Minas Basin Pulp and Power of Hantsport is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to using recoverable energy.
"It has everything to do with dealing with our waste strategy here in Nova Scotia," said Scott Travers, company president and chief operating officer, who disclosed at an Atlantic Provinces Economic Council conference Monday that he was flying to Germany that afternoon to assess a new technology to complement the company's existing recycling efforts.
"I can't comment on what the technology is right now," he said after taking part in a panel discussion on the changing environment for energy developments in Atlantic Canada. "We're evaluating it."
Minas Basin Pulp and Power, which produces 100 per cent recycled paperboard products, was founded by legendary Nova Scotia entrepreneur Roy Jodrey in 1927. The company operates two hydroelectric generating stations in Hants County that were built in 1937.
Mr. Travers said the days of relying on indigenous, plentiful and inexpensive sources of energy like coal in Nova Scotia are gone and that Minas Basin Pulp and Power might serve as something of a model for addressing what he called uncertain times.
"For the past eight decades, we've actually been in the renewable generation business and power transmission business as well," he said, noting the company stopped using trees to make paper products in 1992 and began using recycled cardboard that it sources from across the region and from the U.S.
"Instead of clear-cutting to make our product like other papermakers, we use nothing but the packaging waste that you and I produce as consumers."
The company's efforts have helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Nova Scotia by 2,700 tonnes per year, saving 1.5 million trees and generating enough electricity to power 38,000 homes, he said.
Mr. Travers said escalating energy costs have contributed to the closure of paper mills in New Brunswick and Quebec, and strategic action is required to prevent similar closures in Nova Scotia, where mills have laid off staff or sought bankruptcy protection recently.
"This province is 89 per cent dependent on energy from outside its borders," he said. "In a world where wars are fought over energy supply, Nova Scotians and the rest of the Maritime provinces have certainly put themselves in harm's way."
To counter that dependency, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the province has mandated that 20 per cent of Nova Scotia's electricity must be produced from renewal energy sources like wind and tidal power by 2013.
Rob Bennett, Nova Scotia Power's vice-president of revenue and sustainability, agreed that the days of relying on coal for electricity are over, even though most of NSP's generation is still coal-fired.
"Coal is not the answer for the future, at least not in the immediate future unless there are great strides in technology, and so we need a different answer," he said, adding that the answer lies largely in renewables.
"This is a huge change for our company," he said, pointing to the utility's partnership with firms like Atlantic Wind Power, which has built a wind farm in Pubnico that feeds NSP's grid.
Mr. Bennett, who noted that NSP has increased its use of natural gas at its Tufts Cove generating station in Dartmouth, said the utility wants to see tidal turbines installed in the Bay of Fundy for testing by 2009.
David Chaundy, an economist with the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, said Nova Scotia's GDP is forecast to grow by 1.8 per cent in 2008, down from an estimated 2.2 per cent in 2007, which was driven by increased Sable gas production and increased paper production at Stora Enso in Point Tupper.
The council's lower 2008 forecast is based in part on flattening Sable production, which is expected to decline in 2009, and a lack of multi-billion-dollar investment projects.