Pellets 'a no brainer' for New Brunswick

Bioenergy Waste wood presents better opportunity than farm crops, says researcher
Published Tuesday August 5th, 2008
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DERWIN GOWANTELEGRAPH-JOURNAL

The future of New Brunswick bioenergy lies in the forest, not the field, argues researcher Roger Sampson.

This province will never play in the biofuels big leagues, turning farm crops into ethanol and biodiesel, said Sampson in an interview.

However, New Brunswick could cut its output of carbon dioxide and develop the rural economy by turning waste wood into pellets to burn to heat homes and domestic hot water, even make electricity, he said.

Sampson works for R.E.A.P.-Canada (Resource Efficient Agricultural Production), a research, consulting and development organization in Montreal. His family owns woodlots in northern New Brunswick between Bathurst and Dalhousie, where he spent summers as a youngster.

At one stage in his life he believed in liquid biofuels - ethanol and biodiesel. He eventually came to the view that solid pellets made from grass on the Prairies, wood on the East Coast, make more sense.

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