The wood pellet industry already employs thousands across Canada in manufacturing, harvesting and transportation. It has the potential to create many more thousands of jobs across Canada by replacing less sustainable heating and power generation fuels.

There are already some great examples of the industry thriving locally. Ontario Power Generation’s Atikokan Generating Station near Atikokan, Ont., converted from coal to wood pellets in 2012 and was in service by July 2014. Pellets are sourced from local mills in Ontario, creating direct jobs and supporting the viability of the local forest sector by creating an outlet for sawmill residual and low-grade timber.

If Ontario’s Ministry of Energy committed to convincing all the households using natural gas for heat to convert to wood pellets, that would be a total of nine million tonnes of pellets being used annually. The conversion, in turn, would generate $2.4 billion, and create 90,000 jobs. (Source: Pellet Presentation, Gord Murray, WPAC).

If you’re curious about pellet employment per tonne, here are some figures to consider around domestic heating conversions:

• 9 million tonnes of annual pellets translates to 90,000 pellet jobs;
• 900,000 tonnes translates to 9,000 jobs;
• and 90,000 tonnes translates to 900 jobs.

As the Forest Products Association of Canada’s (FPAC) vice-president of environmental leadership Mark Hubert noted in Canadian Biomass magazine, “From a social perspective, bioenergy also creates more permanent employment than other energy sources. Considering the same capital investment, bioenergy creates twice as many jobs as other types of renewable energy and three times as many jobs as fossil fuels."

< Prev		Next >