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Incentives for Energy Production from Biomass
CANADA - Manitoba Hydro has introduced the Bioenergy Optimization Program to encourage the use of sustainable biomass as a fuel for the production of combined heat and power at customer sites.The new Power Smart program is aimed at over 250 agricultural and industrial customers with access to readily available, low cost sources of biomass, continual needs for heat and power, and the capability to operate biomass to energy conversion systems.
Use of biomass sources such as waste wood, crop residues and livestock manure to produce energy will save these customers money, avoid traditional waste disposal options such as landfills, land spreading and uncontrolled burning, reduce greenhouse gas emissions both locally and in the region and offer many additional environmental benefits.
"We are pleased to continue to develop and support alternative renewal energy sources and technologies such as biomass," said Greg Selinger, minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro. "The use of biomass will result in savings to customers, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide new economic development opportunities for our rural communities."
At the announcement, Manitoba Hydro President and CEO Bob Brennan said, "The program can provide significant incentives for participants to undertake feasibility studies and for the capital cost of the required equipment, up to a maximum of $1 250 000. Customers will be able to use biomass based materials to replace part of their electricity and natural gas supplied by Manitoba Hydro."
Several technologies can be employed to produce useful energy from biomass. Two primary types of technologies are direct combustion — for instance, burning waste wood in a boiler to produce steam for powering a generator/heat exchanger at a forestry mill — and anaerobic digestion where manure is converted by a digester to produce biogas (methane) for fueling an internal combustion engine driven generator/heat exchanger at a hog farm. The heat captured from these systems can be used for space and water heating purposes or other industrial processes to displace natural gas and other non-renewable heating fuels.
The program is expected to produce annual load reduction savings of up to 10 megawatts and 78 gigawatt-hours of electricity and 3.8 million cubic metres of natural gas, and 65 580 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2017/18.
Manitoba Hydro will provide customers with technical and economic information about biomass to energy conversion systems to assist them in making a decision about participation. Essentially, customers participating in the program will be able to optimize the overall efficiency of their facilities and reduce the carbon footprint.
The Bioenergy Optimization Program joins the large number of Manitoba Hydro Power Smart programs that provide information and incentives to maximize energy efficiency for residential, commercial and industrial customers. Since Power Smart was introduced in 1991, Manitobans have prevented over 965 000 tonnes of carbon equivalents from being released into the atmosphere and have saved about $275 million on their energy bills.
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