Recovering forest fibre in B.C has become increasingly expensive, both for merchantable fibre and harvest residues. Harvest residues, in particular, are costly to recover and are mostly left in the bush without being utilized in applications within the bioeconomy and bioproducts sector. Currently, no fully electric or hybrid-electric vehicles on the market meet the forest sector’s transportation needs in terms of range, ruggedness, or dependability.
Additionally, fuel consumption accounts for 40-50% of transportation costs in the forest sector. The commercialization of the electric trailer concept has the potential to reduce these costs by 10-20%, enabling the efficient economic recovery of fibre.
FPInnovations is using a rugged and electrified hybrid electric log trailer to make forest fibre and residue more accessible at an economic price.
FPInnovations, in partnership with Deloupe, Peerless, Tolko, Mercer, and West Fraser, is developing and commercializing a phase 2 prototype of a novel hybrid electric configuration that combines existing forest sector trucks with a newly developed electrical trailer to reduce fuel use, GHG emissions, and the cost of operation while recovering more fibre.
NorthX’s investment will support the design, assembly, testing, and field deployment of a novel hybrid electric log trailer, with the goal of collecting 15-20% additional fibre at an economic price This trailer would save approximately 23.3kg of CO2eq/100km or 23,000kg CO2eq per year, considering the sector overall this equates to reductions of 18MT in BC and 44 MT of reduction in GHG emissions
