Twenty-five years ago, the first bulk shipment of industrial wood pellets traveled from British Columbia to the Helsingborg Energi power plant in Sweden, marking the birth of today’s multibillion dollar industrial wood pellet industry. 

The person behind this accomplishment, John Swaan, tells some of the stories which led him to that first contract worth $1.67 million in 1998.

There has been much discussion recently about the offtake pricing relationships between pellet producers and pellet buyers.

Many years of near zero inflation resulted in some complacency in how offtake price adjustments were defined in the bilateral contracts between the pellet fuel producers and buyers.  It became common to define an annual fixed adjustment to the sales price of the pellets; often in the range of 1.5% to 2.5%.  With hindsight, it is obvious that this exposed producers to risk if the average cost of production increased faster than the price.

This brief white paper will set the foundation for the reader to use the dashboards that complements this analysis.

A supply shock occurs when a significant portion of a good or service is no longer available in the market and substitutes are scarce or non-existent.

This white paper describes how the loss of pellet fuel supply into western Europe and the UK as a result of sanctions on Russia has produced a supply shock that is having, and will continue to have, significant consequences.

This white paper shows how wood pellets and high efficiency gasifying pellet cookers will be beneficial to the people and ecology of Rwanda and many other countries in which people use smoky solid fuels for cooking.

FutureMetrics is honored and proud to be providing analysis and consulting services to BioMassters via the support of the Clean Cooking Alliance (an organization within the United Nations).

The Inflation Reduction Act has opened the door for what may be the most efficient and pragmatic approach to actively lowering atmospheric CO₂ concentrations.  Combining the use of fuel produced from the by-products of continuously growing managed forests with carbon capture results in the same outcome as direct air capture.  This white paper and the new accompanying dashboard show how.

There has been high-level discussion from some government policymakers in the EU about restricting the use of “roundwood” as feedstock for pellet fuel.  While the spirit of the policymaking exercise is properly grounded as a tactic to disallow deforestation and encourage the most efficient use of a renewing resource, a blanket exclusion of “roundwood” is misguided.  This white paper explains why.  This white paper also discusses the dynamics of forest growth and carbon sequestration.

This comprehensive 32-page white paper uses advanced simulation techniques to explore every part of the industrial wood pellet supply chain.  The analysis shows how high inflation could impact the sector.  The paper offers some thoughts on mitigating the negative impacts of high inflation.

This white paper discusses a biomass fuel strategy for the German power generation sector that has the potential to reduce dependence on imported natural gas, mitigate grid reliability risk, solidify baseload generation, and significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.  It is complimented by a new interactive dashboard.

This white paper discusses how Japanese policy has set the foundation for the next wave of pellet fuel demand.  It uses a real-world example based on recent announcements by J-Power and Enviva.

This brief white paper is motivated by a policy announcement in India on October 8 that mandates that 5% to 10% biomass pellets must be blended with coal by October 2022 in most of its coal fueled power stations.

This white paper quantifies the demand for biomass pellets based on the Indian coal fueled power generation fleet.  It also offers an opinion on the potential for India to import wood pellets.

Even after years of explaining managed forest dynamics, the carbon debt misconception lives on. 

To this day, and sometimes by academics with PhD’s after their names, the carbon debt fallacy is perpetuated.  This white paper will explain why they get it wrong. 

This white paper’s thesis is that the likelihood of evolving policy that supports continue growth in demand for pellet fuels might be significantly increased by focused efforts on cooperation between the pellet sector and the consortiums that advocate for wind power, solar power, and energy storage.

Cooperation in strategy and communications may yield a future in which government strategies and influential reporting will have a more complete view of how to get from today to a fully decarbonized power sector.

Version 1.0 of wood pellets, i.e., so-called “white” pellets, have been unchanged for decades.  The promise of more advanced pellets has been around for at least two decades.  So-called “black” pellets that do not lose their integrity when exposed to water, and have other characteristics that lower the barriers for adoption as a coal substitute,  have not, to date, gained significant market share.  This white paper discusses why and also shows how innovation may have opened the door, finally, to pellets version 2.0.

The idea of carbon capture and storage (CCS) used in conjunction with fossil fueled power generation is appealing.  However, the best that CCS can achieve with fossil fuels is to approach CO₂ neutrality.  That is, they cycle carbon that has been sequestered over millions of years from out of the ground and then back into the ground.  There is no net change in atmospheric CO₂ as a result.

But we can do better.  Carbon neutral is good, carbon negative is much better.  This white paper envisions a future in which some of the existing coal fueled power stations are modified to use pellet fuel and capture and sequester the carbon dioxide produced from combustion.  CO₂ permanently  removed from the atmosphere and renewable power are the result.

This paper is accompanied by a new dashboard.  See below in the dashboard section.  The dashboard is also directly linked from within the white paper.

If the goal of policy is to lower CO₂ emissions in the power sector, the metric that should inform decision making should be based on the total investment and operating cost per avoided tonne of CO₂. 

This white paper will discuss this metric and will compare the analytics of two scenarios that provide on-demand dispatchable power: (1) Retire coal power plants and replace them with new natural gas combined cycle generating stations, and (2) modify existing pulverized coal power plants to use renewable industrial wood pellets as a substitute for coal.  

This short white paper and the accompanying dashboard show how combining the use of sustainably sourced wood pellets and carbon capture and sequestration in a power plant can achieve significant negative CO2 emissions.  The paper shows why BCCS must be part of every decarbonization strategy.

The goal of attaining a carbon free electricity generation sector is necessary. But the path from today to that goal needs to be pragmatic. This white paper offers guidance for near and long-term solutions that the Biden administration can incorporate into their strategy.