Beetlejuice

The mountain pine beetle has been ravaging the pine forests in B.C. since the mid-1990s, leaving behind an estimated 1 billion tons of dead trees and a forestry industry in dire need of rescue.

When life gives you beetle-killed dead trees, make biofuel.

The reasoning is simple – the dead trees can be converted into oil through a carbon-neutral process, producing biofuel. The process is expensive and until now has only been done on a small scale, but the technology and potential is there.

One ton of wood can produce about one barrel of oil – which means that B.C. could produce one billion barrels of oil just from trees that are already dead.

Little known fact: Trees have a shelf life of three years before they are considered useless as lumber. But they can be used as fuel for up to 10 years. In fact, trees are actually worth more as energy.

One ton of air-dried wood contains 16 gigajoules of energy, which is the equivalent of about 400 litres of oil. This means that B.C.’s dead trees are worth $128 a ton. Compare that to the roughly $80 a ton for which wood pellets sell, and it means that the pine beetle hasn’t eaten away all the profits. It’s just changed the industry a bit.

Even as wood pellets, B.C. has a resource with a potential export value of $80-billion. But as fuel, the potential profits could nearly double. If oil prices return to $150 U.S. a barrel, a billion tons of dead trees would produce oil worth $150-billion.

Profits from this fuel source would be pouring in faster than you can say ‘Beetlejuice.‘

Image: Dion Manastyrski, Ministry of Forests, southern Interior Forest Region