1. Wildfire-damaged Deadwood has an Ideal Physical State for Processing

When fire sweeps through a forest, typically, it kills the trees in its path but leaves the structural integrity of their trunks intact. The intense heat produced during a forest blaze turns each trunk into a natural kiln, warming heart and sap wood, before wind and sun draw out its moisture content later.

By the time this standing wildfire-damaged dead wood is harvested from Canada's boreal ranges by our forestry teams, it can contain up to 50 percent less water by mass than 'Green wood'. This makes it lighter to handle and transport, and less energy-intensive to process at our production plants.

Wildfire-damaged deadwood often provides more net fibre than 'green wood' and is therefore more efficient to process. This results in much lower operational expenses, a significantly smaller production carbon footprint than when processing high water content 'fresh' feedstock and lower prices at market.

2. Harvesting Wildfire Deadwood Reduces Further Forest Fire Risk

Climate change has doubled the likelihood of extreme wildfire weather conditions in Canada. A much greater frequency of lightning strikes place Canada’s boreal forest carbon sink at more risk than ever before. And holdover ‘zombie’ fires can now smoulder for months, even years, underground.

Every wildfire leaves standing and fallen charred deadwood in its wake, creating dangerous fuel continuity and ready pathways for future wildfires. Dried by wildfire heat and then the elements, this desiccated timber acts as extensive kindling, for both underground holdover ‘zombie’ fires and the spread of future forest blazes.

Clearing this ‘tinder’ – as part of producing a green energy transition fuel – creates breaks that stop the spread of new wildfires by distancing burning forest from unburned forest. These control lines protect ancient old-growth trees and their carbon stores, and allow Canada’s boreal forest range to thrive in greater abundance.

Canada, quite rightly, operates stringent policies around forestry, logging and timber practices to protect the carbon sink in its boreal range. The price of ‘round wood’ timber prices across the world have also become increasingly volatile, with fluctuations sometimes entirely unpredictable.

Power Wood Energy has bought 20-year forestry rights to harvest fire-damaged deadwood and beetle-infested trees from five million hectares of woodland. This land already contains a 15-year backlog of scorched timber and ensures the company can harvest more than 500,000 MT of feedstock each year.

This long-term access to low-cost raw cellulosic material provides Power Wood with feedstock for production at the same fixed price each year, for 20 years. And, in turn, it protects offtake partners and their residential and industrial customers from unstable fuel and energy prices.

4. Harvesting Wildfire Deadwood Reduces Methane GHG Emissions

Leaving dead wood to rot in the forest releases methane – a potent greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Methane is thought to have caused more than 30 percent of global warming in recent years and it is the focus of new efforts to ease climate change.

Scientists and politicians now believe the most effective way to slow human-made climate change could be to reduce the amount of methane released into earth’s atmosphere. They claim that a 40 percent cut in methane could pair back temperature rises by 0.3°C in the next decade.

Power Wood Canada Corp removes dead, dying and decaying wood from Canada’s forest range, to convert into low-emission advanced black biofuel pellets. In doing so, it prevents vast amounts of decomposition methane from entering the atmosphere and causing global temperature rises.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for using fire-damaged deadwood for manufacturing black pellets is the environmental restoration it facilitates. Clearing standing and fallen charred timber from swathes of land both protects old growth woodland and creates space for planting new trees.

Restocking and expanding Canada’s forest carbon sink with indigenous tree species is at the core of Power Wood’s composite approach to addressing climate change. We launched the New Ground Foundation in 2018 to reforest and manage areas we will clear of wildfire deadwood so the planet's tree stock is replenished and not dminished.

Through this foundation, in cleared areas, the company will plant coniferous spruce, fir, pine and larch trees alongside deciduous species including birch, aspen and poplar. All contribute to a greater carbon sink that draws down atmospheric carbon dioxide from above Canada’s boreal forest belt.

Wildfires cause intense heat that typically destroys tree branches and canopies but only scorches tree trunks. The structural integrity of tree trunks often remain unchanged while their chemical makeup is slightly altered by thermal degradation of the wood’s lignocellulosic structure.

Fire-damaged deadwood has had its cellular bonds weakened by heat, so lignin has already begun to redistribute through its fibres. Volatile resins, oils and terpenes are also driven off by the heat. This means they can’t interfere with the binding process during pelletization – leaving pellets with a higher fixed carbon content.

Steam-treated black pellets made from fire-damaged deadwood grind into a less stringy more consistent powder, improving mill throughput for furnaces. And the resulting feedstock for biofuel is cleaner and concentrated in the carbon-heavy components needed to produce highly calorific fuel.

Coal-powered generating stations around the world, faced with making “low capital cost” switches to burning biomass, require the most viable ‘drop in’ replacement for coal. The low carbon footprint biofuel which they adopt must behave like coal in as many ways as possible, to minimise capital expenditure.

Conventional wood pellets have proven difficult to grind, requiring five times more energy to prepare for pulverized coal boilers than coal. They also necessitate major plant modifications to handling, storage and processing infrastructure.

Steam-treated black pellets, made from fire-damaged deadwood and with steam explosion technology, have a Hardgrove Grindability Index (HGI) much closer to coal. Their coal-like, pre-brittleness means they can be processed using existing coal-handling infrastructure with minimal CapEx and modification.