Canada's New Brunswick Power Corporation (NB Power) is considering converting its coal-fired plant to one that uses torrefied or steam-cracked wood pellets.
The utility, located in the Port of Belledune, intends to complete tests of burning biomass at the 450MW plant next year, NB Power told Argus. It has already received test samples of torrefied or steam-cracked pellets (carbonized pellets) from two suppliers, a market source told Argus.
NB Power is looking for between 500,000t and 1.3mn t per year of biomass fuel starting from 2028 or earlier, according to a call for an expression of interest it announced in late November, to identify possible biomass supply chain partners.
Canada's Prairie Clean Energy (PCE) has also been "asked to submit a [request for proposal] to NB Power as they look to secure stable fuel supplies for their biomass needs," PCE's president and chief executive officer Mark Cooper said.
"While there is no final decision on what type of pellet would be ultimately be used," the utility favours the use of carbonised pellets, which are processed "to mimic a charcoal-type product and can be safely used as a substitution for coal", the utility said.
This would enable the company to continue running the power station without having to incur large amounts of additional investment for the conversion. But NB Power may struggle to find all of the volumes of carbonized biomass it is looking for, because the latter's current production capacity globally is estimated to be below what the utility is looking to consume annually.
Around 1.5mn t/yr of woody biomass would be required to produce 500,000t of torrefied or stream-cracked wood pellets, industry estimates suggest.
Over the past five years around 1mn t/yr of white wood pellet production capacity has become operational in northeast Canada, most of which is shipped to end users in northwest Europe through long-term contracts, because of the lack of a domestic market for industrial pellets. Should NB Power take a decision to convert to biomass firing, it could absorb at least some of this production or the feedstock it uses.
"A recent resource assessment concluded that there was sufficient waste fibre stock in the region to support conversion, so the intent is not to harvest additional forest as a source of fuel," the utility told Argus.
The initiative to switch to biomass is part of the province's plan to phase out coal-fired generation by 2030.
By Jasmine Antunes and Erisa Senerdem
