Innovatree Carbon Group

Overview

Timber harvesting operations create waste biomass onsite that is not easily utilized due to the high costs of transportation and low value of the waste biomass. If left onsite the waste biomass would increase the fuel load and wildfire risk in the area, therefore it is burnt in “slash-piles”. The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions has estimated that 5 million tonnes or 8% of BC annual GHG emissions are due to slash-pile burning (PICS Lightning Talks Series - Eric Nance - YouTube). One way to significantly reduce slash-pile burning would be to increase the economic value associated with slash-pile or the waste biomass that goes into slash-piles. One option for increasing the economic value would be to generate Carbon Credits by avoiding slash-pile burning, instead using the waste biomass as feedstock for bioenergy facilities. To accomplish this, Phase I would be the development of an accurate and verifiable method for quantifying the reduction in carbon emissions. This would include the emissions due to slash-pile burning, transportation and grinding emissions, bioenergy facility emissions and the carbon value of the energy created from the biomass waste. Phase II would be the development of an HTML calculator that could incorporate tree species and the different fuel values associated with each, wood chip moisture content, bioenergy facility parameters, a carbon value of the energy produced, transportation emissions per km, grinding emissions per tonne of biomass, slash-pile emissions per tonne of biomass waste and all associated costs/revenue potential.

Ideal Team Skillset

• Mathematical model building
• Coding
• General understanding of forest carbon sequestration