The innovative southern Ontario company is putting its plans into motion to make renewable energy from woody biomass.
In Kirkland Lake, CHAR has an option on a vacant piece of property in the Archer Industrial Park and is in the process of securing and searching for wood waste from area forestry companies. Last year, CHAR signed a memorandum of understanding with Rosko Forestry Operation, a sawmill next to their site, that would involve conveying over wood residual for a proposed two-kiln operation.
No production start date has been announced but the company goal is produce 500,000 gigajoules of RNG a year — enough to heat 5,500 homes — along with 10,000 tonnes annually of biocarbon. The latter could be used by steel mills in Hamilton and Nanticoke, less than an hour’s drive away. "If you look at it this way, it's like the last mile of decarbonization where the EAF does a lot and then this is the last piece that gets them to fully carbon-neutral steelmaking." The Sault Ste. Marie steelmaker is in the process of making the $700-million switch to EAF technology. And the company has made it known it is considering forest biomass as a source of carbon as part of its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
At a site tucked behind the FedEx distribution centre, White said they performed geotechnical work there last year and are awaiting government funding to do detailed design for the facility. At the same time, White said they have to be mindful of the economics of trucking in a low-value raw material like forest biomass from too far out.