Fortress Paper Ltd.

At the recent Brazilian Technical Pulp and Paper Association (ABTCP) Pulp and Paper International Congress & Exhibition, pulp and paper exhibition and congress in Sao Paulo, Brazil, pulp and paper leaders noted a movement towards biotechnology despite market downturns in the industry. Due to the international economic crisis, Brazilian pulp and paper exports fell this year.  Despite predictions that the market downturn will continue, the ...

Pulp and paper producer Tembec Inc. has officially inaugurated a new anaerobic treatment facility which will produce methane biogas and greatly reduce the use of fossil fuels at its high-yield pulp mill in Matane, Québec. The announcement of the investment was made earlier this year.  The upgrade is phase one of an overall $310-million investment. Funding for this investment was provided mainly by the Government of Canada with $19....

The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) congratulates the federal government for the "unprecedented success" of its $1 billion Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Fund (PPGTP) and it’s continued commitment to the ongoing transformation of the Canadian forest products sector. A new FPAC report was released on this phase of the government’s ongoing strategic support for the industry.  FPAC found that the program has funded 98 proje...

Early last week, in a significant step to eliminate coal-fired power generation, the government announced the burning of the Atikokan plant’s last piece of coal- making it the end of an era. The conversion of the Atikokan plant from coal to biomass is now underway. This project, the first of its kind in the province of Ontario. The project creates new economic opportunities for Ontario’s forestry sector, which will provide the biomass fuel...

A power plant in Aitkokan, Ontario will undergo a conversion over the next two years that will change the facility’s focus from coal to biomass. The conversion project for the Atikokan Generating Station, located about 200km northwest of Thunder Bay, will begin later this year and is scheduled to be fully operational by 2014. Upon completion, it will provide more than 200 megawatts of energy to the provincial power grid. The plant will us...

In a draft of the state’s 10-year energy action plan, Oregon governor John Kitzhaber and his government have instituted a strong focus on biomass energy. Given the geography and biodiversity of the state, the report says “Oregon has a unique ability to lead in developing the next generation of biomass and cogeneration facilities, as forests cover nearly half of Oregon’s 63 million acres.” Nearly 60 per cent of those 63 million acres...

An army facility in New York will undergo a conversion from coal-fired power to biomass power as part of a project conceived to help the US Department of Defense meet renewable energy initiatives. Last month ReEnergy Holdings LLC purchased the idled 60MW coal-fired facility at Fort Drum announcing an investment of $34 million to upgrade the plant. The facility has since been renamed ReEnergy Black River and is set to begin its operations in 20...

Two months after the US Department of Energy awarded Ameresco Inc. $795 million to finance the country’s largest biomass cogeneration plant, production began at the South Carolina facility this week. The Savannah River Site Biomass Cogeneration facility will convert biomass to power, turning 385,000 tons of forest residue into 20 megawatts of energy each year. That energy will be used to provide 30 per cent of the electricity needs for the...

Industry leaders in the US are calling on the federal government to invest more time and money on the biomass industry. Proposed cuts to a farming bill – the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) – are a signal to some that this particular alternative energy sector isn’t receiving the intention it deserves. “Cuts in BCAP could put additional pressure on the bio-energy groups using the biomass to set feedstock prices [per ton] at a ...

As a leading European innovator biotechnology, Finland is putting a large amount of resources into research and development in order to move the country in the direction of a bioeconomy. A recent article published by Lab Product News provides several examples of this new Finnish initiative. A non-profit group named the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is one of the groups at the helm of the new movement. One of the biggest changes t...