How to Heat a Hospital

The headline on a 2021 article  from the Nova Scotia Health (NSH) website declares:

Cape Breton Regional Hospital’s new energy centre will be cleaner, greener and more efficient

What struck me when I first read this was that it didn’t simply say the new energy center will be “clean, green and efficient” because, even though the Department of Health and Wellness is starting from scratch — the hospital as it now stands does not have an “energy center” — the goal is not to adopt the greenest source of energy possible but to do better than 100% fossil fuel.

The NSH article explains the plan is to provide 60% of the heat for the expanded CBRH “campus” from wood chips (biomass) with the other 40% continuing to come from oil.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that continued reliance on oil to any extent is a missed opportunity in 2022, but what about the wood-chip burner? Is this good or bad news? I asked Raymond Plourde, senior wilderness coordinator with the Ecology Action Centre (EAC), and he told me:

It could be both.

 

Critical Accounting Error

Plourde began by drawing a sharp line between burning biomass for heat (as is the plan for the CBRH) and burning biomass for electricity, which Nova Scotia Power does at its 60 megawatt plant in Point Tupper.

Says Plourde:

Forest biomass and its use is a complicated issue but, in brief, burning wood for electricity is unbelievably bad. Very bad for the atmosphere, very bad for ratepayers — it’s the most expensive form of electricity on the grid — and it’s horribly inefficient. That’s been one of the worst parts about it, these biomass burners for electricity struggle to reach 20% efficiency; meaning, out of every 100 trees harvested, chipped and burned or pelletized and burned, 80 of them go up the smokestack with no captured benefit to humans at all. And, of course, it releases a tremendous amount of carbon into the atmosphere, which is not counted because of this ridiculous loophole where biomass is considered to be carbon neutral, regardless of use, based on a simplistic and facile — it’s not even really a calculation — a belief that if you cut a tree and burn a tree and another tree grows, then it’s carbon neutral so there’s no need to count it.

This “far reaching but fixable flaw” in our green carbon accounting, which is entrenched within the Kyoto Protocol, was identified by Dr Timothy D. Searchinger et al way back in 2009:

This accounting erroneously treats all bioenergy as carbon neutral regardless of the source of the biomass, which may cause large differences in net emissions. For example, the clearing of long-established forests to burn wood or to grow energy crops is counted as a 100% reduction in energy emissions despite causing large releases of carbon.

Adds Plourde:

The flaw in the…calculation is that it takes time for trees to regrow, so a very large tree that is harvested and used for biomass has a huge amount of carbon stored within its body, its trunk and its branches but also — and this gets missed by the forest industry all the time, deliberately, they act as if there is nowhere else that the carbon exists — but…the reality is that a great deal more carbon is actually stored below the soil, in the soil, by the trees and that if you leave them alone, the carbon stays inert, trapped in soil and in the trees themselves.

So, if you cut a tree that took, say, 100 years to grow, then by their simplistic calculation…eventually another tree will grow and re-sequester the carbon that was released. The problem is…that it takes 100 years if it all works out. There’s nothing that guarantees that a tree will grow back or that somebody will make sure one does. There are no regulations to make sure that happens, so that’s a big flaw, and it’s the time lag that’s the biggest flaw…[W]e don’t have 100 years to recapture carbon that we burn and vaporize and put into the climate, into the atmosphere immediately.

So, burning biomass (like wood chips) for electricity is a very bad, no good idea, as Plourde states in no uncertain terms:

The biomass burners in this province should be shut down, in our opinion, for two reasons, one, the atmospheric input that we can ill afford right now but also the impacts on our forests, because biomass has created a gigantic new consumptive pressure or market for trees. And it doesn’t seem like the forest industry really gives a damn what product is made, as long as trees are cut and machines are running and trucks are running…This is the lowest-value product ever produced from our forests and it should not be done by purpose-specific biomass harvesting.

 

Sawmill residuals

When it comes to space heating projects, though, like the one planned for the CBRH, Plourde says it is “generally accepted by climate scientists” that using wood to heat a building, or multiple buildings, is a better and more efficient use than generating electricity.

But — and this is a big but — the key is that the wood burned represents “genuine residuals from other wood-processing businesses,” primarily waste wood from sawmills but also silvicultural thinnings.  When a tree is cut for lumber, says Plourde,

…usually a little bit more than half of the tree does not end up in lumber and this is in part because our trees are much younger and smaller than they used to be.

Those residuals are “going to go somewhere,” so sending them to a highly efficient wood-chip boiler for conversion to heat is a good use for this genuine “waste wood.”

But the industry complicates the situation, he says, but applying the term “waste wood” to “unmerchantable trees,” that is, trees that might be too crooked for lumber but that if left in the forest would serve myriad purposes — sequestering carbon, housing nesting birds, providing shade, etc. Even dead trees serve multiple purposes, whether providing shelter for forest creatures (including mammals); food for fungi, beetles and insects; or compost — organic material —  to “complement the mineral soil to create the conditions to grow more trees.”

Still, if the waste wood used in the biomass boiler truly is waste wood (a big “if” in this province), there is, says Plourde:

…a presumed net benefit for the atmosphere because the chips and sawdust and bark and so on would be just placed in piles where they would rot and a lot of it would end up in the atmosphere anyway. So, if your high efficiency rates are in place, that is to say, you have a modern, wood-burning boiler-type situation, like the one that I believe is being proposed here, without knowing a lot of the details, and the source fuel was from sawmill residuals then that would be acceptable, if you will, environmentally. There would be some net benefit to the atmosphere as opposed to burning coal or oil.

 

Expanding project

I also had the chance to speak (on March 22) with Paul Frank, the senior healthcare architect for the Cape Breton Regional Hospital expansion project. (This, I have to say, was a welcome opportunity and one not always provided by the provincial government, which is far more likely to send you a carefully crafted statement than to let you speak with someone like Frank, who can actually answer questions.)

Frank explained that the decision to incorporate a standalone energy center into the CBRH project was made as the project grew beyond the original plan, which was to put a two-story addition housing “a new emergency department, new Cancer Centre and the new intensive care unit” on the back of existing hospital. At that point, he said, “all we were going to do was replace the [oil] boilers that were there.”

But then the Cancer Centre, at its own request, was “split out into its own building” because it would be “easier to do fundraising.” (I’m not sure what to make of that, so I’ll put a pin in it for now) and it was decided that:

…since they need some more in-patient beds, maybe we should add two floors of in-patient beds to the addition, so that made it then a four-story building and it’s now grown to eight stories, ’cause they’re trying to be more efficient and not cut down operations.

The second contributing factor to the change in heating plans was the closure of Northern Pulp in January 2020, which left sawmills and contractors with a glut of wood chips. As the CBC reported, the province pursued “a variety of options” to find a market for the chips (including requiring Nova Scotia Power to buy more renewables from within the province, which led to increased operations of the biomass boilers in Point Tupper and Brooklyn). Says Frank:

[T]he province asked is there a possibility to do something to help the economy with buying up some of the wood chips that would have been going to Northern Pulp. So, we did that study, and it made sense to put a biomass boiler in. So that’s how we started with an energy center, because we had no place around where the existing hospital is to put a biomass boiler, to get the trucks in to unload and so on, so we said, “let’s move it to the other end of the property.”

Frank says the biomass system will be capable of providing all the heat necessary for the hospital, but “healthcare facilities by CSA codes require a secondary source of heat” and that is where the oil boilers come in. Moreover, from the end of May to the end of October, the facility will require far less heat than “one of those biomass boilers can produce” (all that is necessary is “some steam for sterilizations and some stuff in the kitchens.”) So, during this period, the oil-fired boilers will be used. But they are expected to use a third — possibly a quarter — of the oil used now.

As for the decision to opt for oil as a secondary heat source, Frank says:

In hindsight was that a good thing? I don’t know. We do have boilers that are capable of being converted to propane or natural gas…[T]he problem with propane is…when you’re looking at it in huge chunks like they would need for the hospital, it’s not that readily available. Are we learning things in Glace Bay? We are putting propane-operated boilers in…Irving are saying, right now they can guarantee supply for that, but they’re not sure they can on a full-time basis. So again, it’s one of these boilers that, if we can’t get propane and we need to convert to something else…we can go back to oil when necessary.

More about Glace Bay in a moment, but I should also say that biomass boilers are “currently under review” for the new healthcare facilities on the Northside and in New Waterford (a tender called in November 2021 for the Northside Health Centre included “biomass equipment” but apparently no contract was awarded.)

As for cooling, it will be done via propane chillers in the CBRH and they “don’t need a lot of propane to operate those.”

But there is another green heating option under consideration in Glace Bay, where the existing facility is being expanded and renovated.

Frank says the hospital is located directly on top of a number of old coal mine shafts and they are looking at using the water flooding them for geothermal heat. It’s “an expensive way to go” but he says they’ve commissioned a study and are now looking for the funding to proceed:

NSH has a program where they can get half of the funding from the federal government for the system. But apparently, and I’m not part of all of that, the funding part, but apparently the federal government will only commit to their half of the funding if the province commits to the other half. So, we just finished the study about three weeks ago and it’s now gone for funding, so, keep our fingers crossed it will now go ahead.

Frank confirmed for me on Monday that if geothermal goes ahead, it will serve as the primary heat/cooling source, with “fewer propane and oil boilers for backup.”

 

J.D. Irving?

I asked Frank where the wood chips would be sourced and he said the NSH had gone out for an expression of interest from suppliers and received one response, from Albert Bridge-based Mira Forestry Development Ltd. (I could only find this tender, which doesn’t show any bids received, but back in September 2020, the province awarded a contract to Mira Forestry Development Ltd to “convert the fossil fuel heating systems at Memorial High School in Sydney Mines, N.S., and Riverview High School in Sydney, N.S.” to wood-chip heating systems. The contract — one of six awarded across the province — includes a long-term agreement to “source wood chips from private woodlots and sawmills.”)

The wood chips have to have a certain moisture content and be a certain size, but Frank said they visited plants currently using biomass in Prince Edward Island and found that “probably 90% of their stuff is scrap wood, trees that have blown over and so on, and we’re hoping we’ll get the same sort of result here.”

In fact, according to the tender documents, the contract to provide the biomass equipment to the CBRH was awarded in July 2021 to Wood4Heating, a PEI company that, as of 2019, owned and operated 13 biomass systems on the island.

Alex Pratt, biomass operations manager for Wood4Heating, told the CBC in a 2018 interview that his company’s systems run on wood chips:

His company brought in a state-of-the-art wood chipper from Italy. They make chips from tree tops or from the brush left behind at sites that have been cleared.

“It makes a fine chip for our biomass plants, so it gives us the specific size that we need,” Pratt said.

PEI has been expanding its use of biomass for several years now but in 2019, as the CBC reported, when Premier Dennis King’s government proposed adding an additional 13 public buildings to “the list of 33 schools, hospitals and other buildings converted from heating oil to biomass heat,” Opposition politicians raised similar concerns to those I discussed with Plourde, namely that:

…the environmental benefits of switching to wood heat depend on how the wood is harvested, whether plantings keep up with harvested trees, and how long trees are allowed to grow before they’re cut.

In 2019, the province had:

…no clear indicator of how many trees are harvested each year. For that figure, the province relies on an Island-wide survey using Lidar technology, which is similar to radar, but uses light from a laser.

The survey is done once per decade, with the next survey taking place in 2020.

Frank told me they couldn’t “guarantee” the wood chips burned at the CBRH would be locally sourced wood residuals. And full disclosure: I actually began looking into this story because I’d heard a rumor that the woodchip contract for the CBRH had been awarded to J.D. Irving (JDI), something a Nova Scotia government spokesperson assures me is not the case.

But it’s worth noting (and Plourde did) that the biomass burner at Dalhousie’s Agricultural College — which is actually a co-generator, producing mostly heat but some electricity and which has sourced wood from “small local producers” since it opened in 2018 — awarded its most recent $1.3 million contract for “sustainable biomass feedstock” to two forestry giants, J. D. Irving and Wagner Forest NS Ltd. As Joan Baxter reported in the Halifax Examiner, the procurement decision was made in July 2021, but it “wasn’t until November 2021 that Dalhousie University finally got around to informing other bidders that their bids had been unsuccessful.”

Baxter interviewed Tom Miller of Pictou County, a long-time forestry worker and “outspoken defender of ecological forestry” who said of the deal:

JDI and Wagner no doubt could undercut the others with their version of sustainable biomass. It’s harder and slower if you have a good idea of what sustainable really means.

That’s the way things are done around here, though. Lots of behind-closed-door deals that are done by the time anyone finds out. And always in industry’s favor. It’s such a piss-off.”

I recommend Baxter’s article, which explores issues of biomass “sustainability” in much greater detail than I can get into in this article. (And in fact, I recommend all the Examiner‘s biomass coverage, between Baxter and Jennifer Henderson and Linda Pannozzo, they’ve really done an incredible job.)

I ended my conversation with Plourde by asking if, in his opinion, Nova Scotia produced enough genuine waste wood to make biomass a sustainable heat source and he said it does — provided we get out of “generating really expensive electricity” from biomass and use sawmill and silvicultural residuals strictly for heating facilities.

This, he said, would have the added bonus of relieving the strain on our forests and perhaps even protecting our “ever-growing list of old-forest dependent endangered species.”