Prince George Interior Waste to Energy Ltd. has plans to convert waste wood into energy its saw mill located at the BCR Industrial Site in Prince George, British Columbia. The company’s planer mill portion of its operation will be renovated to include a bioenergy plant capable of producing 8 megawatts of electricity from approximately 100,000 cubic metres of waste wood that would otherwise be burned or landfilled. The facility will also produce coproducts such as charcoal, biooil and carbon pellets, help create jobs, and reduce the burning of slash and the amount of government-permitted fine particulate allowed at the site by 70 per cent.

"This is an example of the new forestry sector," said Liberal candidate for Prince George-Mackenzie, Pat Bell. "The plant will also produce an activated charcoal that can be used in water filters and in the automotive paint industry. It also produces light and heavy oils. The light oil can be used as biodiesel and the heavy oil has other applications."

The $50 million project will use a chemical decomposition process to convert cellulosic feedstock into electricity. The plant, which will be built in modules, is expected to begin producing electricity in the spring of 2010 and be fully operational by spring of 2011, creating enough energy to power 7,000 homes in the area.

The Prince George project is one of four projects selected by BC Hydro in phase one of its June 2008 call for independent clean energy projects. The other three projects include Canfor Pulp Ltd. Partnership's PGP Bio Energy Project, also in Prince George, Domtar Pulp and Paper Products' Kamloops Green Energy Project in Kamloops, and Zellstoff Celgar Ltd. Partnership's Celgar Green Energy Project in Castlegar.

The chosen initiatives will use forest-based biomass, including sawmill residue, logging debris, mountain pine beetle-killed wood and other residual wood to generate electricity. The four projects will generate a combined total of 579 gigawatts per hour of electricity annually, or enough electricity to power more than 52,000 homes.