More than $130 billion dollars has been or will be spent in British Columbia to increase consumption of oil and gas. NDP and BCUP politicians make empty promises about dealing with climate change, but at the same time welcome photo ops at large scale fossil fuel projects. Conservatives cling to unscientific ideas that climate change is either not real or not caused by human activities.
To arrive at that shocking number, I include LNG Canada $48b, Trans Mountain pipeline $32b , Site C $20b, Coastal GasLink $15b, Woodfibre LNG $7b, and Tilbury LNG $5b. The final numbers are likely to be even higher. An additional $13b could be added since that is the amount of gas royalty credits issued to producers by the province of British Columbia.
Parts of the world not locked into 20th century energy technologies are doing what Canadians should be doing.
Modvion, a Swedish wood technology company, is building a 345-foot wind turbine tower for electric utility company Varberg Energi in Skara, a small city northeast of Gothenburg. This follows a pilot installation of a 100-foot engineered wood tower on an island outside Gothenburg.
Johan Åhlén, CEO of Moelven Töreboda, the world’s oldest glulam factory, said:
Wood has fantastic properties and we need to build much more in wood if we are to meet the climate goals. For us, it is hugely inspiring to participate in this pilot project where we have been able to use renewable wood in a design for the production of renewable energy.
Sweden erects the first wooden wind turbine tower
Imagine 50 000 steel bolts you don’t need to inspect.
Laminated wood has three huge benefits compared to steel: Wood has a higher specific strength which enables a lighter construction. High steel towers need extra enforcement to carry their own weight – which wooden towers don’t need. And finally, modular steel towers demand a vast number of bolts that need regular inspections while our modular wooden towers are joined together with glue.
The company says modular construction results in towers that are lighter, easier to transport and carbon friendly. It calls wood “nature’s own carbon fibre.”
Bloomberg reports:
Sweden has a rich heritage of using wood in everything from windmills to centuries-old churches, clogs, decorative Dala horses and even a skyscraper. Modvion is drawing on that craftsmanship to disrupt a forecasted $40 billion tower industry, where the use of heavily polluting steel and cement hasn’t changed much in the past few decades, undermining the turbines’ environmental benefits.
Startup Bets Wood Can Make Wind Turbines Even Greener
British Columbia has the timber and the expertise to do what Sweden is doing. What it lacks is political will to hasten the end of fossil fuels.
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Categories: Climate Change, Forestry
in-sights.ca 
Tim, some of the answers you seek are included in the links Norm provides. For example,
“We currently use Scandinavian spruce, which is abundantly available and for which re-growth exceeds logging. The wood Modvion uses comes from sustainably managed northern forests that is certified to a reforestation programme, either FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes). For more information, please see http://www.forestindustries.se.
The volumes of wood used per tower depends on the height of the tower and the load it will carry. For example, a 6MW turbine puts a much higher load on the structure than a 2 MW turbine. A typical tower though would range between 300 and 1 200 cubic metres of wood, which is the same as 1.5 – 5 minutes of growth in Swedish forests.”
As for your question re existing towers, these towers would be for new installation; very unlikely that existing towers would be retrofitted. This concept would make future towers much more environmentally acceptable, but until and unless there is significant uptake with the resultant economies of scale it I suspect cost comparisons currently would be difficult.
These towers would be used to support current turbine technology, and there doesn’t seem to be any plan to fabricate wooden turbine blades.
Again, as Norm keeps reminding us, BC is letting these opportunities to be on the leading edge of solutions pass whilst massively funding and abetting the very reason we need the solutions.
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Thks Lew unfortunately the wooden towers still do not
seem to overcome the nimby calling for wind generated
power. Why can’t we get to a point of realization that
more of anything has it’s limits. Perhaps a more cost
effective and environmentally effective path is to be
plugged in less and use wood towers as a replacement
for retired metal towers. Not to build more towers irregardless
that they can be built out of wood.
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Tim, you make a valid point about the need to moderate consumerism. But, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
The accepted fact is that we need more electricity if we are to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. Solar energy can provide electricity but wind power can meet the province’s future needs more easily. If the province commits to wind power, BC Hydro’s existing reservoirs are like batteries that can solve the variability problem, with assistance from new grid-scale storage devices.
The world is moving in that direction.
I am currently researching energy storage systems and expect to write about them soon. There are many types now available and vast improvements are likely to be available in the next few years.
Wind power with storage can provide electricity on demand at prices far less than what energy from Site C will cost. There is little downside to wind power — it can co-exist with agriculture — and we could be heating all homes and powering our transportation with electricity.
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Thks Norm much appreciated. Always enjoy your well researched
and insightful comments.
Cheers
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Interesting Norm. What kind of wood do they use and
is the wood sourced in their country or imported? What
age and how big a tree would meet their requirements?.
If you replaced all the standing current windmills with
wood how many trees would that be? The blades on
existing mills are a high maintenance item apparently
and are not largely recyclable as of yet. Perhaps wood
might work and it could be used instead but wood props
once used on planes are in the same category as buggy whips.
Besides any of our big trees are already spoken for. They
are needed for guitar tops.😀
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