A new heat purchase agreement between the Yukon government and the Teslin Tlingit Council will supply the Khàtìnas.àxh Community School in Teslin with heat from the council’s biomass facility.
The council has an operating 1.5-megawatt waste-wood fueled biomass system that already supplies some local residential and office buildings with heat. That system will be used to heat the school starting this school year.
Teslin Tlingit citizen Blair Hogan helped move this project forward.
“Biomass has been a long dream for the community. Back when we settled land claims, our first wealth initiative was a sawmill,” Hogan said during a ceremony leading up to the official deal signing outside the school on Aug. 22.
“We realized right away that waste was a big part of having a viable forestry sector in Teslin.”
Hogan said the wood chips all come from waste wood.
“We’re not out there logging. It’s clearing roadways, clearing gravel pits [and] clearing sites to be developed,” Hogan said.
Hogan said the project is creating jobs.
“There’s a marketplace now in the local economy that allows us to take wood from various sources to grade it, season it, process it and then deliver it to the many energy centres across the community,” Hogan said.
READ MORE: Wood heat makes a comeback
In an Aug. 22 release issued by the Yukon government, Teslin Tlingit Council Chief Eric Morris indicated the deal was five years in the making.
“This heat agreement will lower greenhouse gas emissions annually by replacing imported heating oil with carbon-neutral biomass,” Morris said in the release.
The release indicates most of the fuel costs and labour tied to this deal will “stay within the Teslin community, creating positive economic spin-offs.”
The release defines biomass as a “clean, renewable energy source that reduces fossil fuel use,” and its use “further contributes to a cleaner and sustainable future” for the Yukon.
Increasing the use of biomass is a goal set out in Our Clean Future, the Yukon’s roadmap for addressing climate change. The plan includes a target to help businesses, organizations and local governments to install 20 commercial and institutional biomass heating systems by 2030.
During the signing ceremony, Highways and Public Works Minister Nils Clarke said using less non-renewable heating sources is “paramount in achieving a sustainable future.”
Per the release, up to 90 per cent of the school’s heat will be made from biomass, which makes up a 106-tonne reduction in the school’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
Clarke said he was listening closely to what Hogan was saying about using incidentally harvested waste wood around Teslin.
“We need more of that in the Yukon generally so that we will have a made-in-Yukon biomass industry, and we certainly will be supporting that aggressively,” Clarke said.
According to the release, using a biomass system like this reduces wildfire risk by limiting fuel loads and creating fire breaks around Teslin.
In an email, Highways and Public Works department communications analyst Kalah Klassen declined to provide the cost of the agreement because it is a business deal between the two governments.
READ MORE: Government unveils wood-burning boiler for elementary school in Whitehorse
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com
