Steel-makers in Europe and some Asian countries, faced with stringent environmental laws, are turning to wood pellets as an additive to coal to reduce CO2 emissions and, in some cases, turning entirely to wood pellets to fire furnaces. While there are many uses for wood pellets research has identified a large and growing use is for climate mitigation and co-firing pellets with coal because of their low cost, or substituting pellets entirely for coal in steel-making. British Columbia, which has an enormous supply of wood, sees wood pelleting as a growing, sustainable export industry focused primarily on Europe, Korea and Japan, with China expected to become a major customer in the future. Pinnacle Renewable The most recent pellet exporting terminal to be constructed on Canada’s West Coast, built and managed by Pinnacle Renewable Energy Group, provides four 15000 tonne silos for storage, conveyors to fill the silos and load ships and a rail yard with a capacity of 36 full and 36 empty rail cars. The firm has six pellet manufacturing plants in the province and two terminals, with the second a leased terminal in Vancouver. Tony McRae, Director of Sales for the Richmond, B.C., firm told AJOT that Europe has been the major market for wood pellets for several years, but Asia is going down the same path, particularly Korea and Japan. “China’s not there yet, it’s the largest coal consumer and soon there will be political pressure to do something,” he said. “Historically, Pinnacle started as a small operation with markets within North American market, now we’ve swung almost 90% of our production overseas to Europe.” McRae said that while Pinnacle still moves wood pellets by truck and rail to North American buyers the Prince Rupert terminal is now shipping two shiploads of pellets a month through the Prince Rupert facility. Although BC has ample sourcing for pellets, the business is hampered by a lack of capacity to handle the export demand. “That’s part of the reason the terminal was built,” he said. “We have current capacity for 50,000 tonnes through Rupert and we expect to double that to 100,000 tonnes.” McRae said the wood pellet industry still has room to grow and to his knowledge the pellets from Western Canada are best for the high BTU output and low ash required for steel manufacturing where stringent environmental limitations are in place.