Hello, I am Francis Leclerc,…

Hello, I am Francis Leclerc, a salesperson for Heizomat Canada and also an owner of an automated wood chip boiler and wood chipper. Heizomat Canada sells German made automated biomass boilers, wood chippers and loading systems. I spent 20 years working in the natural gas/oil industry, I quickly realized how bad it is on the environment and families as people have to go work in very remote locations to make a living. By switching to biomass heating we can use local renewable resources and sustain families in each communities that do the transition.

I am very passionate about automated biomass heating because it makes so much sense for Canada and it has been time tested in Europe. We do not need to reinvent the wheel... and the benefit for the environment and people are obvious.

One of the challenge of the Canadian biomass industry is the production and supply of good quality wood chips. Just like firewood, wood chips need to be dried before being burned. It takes time and the right equipment to implement a wood chips supply chain but we are lucky we can just look over to Europe to see how it gets done.

The location of the fuel is our challenge. Wood chips should not be transported more than 80-100km to make them affordable. But most of the energy is needed in large cities and the wood lots surrounding the large cities are privately owned and not managed properly to supply biomass fuel because there are no incentives/regulations for the landowners. That is the main difference between Europe and Canada, I believe. Lots of wood is going to waste due to lack of harvesting/management of private wood lots, in Europe owners are obligated to managed their wood lots. It is profitable but it takes time...

One great source of biomass fuel for the large cities is their landfills/transfer station. All the waste lumber can be chipped and burned right away as this waste is from dried lumber. Heizomat's biomass boilers are designed to burn fuel that contains contaminants like nails, gravel, etc.

In rural farm areas, the farmers are utilizing their wood lots to produce firewood, cord wood and logs for lumber. They are slowly turning to automated biomass boiler and they usually produce their own fuel using a PTO driven chipper off their tractor. They can also produce and supply good quality wood chips in their area because they already own most of the equipment needed to handle/transport wood chips.

In the Prairies where there are no trees to chip, or in urban areas where wood chips is not suitable due to the lack of space, wood pellets becomes the right fuel to use to displace fossil fuel. Due to the lower cost of transportation and ease to handle the pellets are definitely part of the biomass fuel supply chain as well. The pellets producers do not want to truck the wood chips needed to produce pellets very far either, this creates shortages of wood chips in some areas. Most of the pellets are exported to the Asian and European markets so it leaves some Canadians with a bad taste for the biomass industry...

In Canada, and Ontario, we have plenty of wood to do the switch to biomass heating and CHP, but the challenge is the location of the wood. To keep the cost of the fuel down we need to make sure we use the biomass close to where it is being utilized, highly populated areas. This means incentives and regulations for private wood lot owners to mange their land and supply wood to businesses that will produce and supply good quality wood chips with the right moisture content.

There are plenty of people interested in supporting the biomass industry either by supplying or producing good quality wood chips but they need some help. Just like natural gas is subsidized to make it affordable, the government will need to help people and businesses as well. The government of Quebec, through its Transition Energetique program, is definitely promoting and helping people and businesses transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy and I think other provinces and Territories should have a similar program.

The other big challenge is the technology made and available in Canada is so far behind that only large industrial project can afford to buy a good automated system. There are no good systems below 1MW made in North America. The technology comes from Europe and the challenge comes from the certification of the equipment. In North America we certify boilers using the ASME system, or a CRN number for equipment certified for Canada only, Europe uses EN 303-5. This is holding back many systems and complicating the installation. Only PEI has recognized EN 303-5 as equivalent to ASME. North American manufacturers are not going to be able to catch up to European manufacturers so we have 2 solutions: change regulations to accept EN 303-5 or force the European to build the boilers here to have them ASME certified.

As a salesperson and a boiler owner of a non ASME certified system, I would like to see the regulations barrier removed ASAP to lower the cost of the equipment. The few ASME certified European boiler dealers are hording the projects and driving the cots way higher than they need to be. They have managed to influence the engineers designing the heating system by telling them that ASME boilers are better. There are plenty of high quality European boiler manufacturer but only 2 are able to bid on governments projects that always require ASME certification.

Thanks for listening to users and salespersons involved in the industry, we appreciate it!

Cheers.