash, thinning residues, bark and sawdust, are the nutrient materials that new growth depends upon.
Forest regeneration takes more time than industry considers profitable. Best practices in many silvicultural operations dictate that forest tenure should seek to maximize timber yields in a minimal amount of time. This effectively manipulates the forest down to a human time scale as opposed to its natural time scale of centuries and thousands of years to maintain these nutrient levels. Since the removal of biomass strips the soil of nutrients that are essential for forest regeneration, the replacement of lost nutrients with industrial fertilizers is required, instead of allowing decomposition to occur naturally.
Many of these fertilizers are derived from fossil fuels and, as such, Sierra Club Canada asserts that the government considers whether collecting biomass for energy production will actually reduce our dependence on fossil fuels if the replacement of the nutrients must be external as a result.
In the context of intensive forest ``farming,'' there is a risk for net primary productivity of forests to decline. The slow decay of organic matter and the gradual replenishment of soil nutrients by bacteria, fungi and insects naturally restore the balance to the ecosystem. Replacing this process with chemicals is an imperfect science and has significant margin for error.
Those are the pros and cons I was asked to outline. I was also asked to consider whether using biomass and biofuels is a sustainable solution.
It is the position of Sierra Club Canada that biofuels should be developed as an alternative to fossil fuels. The critical issue at hand, though, is the need to reduce our intensive energy consumption. Sierra Club Canada believes that forest biofuels represent a positive contribution to this transition, provided that production does not encroach on intact old-growth forests.
I will outline some recommendations that we have set out for the Senate to consider.
First, the risk for creating demand for biofuels above current feedstocks needs to be addressed, and controls need to be in place to ensure that land is protected from unsustainable change in the context of ever-increasing growth in demand.
Second, as with any forest management plans, First Nations need to be included as part of the project definition and/or the partnerships for these endeavours.
Last, controls need to be in place to ensure that a biofuel industry does not suffer the same fate as the current forest industry. This includes, but is not limited to, built-in sustained yield management programs, and monitoring to verify that effects are not harming the ecosystem; comprehensive data collection and analysis programs and agencies to confidently establish the status and limitations of current feedstocks; and stringent regulations for tenure expansion to include only existing forest tenures and exclude virgin forests.
Senator Mercer: Thank you, panellists. I am not quite sure where to begin. The largest single industry in Canada is the production of products from wood, the harvesting of wood, and pulp and paper. It is well known that the industry, both the lumber side and the pulp and paper side in particular, is in crisis.
Ms. Cane was the only one who addressed the real issues with which politicians are faced. We all are concerned about the environment. We are concerned about how many particulates are going into the air. We are all concerned about whether things are carbon neutral or not. We are even more concerned about the fact that there are people who do not have jobs, people who do not have enough money to pay for their children's education or to buy enough food this weekend at the grocery store. We have to come up with a balance. We might be able to accept arguments that biomass is not carbon neutral. We could argue with you about that. That will not get us anywhere, other than the satisfaction of one of us feeling that we have won the argument. The real issue is the sustainability of an industry, not just the sustainability of the environment. This industry is bigger than the auto sector. In fact, it is bigger than anything else in this country, if you go community to community.
How do we balance our honest and sincere concern about the environment with our honest and sincere concern about the effects of the downturn of a critical industry, both on the lumber side and the pulp and paper side, which employs millions of Canadians and affects the lives of millions and millions of Canadians? It is a simple problem; give me a simple answer.
[Translation]
Mr. Mainville: That is a very good question, which I feel was partly answered by the agreement signed two weeks ago.
As you are aware, the forestry industry has lost momentum and has experienced major job losses. I believe that the forestry industry and the environmental movement have come to the conclusion that the status quo is no longer possible. Not only do forestry practices have to change, but markets are also evolving. The message to the World is that the long-term development of the forestry industry requires us to focus on markets for environmentally-friendly products. This is the message and industry has heard it loud and clear.
Now what is the role of biomass in this new order? What is interesting is that the main concern is with the overall life cycle of products. The agreement between the Forest Products Association of Canada, 21 major companies and 9 major environmental groups signed two weeks ago refers to dealing with the issue of a product's total life cycle as well as ways of reducing the climate footprint of forest products and protecting long-term jobs. The key word here is ''long term''. Communities require viable solutions and non-environmentally-friendly products are not a viable solution. This is the message that emerges from the agreement.
Sound business management and the environment go hand in hand. Now we have to come up with the solutions.
In looking at biomass-based solutions, I think that the slogan has to be small is beautiful. I think that one thing clearly stands out here. Large-scale biomass initiatives are not, in our opinion, a solution for jobs, the industry's image or for the environment. We should keep that in mind.
I believe that the industry is aware of this. A positive solution, as far as we are concerned, would be to develop initiatives such as small-scale forest co-operatives to create long-term jobs. A further potential solution would be small- scale biomass harvesting to either replace existing heating systems or to develop new smaller ones. I do not think that large-scale electricity generation using new energy sources is the answer and will not help the forestry industry break into international green markets.
[English]
Dr. Sammons: There are a couple of ways to look at it. If you take Mr. Hesselink's model — and, again, I will focus on biomass combustion — your neighbour to the south has made some critical mistakes in this area. Perhaps you all can lead as opposed to follow their example.
Presently, a $200 million biomass combustion plant creates about 20 permanent jobs. The Teamsters Union, the truckers in the United States, have come out with a policy statement against large-scale biomass combustion. At the very least, I would hope the policy would be structured such that the financial incentives do not replicate what is happening south of the border, where there has been this huge push, in terms of financial incentives, to build big plants, which do not create many jobs, which do not operate at high efficiency, which are a health hazard and which will accelerate climate change. Mr. Hesselink's model, if you go back to efficiency usage and maximizing energy efficiency, will offer plenty of opportunities to market products, but you do not have to incentivize large-scale electrical generation because it is a disaster any way you want to look at it.
Senator Mercer: This country is blessed with the largest forests in the world. We can afford to have an agreement signed between the forestry sector and environmental groups to protect a large portion of the boreal forest given our wealth of resources.
Let us assume that we continue to harvest the forest for one of three reasons, whether for lumber and construction, for pulp and paper, or for biomass. I was surprised in that we heard from this panel, for the first time that I can recall, that the sequestering of carbon with respect to silviculture and other good forestry management was frowned upon. If we are going to be harvesting anyway — and, yes, it might take 30 years for the carbon to be resequestered — other than specific cases that we can find in various parts of the world, including New Brunswick and British Columbia in this country, is it not better that we are resequestering, even if it has taken 30 years? Prior to recent times, we were not resequestering anything; we were clear-cutting. You showed a picture of the cutting in Nova Scotia. I cannot tell you exactly where it was, but I have seen that hundreds of times in my province. Is not resequestering of carbon by using good proper silviculture methods better than what we have been doing?
Ms. Cane: It is a step forward in terms of burning fossil fuels and the extraction of oil, especially with the crisis in the tar sands. This is an egregious environmental endeavour out in the Prairies. Biomass represents a portion of the solution. I do not necessarily think that we will fuel Canada on wood pellets. However, I think that everyone appreciates that it is part of the solution that includes wind, solar and geothermal energy as part of a comprehensive take on creating real green energy.
You asked about the involvement of communities. There is substantive literature on the creation of what are called green jobs, where communities can thrive and local markets can develop by using sustainable business endeavours for power generation, for food production, et cetera.
Is it better than nothing? I think it is better than nothing. I do think that the applications need to be specific and a niche needs to be created. We saw the example of heat production being a viable way to use biomass, but I do not think it is the whole solution.
Senator Plett: All I can say is wow. I am happy that Senator Mercer went ahead of me because he talked me off the ledge with the calm demeanour that he always exhibits.
Over the years, I have been told that I am not supposed to kill a cow because that is not good. I am not supposed to eat steak. I am not supposed to go fishing because we will kill the fish. I am now being told that I cannot burn a log at my cottage anymore. I do not know where we are going.
I agree with Ms. Cane that we must have a balanced approach. My question to her is why did the Sierra Club not sign this agreement that was signed on May 18?
Dr. Sammons, I cannot argue with you. I am a plumber, not a doctor. I am not sure I can argue with any of what you have said. You have given us numbers. You suggest everything else is voodoo. I think that was part of your slide. Some people might suggest that some of what we saw here today is voodoo.
People live longer today than they have in hundreds of years. Last Sunday, my wife and I had arrived late for church service and were sitting near the back, where we could view the congregation. My father is 86 and my mother is 82. They have been married for 62 years. I looked at the congregation and remarked that 15 or 20 per cent of the people in the congregation are over 80 years old, yet everything we do is unhealthy. Why are people living longer?
Now we are being told that burning wood is unhealthy. I have never had a doctor tell me that I will get sick from burning wood.
I have done my part for the environment. I have changed every light bulb in my house to the light bulbs you suggest, so I am saving a lot of money and I will now live longer.
Mr. Hesselink, you went through your slides rather quickly. I look forward to seeing the actual slides because you showed us a slide that contained red flags. We went through that at 100 miles an hour. I noticed that half were green flags, but I did not have an opportunity to see what was good about it. There must be something good, so I am looking forward to that.
Mr. Mainville, you talk about ``small scale.'' I am not sure what small scale is. Who decides what is small scale? We have large-scale cities. We will not heat large-scale cities with small-scale operations. Are we going to do it all with wind power? I am sure someone will say wind is unhealthy. In Lethbridge, everyone walks bent over. I have been to Lethbridge many times, and everyone is walking at an angle there because they have too much wind. That must be unhealthy in some way as well.
We are told today that coal is better than wood. I have never heard that before. I have heated with coal and I have burned coal. To say coal is healthier than wood, I have to study that.
However, I do want to talk about small scale versus large scale. I would like an answer to that.
We have been told by many forestry witnesses what a great forest management program we have in Canada. We have been told by people in British Columbia that trees actually grow fairly fast. Now we are being told that they take forever to replenish.
We have been told that we do not take all the scrap out of the bush because it has to stay there. The forest management people are managing that and only allowing a certain portion. We have been told that wood pellets are being made from what Ms. Cane called ``slash.'' Bark and other material, unhealthy as it is, I imagine, is burned on the side of the road. People driving by will get cancer if we burn this material on the side of the road. Why not build some wood pellets out of it instead?
We have had many witnesses tell us about forest management, and now we are being told that the forest management is not any good. We can have small-scale boilers. If we have a hundred small-scale boilers or two large- scale boilers, I cannot quite see the difference in the amount of emissions that poses.
I apologize because I have railed on you for a while, but I would like your comments with regard to the fact that we are not pulling everything out of the bush. We are not scraping or raking. We were in New Brunswick last summer and we saw the wonderful job that the Irvings do in managing the forest. I have planted a tree there. I am looking forward to going back and seeing how high the tree is this year and to get my four and a half cents for planting it. We do a good job of not clearing out these forests. We are doing a good job of managing that, yet we are now being told not to do that anymore either.
I would at least like Mr. Mainville — and if anyone else wants to jump in, that is fine — to talk about his concern, because we are not scraping the bottom of the forest so that we end up with nothing to replenish the forest. Diseased wood and bark is being used that would otherwise be waste. I would like an explanation as to who determines what is small scale versus large scale. What do you think is small scale versus large scale?
In addition, I would like Ms. Cane to tell me why the Sierra Club chose not to sign the agreement that everyone else seemed to think was so good.
Ms. Cane: I work in the Ontario office and I personally was not informed of the agreement. My assumption is that the agreement, when it was in its initial stages, was discussed in our B.C. chapter and I am not privy to what happened. I do not know whether there were negotiations, problems or disagreements, so I cannot speak to that matter.
Senator Plett: I think our committee should get an answer. Could you send us one, please?
Ms. Cane: I can check on that.
Mr. Mainville: Maybe I can answer in two phases.
[Translation]
As far as the large or small-scale issue is concerned, we first have to define sustainable small-scale forest harvest.
I strongly suggest you take a look at the Quebec biomass harvest program. It is not restricted just to logging residue. The program also refers to unharvested commercial trees and whole trees. It mentions non-commercial trees, partially burned trees, areas of insect infestation, bushes, logging residue as well as everything remaining unharvested at the end of a year. It stipulates that up to 70 per cent of logging residue may be harvested.
In my opinion, this is not small-scale harvesting but rather an open invitation for biomass harvesting on a massive scale with a view to ultimately using a large proportion of it to generate energy. This does not mean however that this is currently happening, but the implementation of this type of program without clear harvesting guidelines is, in my opinion, a threat to the environment.
It is important to red flag this, because if we want sustainable biomass harvesting — and Greenpeace is convinced that this is possible — we have to set limits.
There should be no harvesting for energy generation. Can Canada say that there will be no forests felled for energy production?
As things stand today, it is possible. We could go out tomorrow and fell 50 000 hectares of Quebec crown forest, turn it into chips and burn to generate energy to sell to Hydro-Québec. I do not think that is a productive societal initiative. There are steps that can be taken to set limits before we get to that stage.
However, there are extremely interesting production initiatives. For instance, the municipality of Amqui in the Lower Saint Lawrence decided to convert its entire municipal heating system to biomass.
They used to use heavy oil, which is a polluting hydrocarbon manufactured from refinery waste. Today, they have replaced their hydrocarbon-based heating system with a system running on biomass and mill waste. Waste products, such as: sawdust, log ends and bark are all useable. This is an example of total waste salvage. Instead of discarding these materials, they are used to produce energy on a small scale in hospitals and schools. This initiative is managed in co-operation with forestry co-operatives. It is an example of sustainable development in a forest region through the appropriate small-scale use of waste products.
This is where the solution lies. It is not a matter of prohibiting biomass but rather of setting out clear guidelines. We are not against biomass but there is a proper way of going about it. Unfortunately, current provincial programs do not indicate that biomass will be developed in a smart way.
[English]
Senator Plett: I have a comment. I think what Mr. Mainville wants is what, in fact, we are doing right now. He says: ``Let us ensure we do not do something worse than what we are doing now. If something is not broken, then why fix it.''
I do not disagree. We should use the waste you are using. We are not cutting trees for biomass. The committee heard clearly one or two days ago that Canada does not do that. I specifically asked witnesses why we are not cutting down trees if we have a shortage of biomass at a plant in B.C. They said it is not a viable operation to cut down trees to produce wood pellets. If someone cannot make money at something, they will not do it in our society today.
[Translation]
Mr. Mainville: Last October was the first time an area of whole fire-damaged trees in Quebec was allocated for felling for the purposes of biomass energy generation. I do not recall the exact size of the area, but it is now possible to harvest whole trees in Quebec to produce biomass. The only reason for this is that this sector is being heavily subsidized to create momentum around biomass.
It is not profitable for the industry, but is heavily subsidized by the Government especially in fire-ravaged areas. The forestry industry used to require a quality product to produce fibre but the incentives have now disappeared. A year after a tree is partially burned, it is no longer a quality product since a beetle called the Sawyer uses them to lay its eggs.
Trees in burned areas can always be harvested two or three years after the event. They can be chipped and used to produce energy. I think that clear guidelines are required because there are none at the moment. It is currently legal to harvest whole trees in Quebec to generate energy. We have to face this fact.
[English]
Mr. Hesselink: I want to add a few comments. First, the statement made by Mr. Mainville about Quebec zero- pricing the resource is also true in Ontario, where a bio-fibre policy going forward 10 years prices the resource at zero. It is a large basket of wood including ``unmerchantable'' trees, which is a very broad definition. The policy contemplates using stem wood and it zero-costs the resource for the province.
Second, I want to put on the table that I am sure some fuel can be made from slash — a briquette or something else — but my understanding is that wood pellets require stem wood. It is a quality control requirement of producing pellets of a standard size. I can probably verify that for you, and I am happy to do that.
Third, I find the forest management front disconcerting. I talk to foresters on a regular basis and spend a lot of time in Northern Ontario. You will never hear a forester say they have enough silviculture money. They can always improve and are always trying to make do with limited budgets. It is indicative in Ontario and possibly elsewhere in Canada that the province is closing nurseries. We have a crisis in the provincial silviculture infrastructure and the entire mechanism regarding sustainable forest management. Pieces are eroding along with the industry.
As a taxpayer and a Canadian, I am concerned about those things. As a resident of a mill town for seven years who watched my friends lose jobs when the company decided to take a hike, these are important parts of any future for a forest industry. We must keep an eye on the ball to ensure the forest is there and being well tended. We should never rest on our laurels and assume sustainability and that we are the best managers in the world.
Dr. Sammons: The math does work for smaller scale units, whether residential or advanced wood combustion. Bigger units are more polluting because of the control system.
Regarding lifetime issues, one thing I did not discuss is the mountain of literature. Although we have not burned wood for a long period of time, areas of the world still burn wood with high densities of particulates and smoke inside residential buildings. Such conditions are disease causing. Part of the fact that people live longer in some parts of the world is probably because they do not burn wood any longer as a primary source of fuel.
Finally, no one will scientifically validate the figure of 30 years. Carbon balance will take more than 100 years. In terms of the biology of the world, every tonne of CO2 released into the air currently has a biological effect in terms of balance and crossing thresholds much more so than 20 years ago. We have increased the impact as we put more CO2 into the air.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: You have shaken all my convictions. I thought that biomass was the right solution. We have been told that it should be developed on a large scale and now today you have told us that small-scale operations would be better. Your testimony is almost the complete opposite to what we have heard from others.
You have contended that lots of small-scale biomass operations will emit less CO2 than large-scale developments. I find that difficult to understand. I would have thought that a large-scale operation would have better systems for cleaning out greenhouse gas particles.
Dr. Sammons has asserted that biomass produces a lot more CO2 particles than coal because burning coal releases carbon that has been stored for millions of years whereas burning wood releases substances that have only been held for 100 or 200 years. Compared with a million years, 100 or 200 years is relatively recent. Miss Cane said that we have failed to take methane into consideration.
[English]
I am a little lost regarding the issue of large scale versus small scale, the sum total.
Dr. Sammons: Big plants can be made to control particulates more effectively. You cannot change the CO2 number. We have no technology that will change the CO2 produced per unit of power.
One thing to bear in mind is that while carbon and coal may have been sequestered for millions of years, the key factor we need to address is the decisions we will make in terms of power generation. What fuel source will have the least damaging effects in the next two to three decades?
We are at a point where we will trip over a number of thresholds that we will not be able to easily reverse. People like to use acid rain as an example, but that does not really apply to the CO2 question because with acid rain we can change the coal source and go to low sulphur coal and we already had the technology to reduce sulphur emissions when the law was changed. We currently do not have technology to reduce CO2. We currently do not have another source in terms of biomass. We have a source that will produce more CO2 per unit of power. One can argue that it will be resequestered in 150 to 200 years, but the coal carbon will be resequestered as well. It is not as if it will stay up there forever.
Biomass turns out to be a power choice that in the next two to four decades will have the most negative impact as compared to burning coal or burning natural gas. If you want to take a time span of 1 million years, the calculation is different in terms of life cycle. However, at the moment we need to focus on what we will do that will have the least incremental negative change in the next 20 or 30 years.
Burning wood has a huge impact because we chop down the trees, lose the ability to sequester carbon on an ongoing basis, burn the immediately sequestered carbon, and emit more CO2 per unit of power than if we burned coal or natural gas. We do have alternative energy supplies that are part of the way to make up for this. We can conserve more energy and we are not providing the same kind of financial incentives for that.
Senator Robichaud: I agree with you that there are other ways.
Ms. Cane: I do not know the studies that Dr. Sammons is citing, but I do not think that coal is a clean source of energy, and many environmental organizations will agree with that comment.
Dr. Sammons: I am not saying it is clean.
Ms. Cane: It is also definitely not cleaner than biomass. I do not know if you have seen an open pit mine, but it is a horrible scar on the landscape. I do not think coal is a solution, but we can agree to disagree.
You said that more CO2 is produced by burning biomass per unit of power. I have not read that statistic. The statistics with which I am familiar say that it actually emits less CO2, less particulate matter. The Ontario ministry of energy commissioned a report that was released a couple of weeks ago that concluded that it does emit less.
Dr. Sammons: That is based on the IPCC calculations, and the man who wrote those calculations has now said that that is a mistake. The evidence exists that is incorrect that it is less carbon intensive. It is based on an accounting assumption system which the man who wrote it has said is in error.
[Translation]
Mr. Mainville: The source of the carbon, be it from biomass, coal or natural gas, is of little importance. When CO2 finds its way into the atmosphere it leads to climate change. Political and economic decisions will have to be made if we are to avoid crossing the threshold of extreme catastrophic climate change.
I think that we all agree that coal is not an energy solution and we must abandon its use. Biomass is presented as a green solution. However, this is not strictly the case. Biomass has major environmental impact, including on the carbon cycle. I would urge you to consult the studies dealing with issues such as: the life cycle of biomass, the impact on soil, building of roads, a forest's reaction to biomass harvesting, the time it takes a forest to start capturing carbon again and how much CO2 plants burning wood emit. Industry bandies about the terms zero carbon or carbon neutral. However, this is not the case. We need the actual figures. The ball in your court.
[English]
Mr. Hesselink: I was going to say much the same thing. We do not currently have a lot of correct information to make good decisions. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to get the right information and ensure that our models are accurately employing assumptions so that we can get to the end of that.
It is one thing to have had this conversation 200 years ago at the advent of the Industrial Revolution when we had an unloaded atmosphere, but we now have a loaded atmosphere to work with. Therefore, as Mr. Mainville pointed out, it is susceptible to what we do to it. The atmosphere does not care where the CO2 came from. We can get to the bottom of those things if we look at the right numbers.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: You have said that the source of the carbon is not important. However, do the atmosphere and the planet not have limited absorption capacity? If carbon, which has been stored for millions of years escapes into the atmosphere, is there not a danger that we might cross the threshold?
Mr. Mainville: You are quite right. This is exactly our concern. Will we improve the situation by undermining the productivity of forests, which are one of our carbon sinks or by abandoning combustion? We have to be more efficient and generate energy in other ways than through combustion. All combustion releases carbon into the atmosphere.
We are now witnessing the development of green energy. Geothermy, wind and solar energy, energy efficiency and reduced energy consumption are real solutions. We should not be looking for a new material to burn because we have exhausted other fuels or because we face problems with other reserves. We have to change our mindset that energy production requires combustion. There are other ways of generating energy.
Senator Rivard: Dr. Sammons and Mr. Mainville have fuelled our enthusiasm for biomass.
I would like to pick up on Senator Mercer's statement that our concern as politicians is to promote the forestry industry. However, we also have to think about the environment.
I also agree with the argument that we should forget the idea of using healthy trees to generate energy. Biomass, despite some drawbacks, might be acceptable on a small scale though.
I recognise the role Greenpeace has played over the years. Jean de la Fontaine might have more contemporary relevance than we thought. Greenpeace reminds me of Jean de la Fontaine's fable the Coach and the Fly. I am sure you know it. Greenpeace is the like the fly in so far as you brought an end to overwhaling. It is tuna that our friends the Japanese are now overfishing.
We have heard from other witnesses about the issue. Guy Chevrette, for example, told us that Quebec public opinion had, to a certain extent, been skewed by Richard Desjardins' film on the boreal forest. I am sure you share Mister Desjardins' opinion on clear cutting. We were told that this film was made about seven years ago. However, if we were to return to the site were the film was made today, we would see that the forest has totally recovered to what it was before the film.
What I am saying is more of a comment than a question. The most pressing questions have already been asked and answered. Even though we do not share your opinion, your responses are food for thought.
[English]
Senator Eaton: I agree with most of what you are saying, Dr. Sammons, and completely about large scale. I think there are more efficient ways with hydro power.
When we talk about pellets and trees — because this is what we are concerned about, reinventing the forest industry in Canada — the University of Guelph is doing some experiments where they are growing willow. Have you seen that, Mr. Hesselink? They tell me the willow plant will last for 21 years and they cut it every three years. They harvest it like you harvest grain; you let it sit for six months and then you send it to make pellets. Is this something you would find environmentally friendly?
Mr. Hesselink: I would be interested in the results of those trials, personally and professionally. There are many of those going on in various places. The University of Guelph is a hot spot for a lot of the agricultural or quick-growing, woody biomass research. I am interested and I have been following some of them, but most of those things are preliminary now.
Senator Eaton: We have been listening to very good witnesses for nine months, and we are finding that wood as a green product, whether in construction, in bio-pharmaceuticals or biomass as in pellets, is not in the general conversation. We hear from all of your organizations about wind and solar, but here we are, the most forested country in the world, and there is nothing about wood. Is it because you do not consider wood a green product that you do not promote the use of wood?
Mr. Hesselink: CPAWS does promote wood products through our support of the FSC certification program. The agreement we just signed with industry is an indication of the kind of cooperation we have enjoyed with industry over many years. I work with industry at a very regional level in Ontario, on a forest management unit basis almost, but we also engage them at a marketing level.
For those companies that are FSC certified, we do what we can as conversation organizations to promote their products, whether they are paper or building materials. That is a green sector; that is a marketable value that we do endorse. We are not a marketing outfit and it is not our primary business; but in our small way, we add to that.
Senator Eaton: You all have huge mailing lists and very high profiles. The Sierra Club and Greenpeace have high profiles throughout the world, yet we seldom hear anything about wood. I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for your organizations to use your mailing lists and your clout to start promoting bioproducts and the green uses of wood, whether in construction or conservation. Could you think of things in the future where you could help the forest industry by promoting wood as a green product?
[Translation]
Mr. Mainville: I would like to draw your attention to Greenpeace's paper setting out our economic vision for the forest sector which was published last year. It called for the development of value-added products.
Forest products can be sold and marketed as extremely environmentally-friendly alternatives to steel and concrete in construction. Our report refers to products such as smart paper and to initiatives to design value-added products.
The fact that the media have decided that our paper was not controversial enough to warrant coverage is quite a different issue. People have to realize that there is a controversy going on in the forest sector. We are suggesting that the solution is to shed the ``primary processing'' straightjacket, whereby trees are felled, made into 2 x 4 and shipped to the United States. We should develop value-added products. For example, why not develop a Canadian-made furniture industry? Why not create jobs in product areas other than the manufacturing of 2 x 4s? These are the solutions we are advocating.
Biomass is not a value-added industry. Quite the opposite in fact. I would contend that it is a value-stripping industry that takes an extremely valuable resource and uses it in the least innovative way, that is, it burns it.
[English]
Senator Eaton: Yes, but I think that Scandinavian countries have done it very successfully. Places like schools, prisons and hospitals, just as you have said, have started to use wood pellets as heat.
I am disappointed in some of the organizations themselves because we hear so many negative comments about what we are doing against the environment, but nothing positive ever comes from you guys in terms of what we could be doing. It is always, ``Stop doing this, stop doing that and you are doing too much of this,'' instead of, ``Why not consider using paper or fibre bags made from forest products in supermarkets instead of plastic bags?''
[Translation]
They are value-added products.
[English]
It would be helpful if you had recommendations or if you could go back to your organizations and say: How can we help the forest industry? How can we promote wood as a green product? How can we encourage Canadians to construct non-domestic buildings? How can we change the building codes in this country to encourage value-added products in wood?
The Chair: Mr. Mainville, we will ask the researchers to retrieve your study on value-added products in wood. If any of the witnesses cannot answer a senator's questions today due to time, we would appreciate it if you could send the answer in writing.
Ms. Cane: I will respond to Senator Eaton's questions and concerns. A lot of the reason why you hear only negative press about things that are going on in the environment is because the media focuses on negative aspects. You get more attention saying there is a problem with something than praising something for being good. That is the nature of that industry.
Sierra Club Canada does promote the use of value-added forest products such as furniture. A lot of my research personally has focused on the value of non-timber forest products — securing land tenure of forests and using the tenure system for the production of blueberries, wild berries, mushrooms, wild game, et cetera. A huge market for wild game could be sustainably developed.
The rights of First Nations peoples for these non-timber forest products have not completely been considered in a lot of cases. There is a lot of research going on up North with the forest research network up at Lakehead University. I believe they have presented to you already on those values. There are definitely good things going on with the forest sector.
One of the reasons we do not promote wood burning is because it is assumed that people know how to burn wood. People know it is a source of fuel and it could be an industrial source.
We want to promote technologies and industries that are not necessarily as well known, such as solar and wind energy. That is largely the reason we do not promote it, but you are right in identifying the need to promote wood as a green source of value-added products — non-timber forest products, et cetera.
Senator Ogilvie: It has been a fascinating morning. You have introduced a number of things we have not heard before, at least not in the same context.
I am always fascinated — and in fairness to you, you have alluded to it in a way — by the reality that carbon dioxide is essential to life as we know it. We would not be here if not for the mean ambient temperature that is almost guaranteed by a certain level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Therefore, we are talking about the additional impacts that occur over time.
From my point of view, the issue we have to recognize is that we humans are also part the ecosystem. Therefore, ultimately we have to find a way to work that in terms of our role and our reasonable expectations as part of that ecosystem.
Finally, I have a general comment on the issue of trees. I am glad we put it in perspective; a tree is a storage system of carbon dioxide. Instead of looking at great, deep excavations and wanting to pump carbon dioxide down into the ground, why have we not thought about wood as a means of storage? That option is there. At least until it decomposes, is burned or used in some other way, it is a good storage of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is not eliminated; it is stored.
It is also my understanding that large trees reach a point in their cycle where even in their living form they are, at best, neutral in their absorption and the release of waste from the trees — the leaves, the shedding of bark, et cetera — in the existing system.
To talk about particulates, we are also aware of the Great Smoky Mountains and the terpenes — which are a marvellous part of the environment — that give rise to great fogs. Many things you have said are very important, but particularly the issue of particulates. I have always been amazed that we look at it as a wonderful system, yet we say things like, ``Oh, smell the fires.'' Why do we smell the fires? It is because there are particles and chemicals in the atmosphere from those kinds of systems.
You mentioned light bulbs. I have deliberately removed CFL lights from my home because of the nature of the metal concentration and the increased risk of fire from these bulbs.
The issue, as I think you have all touched on, is that we have to come to understand the systems and look at them in a larger context and be realistic about where we go.
To follow up on Senator Eaton's comment, it is my understanding that certain parts of Europe — from Scotland through to Scandinavia — have been successful in farming trees in well organized systems that give rise to a semi- continuous harvesting approach and sustainable land management in regard to runoff, acidification and, of course, choosing somewhat elite species that grow well under the given circumstances. Is that kind of high-level farming of trees seen by your organization as a reasonable, ecological thing to do?
Ms. Cane: Yes, Europe does have extensive tree farms and sophisticated hybrid species. They have the technology to create energy from these forest resources in the form of really efficient mills and efficient combustion technologies, with sophisticated filtering and emissions controls.
You also asked if it is a reasonable solution or a reasonable vision for Canada. Sierra Club is a conservation organization. It is most important to conserve existing wild lands. We want to keep our wilderness as wilderness; we do not want to turn it into a tree plantation. However, we have a lot of lands that are extensively managed under forest tenure. In the opinion of Sierra Club, since those lands are already under forest tenure, using them under a sustainable management system or converting them to ecosystem-based management, using a precautionary principle and all of the other best practices that you see in forest management, we think is a good idea. We should be upping conservation value and environmental considerations under all of our forest tenures.
However, it is important to note that although forest tenure in Europe has largely taken over — they do not have as much wild land as we do — that is not necessarily what we should do. We do have to keep some ``Canadian-ness'' in fixing this problem.
[Translation]
Mr. Mainville: I would like to draw your attention to one striking reality in Scandinavia. Fifty percent of species disappearance in Scandinavia is due to the loss of old-growth forests. Take a look at the list of endangered species in Scandinavia, it is incredible.
Canada is lucky to still be managing its natural forests in such a way as to continue harvesting without making them ``unnatural''. Turning forests into ``human-controlled areas'' has a direct impact on the ecosystem. They become more fragile and species disappear. This does not appear to be an appropriate long-term solution for Canada, especially given the scale of our operations here, which is totally different from Scandinavia.
[English]
Senator Kochhar: It is always comforting to me when the experts agree to disagree amongst themselves. We have heard many things, but I still have not heard an answer to Senator Plett's concerns. If we have been doing everything wrong for the last 50 or 70 years, why are we living 20 years longer than we ever have in the past, and living healthier? If we were not living healthier, we would not be living longer. Perhaps Dr. Sammons can elaborate on that.
I am in the furniture manufacturing business, and I, like Senator Eaton, would like to see you people promote wood products in a sensible way so that we can put to good use the plentiful forests we have in this country.
Dr. Sammons: I feel like one of our messages is that we are promoting wood products because if you burn it, you have lost it. At a commercial level you cannot promote a wood product if you are going to burn it.
We need to be careful in that a problem with carbon accounting is that simply regrowing the wood does not mean we are actually rebalancing the carbon. You will want to look at some interesting studies on the carbon density of wood conducted in the Tongass forest by Beebe.
One would think that older trees are slowing down. Beverley Law and a number of people in Oregon have shown that the most ``efficient time'' for carbon sequestration for most North American species of trees is when they are 80 to 120 years of age. Beebe found that the carbon density of the 200-year-old trees in the Tongass forest was double that of the 80-year-old trees.
With respect to length of life, that has much more to do with public health issues — vaccinations and a whole series of things — that have nothing to do with whether we are burning wood. The point is that the cause and effect issue is well outside of what we are looking at here. Vaccinations and a number of public health issues, especially clean water, make a huge difference in terms of lifespan. They relate much more to why we are living longer.
We have always burned wood. If you look at the World Health Organization literature, one thing they are concerned about is the fact that much of the world still continues to live with significant amounts of smoke and particulates inside the house, et cetera. There is no question that their life expectancy is significantly shorter because they are exposed to those particulates.
The Chair: We have appreciated your presentations. The clerk will send you a letter with additional questions on biomass to enable the committee to complete its report, which will be delivered later in 2010. Thank you very much for being here this morning.
(The committee adjourned.)