The BC Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE) and the FortisBC Clean Growth Innovation Fund (CGIF) are pleased to announce a call for innovation focused on Forestry Residue Management. Innovators are invited to submit proposals that outline clear commercial pathways to increase resilience in BC’s forests by strengthening value chains, diversifying utilization opportunities, and managing carbon.
CICE and the CGIF will be awarding up to $6 million in non-dilutive funding. Applications for the Forestry Residue Management call for innovation were accepted from June 26 to 12pm PT on August 18, 2023. Companies will be notified whether they are selected for stage 2 by August 25, 2023.
For more information, DOWNLOAD THE FORESTRY RESIDUE MANAGEMENT APPLICATION GUIDE
The Forestry Residue Management Innovation Challenge
Our beautiful province of British Columbia is facing critical challenges when it comes to wildfire prevention and the sustainable utilization of wood waste. While thinning for wildfire prevention has become an imperative task in BC, these operations have led to an increased accumulation of wood waste residue – approximately 4,600,000 green metric tonnes of wood fiber resources are stacked into slash piles and burned on-site each year. Wildfire risk and associated emissions are also rising due to a changing climate, with 150-200 million tonnes of CO2 emitted from BC wildfires during each of the high fire years of 2017,2018 and 2021. In addition to direct emissions, wildfires kill trees that will decay over time releasing carbon at similar scales to the direct emissions from the fires.
Forest residue management is a long-standing challenge in BC requiring innovation to enable commercial incentivization of the collection, transport and processing of forestry residues. This has proven difficult due to the low economic value of residues, difficult terrain and long transportation distances.
CICE and the CGIF believe that funding innovation in forest residue management will advance high impact solutions that will unlock the untapped potential that lies within our forests.
“Possibly the most important step we can take towards more responsible management of harvest residues is a shift of our mindsets from the view that residues are a waste byproduct of harvesting…The more we start planning for residues as we lay out our cutblocks, and not as an afterthought once the logs are gone, the more operational efficiencies we will be able to command, the lower our costs will be for treatment and processing, and the smaller our emissions will be in the forest.”
Eric Nance, Dominik Roeser, Carly A. Phillips, Caren C. Dymond and Werner A. Kurz, 2023 ‘The burning question: Addressing harvest residue management in B.C.‘, Canadian Biomass, 15 February
Timeline
The Funding Opportunity
CICE and the CGIF are awarding up to $3 million each, for a total of $6 million in non-dilutive funding, to innovators with high impact proposals that lead to implementation solutions in the following areas:
- Commercially viable pathways for collection, transportation, and management of forestry residue, including opportunities for slash and thinning by-products to reduce wildfire risks
- Diversification of utilization solutions to derive energy value from forestry residue, such as biogases, advanced biofuels, and other scalable end-use products
- Proposals that align forest management with carbon-based innovations, such as nature-based solutions, bioenergy with carbon capture utilization and storage (BECCUS), and other potentially negative-emission technologies
CICE and the CGIF will prioritize regional approaches and commercial plans with potential to be scaled across multiple sites. Favoured projects will fall between Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4-9. Project activities may include, but are not limited to, demonstrations and pilot projects, innovative implementation solutions, novel linkage of system components, mitigation or monitoring technologies, and business model innovations. Preference will be given to projects that empower Indigenous forest management and remote communities in BC.
Q&A Webinar
Download the presentation slides.
For full details on how to apply, download the FORESTRY MANAGEMENT APPLICATION GUIDE.
For more information, please contact CICE: FRM2023@cice.ca