This is a subpage of NS Forest Biomass RRA 2024
View that page for other subpages
Feedstock Availability and Cost in Nova Scotia By County and Specific Locations
by Kevin Blackburn, Senior Technologist, Fibre Supply, FPInnovations
Publication of FP innovations & Nova Scotia Innocation Hub
From the Executive Summary:
An analysis of fibre availability by county and by location, with and without Northern Pulp, shows the potential viability of new bioeconomy facilities under these two scenarios. With the Northern Pulp mill in operation, there is a forest-origin pulpwood/fuelwood supply availability of 560 000 oven-dry tonnes (odt) compared to 825 000 odt with the Northern Pulp mill closed. If Northern Pulp remains closed, a surplus of 263 000 odt of mill by-products will be available in the province at current operating rates compared to a 60 000 odt deficit with Northern Pulp open (some chips would need to be imported, as was the case before 2020).
Some key conversion factors & stats from this document
– Ratio of Oven Dry Tonnes to harvest volume: 0.4235
Mill by-products for which volumes are estimated include:
(1) Wood chips: means any softwood or hardwood pieces (small and thin) suitable for processing in a pulp mill or for sale to any other user, except as biomass fuel. Sawmills producing pulp quality chips can transfer the silviculture liability to the company acquiring them.
(2) Sawdust: fines, dust-like particles, generated from the processing of roundwood at sawmills during cutting and sawing. Fine sawdust is also a by-product of de-barked roundwood chipping at pulp mills. Fine sawdust is mainly used as feedstock for industrial boilers or for pellet production.
(3) Shavings: thin strips of wood generated from the processing of roundwood at sawmills during edging, trimming, and planing. Shavings are mainly used as animal bedding, feedstock for industrial boilers or for pellet production.
(4) Bark: is generated from de-barking operations at sawmills and pulp mills. Bark is entirely used as fuel for industrial boilers.
– In 2019, 41 buyers of more than 1000 m3 were scattered across the province with notable concentrations in the Pictou, Halifax, and Lunenburg counties.
– Nova Scotia is a province rich in forest resources, covering 80% of the area (NSDNR 1999).[2016 State of the Forest Report puts ot at 75%]
– Softwood dominated stands represent 48% of the forested area in Nova Scotia, while mixedwood stands make up 29% and hardwood stands the remaining 23%.
– Unlike other provinces in Canada, except Prince Edward Island, private forest ownership (60%) dominates in Nova Scotia over provincial Crown ownership (37%) and Federal/Aboriginal lands (3%)
Figure 4. Historical harvest levels in Nova Scotia
– Sustainable wood harvest (p14): Before 2000, the Annual Allowable Cut (AAC) was calculated at 5.25 million cubic metres (M m3) (3.75 M m3 softwood and 1.5 M m3 hardwood) (Bornais, 2004)… The 2016 Strategic Forest Analysis (SFA) aimed to develop a balanced strategy that addresses timber harvest, forest wildlife habitat and forest ecosystem objectives. The SFA’s recommended scenario results included a 20-year harvest estimate of 5.74 M m3 (4.152 M m3 softwood and 1.588 M m3 hardwood). The SFA also assumed a 15% non-participation rate from private lands.
Lahey Report p 15
…The report recommends adopting a triad model approach for the implementation of ecological forestry. This forest management zoning strategy allocates natural areas into one of three zones with specific values to be achieved in each:
• Conservation zone (biodiversity focus, no timber management)
• Ecological Matrix zone (where conservation and timber production objectives are both
applied and combined)
• High production forestry (HPF) (timber production focus)
Some wood supply considerations from the SGEM and HPF documents include:…
• Minimum retention levels of 20% to 33% of total basal area with much of the forest at
50% to 66% retention levels
• A reduction of 10-20% of the Crown land short-term (25 years) wood supply as described
in the Lahey report (2018)
• The Crown land long-term outlook (30-40 years) may likely be better than today from a
wood supply perspective as the condition of the ecological matrix forest improves and high-production plantations arrive to maturity
The short-term reduction of 10-20% would represent a reduction of between 72 000 odt and 144 000 odt from Crown land annually. This reduction is considered conservative given the current direction of the SGEM/HPF drafts. Given the increase in retention levels, wood supply is likely to fall, and wood costs likely to increase in the short-term.
Forest industry
The sawmill industry plays a vital role in rural communities with 107 sawmills spread across the province. Most of these (73 out of 107) sawmills are small, family-owned mills that consume less than 1000 m3 of roundwood per year…Since the 2005 lumber market crash due to the high Canadian dollar and the low number of new houses being built in the US, the number of existing sawmills has been declining rapidly (Appendix 2). Furthermore, out of the 107 existing sawmills in 2019, 18 had no production. The downturn has been especially hard on the small sawmills (< 10 000 m3 wood consumption per year). The major sawmills consuming more than 70 000 m3 per year (6 of them) have stayed opened throughout the downturn. The maximum lumber production for the province was reached in 1999 with 766 million board feet (MBF) and went down to an all- time low of 295 MBF in 2014.
…When operating, approximately 95% of all sawmill chips and 40% of bark and sawdust produced in the province were purchased by Northern Pulp (Cools, 2021). The long-term effects of Northern Pulp’s closure will have on the sawmill industry are yet to be seen, but the excess chips and other by-products normally destined for Northern Pulp were quickly accumulating at many sawmills, eliminating an important source of revenue.
…In addition, because of the large quantity of low-cost chips available from sawmills, Port Hawkesbury Paper (PHP) staff have modified their harvesting strategy. While their normal practice is to harvest random length pulpwood to be chipped at the pulp mill, PHP have increased their production of sawlogs in their cut-to-length operations to provide logs to sawmills in exchange for pulp chips. For reference, PHP purchased approximately 87 000 odt of pulp chips in 2020, compared to about 14 000 odt in 2019. While this shift has been beneficial financially for PHP and the sawmills needing to find a home for their pulp chips, the result is a reduced market for low-grade roundwood, which is needed to have a sustainable forest industry. If this does not occur, high grading will become more common, leading to a generalized reduction of stand quality.
…
The firewood industry is of great importance in Nova Scotia since 75% of homes are in rural areas. The price of heating oil hovers around 1.10 $/L (NRCAN, 2021) and residential electricity rates are about 16 cents/kWh. Natural Resources Canada estimates that about 450 000 m3 of firewood are harvested per year (NSDLF, 2019). Using a conversion factor of 2.5 m3/cord, this means that around 180 000 cords of firewood are harvested every year. Using an average household heating use of 4 cords per year, this means that about 45 000 homes or 12% of Nova Scotia homes have a firewood heating system. The firewood/fuelwood market uses on average 88% of hardwoods and 12% of softwoods. These proportions are based on the volumes reported in the Registry of Buyers (average for 2010 to 2019). Since firewood businesses producing less than 1000 m3 are not required to register, the real proportions might differ slightly. Other roundwood users in the province, representing less than 1% of harvested roundwood, include producers of telephone poles, railways ties, pallet wood and fruit box manufacturers.
FEEDSTOCK AVAILABILITY (p19)
Sawlogs and studwood are the only parts of the trees not considered as potential feedstock for new bioventures. Therefore, potential sources of fibre for new facilities include
– pulpwood (smaller-diameter, lower-quality logs),
– fuelwood-quality logs of any size or form, from any species of hardwood or softwood tree having no higher valued potential (e.g., lumber), and
– mill residues (wood chips, bark, fines) given the current production capacities and historical market demands.
Roundwood
…The potential roundwood supply available to biorefineries would be pulpwood and fuelwood quality from the unused sustainable harvest and from the exports for a total of 569, 200 m3 softwood (216 300 odt) and 628,650 m3 hardwood (345,750 odt) with Northern Pulp re-opened (Tables 3 and 4) and 949 200 m3 softwood (360, 700 odt) and 843,650 m3 hardwood (464, 000 odt) without the Northern Pulp mill in operation (Table 5 and 6). Pulpwood and fuelwood availability has decreased since 2015 (665 000 odt) due to a lower hardwood sustainable harvest supply (2.1 M m3 vs 1.59 M m3, equivalent to a drop of 200 000 odt) and an increased estimated average annual harvest of 300 000 m3, equivalent to 150 000 odt (Volpé, S. Badcock, R. Duff, R. 2015).
p25….The provincial harvest for all land ownership types by county is presented in Figure 6. The average provincial harvest for the last 5 years is 3.49 M m3 and occurs mainly on private woodlots at 63%, followed by Crown land at 25% and industrial lands at 12%.
Harvest residues
Cut-to-length (CTL) harvesting is a popular harvesting method across Eastern Canada. The average recovery rate for harvest residues is 60% when forest fibre is recovered using a CTL harvesting system in softwood dominated stands. or this analysis, default recovery rates in BiOS, which are set at 45% for CTL systems, will be used. With this hypothesis, for every cubic meter of softwood roundwood harvested, 0.075 odt of harvest residues can potentially be recovered and delivered to a potential client, while a cubic meter of harvested hardwood will generate 0.16 odt
… Available harvest residues currently being generated with the harvest of merchantable wood represent 180,000 odt and potentially available total volumes of 260,000 odt based on sustainable harvest levels…Volumes are “available” in the sense that they could be extracted from harvest operations if there was demand and regulatory changes. However, this fiber is not currently being generated in a marketable form today. Also, a new product to recover would mean that current operating practices would need to be adapted.
Mill by-products
Mill by-products availability is determined in oven-dry tonnes (odt) by looking at the difference between the output of by-products from the mills running at full capacity and the operating rates for 2020.
Mill by-products for which volumes are estimated include:
(1) Wood chips: means any softwood or hardwood pieces (small and thin) suitable for processing in a pulp mill or for sale to any other user, except as biomass fuel. Sawmills producing pulp quality chips can transfer the silviculture liability to the company acquiring them.
(2) Sawdust: fines, dust-like particles, generated from the processing of roundwood at sawmills during cutting and sawing. Fine sawdust is also a by-product of de-barked roundwood chipping at pulp mills. Fine sawdust is mainly used as feedstock for industrial boilers or for pellet production.
(3) Shavings: thin strips of wood generated from the processing of roundwood at sawmills during edging, trimming, and planing. Shavings are mainly used as animal bedding, feedstock for industrial boilers or for pellet production.
(4) Bark: is generated from de-barking operations at sawmills and pulp mills. Bark is entirely used as fuel for industrial boilers.
…From the Conlcusions
The amount of mill residues potentially available assumes a strong lumber market where the 24 sawmills consuming over 1000 m3 operate at full capacity. Six potential forest bioeconomy investment locations were evaluated based on fuelwood and mill residue availability and delivered cost under scenarios in which the Northern Pulp mill either re-opens or not.
In the scenario with Northern Pulp re-opened, Greenfield and Port Hawkesbury have the lowest average fuelwood cost ($104/odt and $103/odt) within 200 km because of an abundant supply located within 50 km (59 200 odt and 35 350 odt). Enfield has the highest availability of mill residues within 50 km (60 500 odt) and the lowest overall average cost ($114/odt) within 200 km.
With Northern Pulp remaining closed, Greenfield and Port Hawkesbury again have the lowest average fuelwood cost ($94/odt). Greenfield, Enfield, and Trenton show promising mill residue volumes available within 50 km with 108 550 odt, 134 950 odt, and 117 600 odt, respectively. This is because of their proximity to large sawmills historically supplying Northern Pulp with chips.
