Sustainable biomass supply chains from salvage logging of fire-killed stands: A case study for wood pellet production in eastern Canada

While western Canada is an international leader in the growing pellet market, eastern Canada remains a minor player despite its abundance of wood residues from natural disturbances. This study investigates the potential amount of biomass from salvage logging of fire-killed stands along with harvesting residues from clearcut to supply pellet plants in eastern Canada between. We built and optimized supply scenarios in two forest management units to fulfill different pellet plant capacities under various operational, ecological, and economics constraints. Despite the high spatial and temporal variability of burned area, this study confirms the large quantities of biomass from fire-killed stands available as ecologically sustainable feedstock for bioenergy, which, combined with the comparatively smaller and more stable quantities from clearcut harvesting residues could supply theoretical pellet plants. Our results show that under current market conditions, biomass both from harvest residues and fire-killed stands could fulfill on average between 5% and 66% of a 50000ODTy−1 plant needs at a price of $90ODT−1 of wood chips for the decade considered. With a wood chip price at $120ODT−1, 100% of the production capacity of a 50000ODTy−1 plant or even of a 100000ODTy−1 plant could be met. Ecological constraints related to the need to protect sensitive sites and prevent recovery operations on them, and operational constraints related to the capacity of the machinery to recover biomass from a given site, have little impact on the supply of biomass from fire-killed stands. However, important regional variations exist in terms of potentials and constraints, which would need to be taken into account when designing bioenergy industrial networks.