Company fired up about wood chips.

• Date: 01 December 2019
• Author: Ross, Ian

A northwestern Ontario green energy company is making incremental steps toward promoting a regional biomass economy.

Over the years, Northerners have heard from industry, government and academics about the opportunities to harvest, transport and process the abundant supply of discarded forest slash into heat and energy for buildings and entire communities.

But little in the way of tangible progress has been made.

Biothermic Wood Energy Systems, a Thunder Bay biofuel heating company, established a processing and storage facility that they bill as the first of its kind in Ontario.

Led by co-owner Vince Rutter, Biothermic has been a leader in promoting modern, clean-burning wood heating solutions using a reliable and sustainable homegrown source of fuel that can outcompete propane, natural gas and imported oil.

To Rutter, Canada's forests are vast, the heat demand is large, and the price of fossil fuels is bound to go up with federal carbon pricing.

"The lowest cost alternative, without a doubt, is wood. We have to move in that direction."

On the company's Mooney Avenue acreage in Thunder Bay's inner city, a wood chip processing plant and a 5,000-square-foot dome-like storage shed has been erected.

...