Green

Nearly $2 billion worth of hydroelectric developments underway is set to provide a financial shot in the arm for two Northern Ontario communities along the winding Mattagami River.

Industry promoters of the Alberta oil sands are predicting gradual growth in the latter half of 2010 as development projects, shelved by the recession and dipping oil prices, come back to life.

A northeastern Ontario First Nation community is aiming to crack the biomass market. Nipissing First Nation, just west of North Bay, has unveiled plans for a small wood pellet mill with a target of producing 24,000 tonnes of material annually.

While other companies worry about wasting energy, the team at the Sudbury-based Renewable Resource Recovery Corp. is fine with seeing it go down the drain – literally.

After years of discussion, planning and false starts, Sudbury’s Cambrian College is finally looking to make its $6-million Xstrata Nickel Sustainable Energy Centre a reality in the spring of 2010.

Northeastern Ontario is being billed as the 'Saudi Arabia of biomass' and delegates who attended a North Bay conference heard of the opportunities and challenges to heat and power the region with this green crude.

The jury is still out on a bio-fuel trial to determine if two types of grass can be mixed in with wood waste to fuel Abitibi-Bowater's new biomass boiler in Fort Frances.

A Toronto-based manufacturer of peat fuel wants more transparency from the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) on its plan to replace coal with wood biomass fuel at its generating plants.

Thunder Bay's Confederation College is taking their partnership with global energy experts Honeywell to another level with plans for a biomass wood-fire boiler.

The uncertainty over Ontario's fledgling biomass economy has a northeastern Ontario community dropping a biomass energy project and switching to solar.