Forest Bioenergy: How Quebec’s Forests Can Support Economic Development and the Energy Transition

Forest bioenergy offers potential for Québec to support the energy transition, diversify markets for the forest sector, and strengthen its resilience. This potential is important in a challenging economic environment marked by the softwood lumber trade dispute, weakness in pulp and paper markets, and changing global markets. Biomass could create new outlets for forest harvesting and wood-processing residues, as well as for underutilized tree species and lower-quality wood.

Despite the abundance of the resource and the range of conversion pathways, deploying forest bioenergy projects remains challenging. A main barrier is the high cost of delivering biomass to processing facilities or conversion sites. This cost results from the interaction of several factors, including low energy density, resource dispersion and variability, harvesting conditions, preprocessing requirements, transportation distances, seasonal operations, quality specifications, and equipment utilization rates.

This presentation will provide a structured analysis of these factors to explain where costs arise and why they vary from one supply chain to another. It will also examine opportunities to improve competitiveness, including better integration with existing forest operations, volume consolidation, shared use of equipment and infrastructure, fewer material-handling stages, and improved logistics planning.

Finally, the presentation will consider the conditions required for forest bioenergy to contribute sustainably, by 2035, to industrial diversification, regional development, and the decarbonization of Québec. The central question is therefore not simply how much biomass is theoretically available, but rather which biomass can be mobilized, at what cost, under what conditions, and for which value chains.

The decline of Québec’s forest products sector over the past 25 years has reduced electricity consumption by approximately 13 TWh/y (~1.7 GW), which allowed the province to increase aluminum production/exports and consumption of electricity for low-value building heat. Unfortunately, this sector decline has been accompanied by tens of thousands of job losses and heightened wildfire risk.

As Québec seeks to decrease reliance on imported fossil fuels, reduce emissions, and adapt to a changing climate, the forest sector can make a substantial contribution that reverses the timber harvest decline of the past 25 years and limits wildfires. Central to this approach is the combination of BECCS (BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage) with community-wide district heating. BECCS facilities, consisting of a biomass combined heat and power plant paired with a carbon capture plant, produce three products simultaneously: 1) electricity for the grid or industrial consumers; 2) heat for district heat networks or industrial demands; and 3) permanent carbon dioxide removals (CDRs).

Québec can benefit from precedents set by the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, where 55–75% of the population rely on district heating, with biomass as a primary energy resource, and are currently constructing multiple BECCS facilities. Like the Nordics, Québec is likely to rely on offshore CO₂ storage, with Nova Scotia identified as the most promising site.

This approach could also establish Québec as a leading exporter of Carbon Dioxide Removals and ensure the long-term competitiveness of its forest products industry.

Forest biomass can be converted into a wide range of energy products, including transportation fuels, hydrogen, biomethane, pellets, pyrolysis oil, heat, and electricity. This project develops a harmonized techno-economic framework to compare these various conversion pathways using one petajoule of biomass as the common reference basis.

The analysis evaluates the levelized cost of production by accounting for capital investments, operating costs, external energy requirements, and biomass feedstock supply costs. Revenues associated with primary products, co-products, electricity, and heat are also incorporated to estimate the profitability of each pathway.

The sensitivity of the results is assessed under different pricing scenarios, including current market prices, fossil fuel equivalent prices, the application of a renewable premium, and the valuation of avoided fossil carbon emissions. The proposed framework enables a transparent comparison of competing forest biomass utilization pathways and supports resource allocation decisions as well as the assessment of emerging technologies.