There will be a lot of activity at the Fraser Lake sawmill this summer.

The West Fraser Mill Ltd. sawmill will eventually be home to the largest installation of a Turboden power generation plant in the world, and only the second in Canada.

Turboden is a Pratt-Whitney Power Systems company based in northern Italy that specializes in the design and manufacture of 鈥榦rganic Rankine cycle鈥� power generation systems.

A Rankine cycle is named after William John Macquorn Rankine a nineteenth century Scottish engineer and physicist, who helped lay the foundations for the theory thermodynamics and paved the way for the development of the steam engine.

The organic aspect that Turboden brings to power generation is that it bases its systems on renewable energy sources, like tree fibre biomass.

The Fraser Lake sawmill produces loads of biomass in the form of sawdust. Being in the heart of beetle-kill country, there鈥檚 also no shortage of dead and rotting wood in the forest.

Rod Albers, West Fraser Mills Ltd. manager of energy and Bioproduct development was at the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako (RDBN) board meeting on April 18, 2013 to bring directors up to speed on their plans for Fraser Lake.

The tear-down of the beehive burner will take place mid-2014, assuming all goes well with bringing the Turboden generator online.

The $40 million project is expected to begin this July. Component parts for the generator - 25 transport-trailer loads - will begin arriving early in the fall.

The plant should be consuming biomass and producing energy by spring 2014.

Most of the 95,000 tonnes of biomass that it will require annually is expected to come from sawmill waste, with some coming from regional forest biomass.

The installation of the power plant, with an anticipated minimum 20 year lifespan before costly maintenance to turbines becomes an issue, will, according to Albers, provide long-term stability for the Fraser Lake sawmill.

鈥淭he economics would not work with only logging residuals,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e need to have the sawmill operating in order to make the economics work for us.鈥�

Last September, West Fraser entered into a purchase agreement with the province to sell excess power back to B.C. Hydro and onto the power grid. That is the profit incentive to get the plant up and running.

The profit incentive has raised some concerns at the RDBN board table. Rosanne Murray, alternate director for electoral area E, raised the question of whether or not taxpayers would eventually have to foot the bill for West Fraser's project through increased electricity rates.

"Are we as taxpayers subsidizing corporations to produce power to sell back to us at a higher rate?" Murray asked.

The cost of producing electricity through biofuel, in comparison to the cost of producing the same energy through lower-cost hydro-projects is not publicly available, Murray cautioned in an email.

"Will the rate paid by BC Hydro to independent power producers cover their [the producer's] costs?" she asked.

Despite the big-picture concerns raised by Murray, the new power plant will have positive local benefits.

The efficiency of the new plant, combined with the decommissioning of the beehive burner and the expected diminishment of slash burning in favour biomass harvest, should mean an approximate 97 per cent reduction over current emission levels.

During the one year construction project, an estimated 20 jobs will be created. The plant will require approximately 13 direct jobs for fuel supply, operations and maintenance.