With promises of a new hotel and lumber mill on the horizon, Smooth Rock Falls officials are diversifying further with a new focus the green energy development.
The Tembec mill closure in 2006 cut 200 jobs out of the local workforce, says Bob Cheetham, economic development official with the town.
A $320,000 feasibility study from Halifax Global Inc. is underway to help Cheetham and other local officials examine the viability of using tree biomass and other natural products for energy generation. The Northern Ontario Heritage Fund is providing $153,000 towards the study.
Also being pursued is a $100,000 study to determine the viability of creating an ethanol production facility. The results of the studies will be available by the end of June whereby a business scoping analysis will undertaken.
“We need to develop a focus for using what we already have,” he says.
“For so many years, we’ve been reliant on two-by-fours and pulp, but the value of the tree certainly goes beyond that.”
One avenue being considered is a regeneration centre of excellence that would use regional biomass to act as feedstock for energy production. It then could be sold to the provincial grid or used locally.
Developing green energy would be dependent on the use of the eight megawatt co-generation plant sitting on the former Tembec site, as well as the four lagoons and slurry ponds that cost the company an estimated $11 million to install. This infrastructure would save millions of dollars in future investments for the town, Cheetham says, and make the project more attractive, as it could be used to create methane, another potential energy source. Discussions are ongoing with Tembec to acquire the facility.
Another focus is a massive land inventory study being overseen by Cheetham through the North Claybelt Agri Network.
Smooth Rock Falls is spearheading this initiative on behalf of a coalition of 12 nearby communities, from Hearst to Black River, Matheson, including Opasatika and Kapuskasing.
This initiative involves mapping 50,000-square kilometres of land reaching from Constance Lake to Black Lake, charting everything from soil types to the owners of the land packages. With this information, organizers will be able to easily bring up highly detailed maps tailored to their specific needs. For instance, if a certain type of soil is required to grow hemp or willow for feedstock, map overlays could determine specific blocks of acreage conducive to this kind of growth.
Biomass, or wood waste, is typically dependent on the output of forestry firms, meaning that these types of green energy projects are limited on feedstock from private companies, many of which are making use of it themselves.
However, the land identified in the inventory is all privately owned, rather than Crown land parceled out by the Ministry of Natural Resources through sustainable forestry licenses (SFL). This means that any plans the group may have will not be hamstrung by companies that may have their own interest in the biomass, he says.
This will allow them to make a case for the farmers and other local landholders to grow crops for energy feedstock production.
However, as it typically takes three to five years for new crops to be prepared, grown and processed, the biomass feedstock production is being viewed as a long-term initiative, Cheetham says.
In time, this may allow organizers to examine tree growth that has value, not only for energy, but for other sectors as well, including pharmacology.
