When I left school one of my first attempts to make a wage was tree felling, it was awful hard work especially in the early days as I done no research and had zero experience with a saw.
Maybe the sort of job you are born into, anyway I only lasted a couple of years before moving to a sawmill for a weekly wage.
Its handy nowadays to be able to handle a chainsaw safely as are a lot of life experiences.
That's one of the reasons I smirked when reading the quote from Leroy Reitsma, Vice President, Pinnacle Pellet Inc when he said "With the economic downturn in the forest industry, it has forced us to have to diversify our fibre supply. The good news for the entire community is what it does is it will create significant employment. At the end of the day, the community is the winner because there are more jobs in the community."
Here is a bit of history about Pinnacle Pellet Inc. It was owned by Pinnacle Renewable Energy Group a private company owned by the Swaan family of Quesnel, British Columbia having commenced operations in 1989 with the opening of their Quesnel plant.
It went on to operate six plants across BC with a productive capacity of 1,050,000 tonnes of wood pellets annually which comprises fifty-six percent of Canada’s total pellet production.
The Meadowbank plant, located near Quesnel, was first designed and built with the expectation that ninety percent of the fibre supply would be provided by the nearby Dunkley Sawmill operations, and they recieved grants because they were going to provide employment.
With the reduction in production at the sawmill, the pellet plant is receiving only forty-five percent of its fibre needs directly from Dunkley Lumber.
You might be wondering by now why I'm ranting about the Pinnacle Renewable Energy Group Well you may have seen the Panorama TV program on 3rd Oct 2022 that analysed satellite images, traced logging licences and used drone filming to prove how they have been cutting down virgin forests for your GREEN RENEWABLE ENERGY. see links in comments
Ecologist Michelle Connolly told Panorama the company was destroying forests that had taken thousands of years to develop.
You may be asking who the heck are Pinnacle Pellet and what has it to do with us in the UK, Well they had a few rebranding change of names, and are now owned by DRAX you may have heard of them?
According to the Drax hyperbole on their website "The acquisition will increase Drax’s annual operational capacity to 4.9 million tonnes of sustainable biomass pellets from 2022, at 17 plants in locations across Western Canada and the US South – up from 1.6Mt now. Of this increased capacity, 2.9 million will be available for Drax’s self-supply requirements from 2022. It will also give the Group access to four deep water port facilities and three major wood fibre baskets."
The Carbon Capture element that has led Drax into being the "go to" example of progress in reducing C02 and negative emissions needs our attention, the logic of the negative emissions argument is that burning wood is “carbon neutral” because trees absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere in the first place, and you are simply releasing it back. When you combine this with a carbon capture facility, it is argued, you are therefore removing CO₂ from the atmosphere overall. see link . And how about Carbon monoxide and the process also produces other noxious emissions, such as volatile organic compounds and oxides of nitrogen, which are responsible for acid rain.
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