Renewable Energy - Top FAQ

Energy crops are crops that are grown for the specific purpose of producing energy (electricity or liquid fuels) from all or part of the resulting plant. Switchgrass, alfalfa, corn, willow and poplar are examples of plants that can be grown as energy crops.

Ethanol produced in Ontario , for example, is produced primarily from grain corn. Commercial Alcohol's ethanol distillery in Chatham is Canada 's largest ethanol plant, capable of producing 150 million litres of ethanol per year, through the processing of over 15 million bushels of corn.

Economic Benefits: Because biomass resources are typically bulky and costly to transport, conversion facilities are often located in close proximity to the resource. Rural economies are supported by biomass through the development of new local industry to convert biomass to either electricity or transportation fuel.

In addition, the use of agricultural biomass creates new markets for rural farmer's products and stimulates rural economies by new demand for agricultural wastes and crops that can be grown on marginal land. 

Converting biomass to energy may also eliminate costly waste disposal problems. Processes such as diverting municipal waste from landfills for energy generation, tapping the gas produced by landfills for power production, using digester gas from sewage treatment plants create revenue from waste.

Finally, increased investment in biomass conversion technologies can create high-skill, high-wage jobs for the producers of these technologies and the industry or utility that uses them.

Other benefits: Bioenergy is greenhouse gas neutral and may be valuable in carbon trading. As part of Canada 's Climate Change Strategy, large final emitters of greenhouse gases will have targets for reduction of their emissions, and may be able to meet such targeted reductions by substituting bioenergy for fossil energy use.

Bioenergy also provides energy stability and energy source diversification. Whereas fossil fuel prices in Canada depend on global price fluctuations, 'home-grown' biomass production can provide fuel price stability.

Energy crops are crops that are grown for the specific purpose of producing energy (electricity or liquid fuels) from all or part of the resulting plant. Switchgrass, alfalfa, corn, willow and poplar are examples of plants that can be grown as energy crops.

Ethanol produced in Ontario , for example, is produced primarily from grain corn. Commercial Alcohol's ethanol distillery in Chatham is Canada 's largest ethanol plant, capable of producing 150 million litres of ethanol per year, through the processing of over 15 million bushels of corn.

Cogeneration is an electrical energy generation technology which uses the combined production of electricity and useful heat from a single fuel source. Also referred to as combined heat and power (CHP), cogeneration facilities use significantly less fuel to produce electricity and thermal energy than would be need to produce these products separately.

The Chapleau cogeneration plant, located on the Tembec sawmill site, burns mill residues along with residues trucked in from other wood-processing operations within the region. The plant's combustion system produces steam for a 7.2 MW turbine, heating all of the mill's buildings and providing the steam for the lumber kilns. In addition to providing steam for heat, the system produces electricity that is sold to the provincial grid.

The Ontario MNR Forest Sector Competitiveness Secretariat and Ontario forest industries are investigating co-generation opportunities to help reduce the forest industries' electrical demand from the grid and to provide lower electrical cost opportunities to keep the industries viable and competitive.