EXTRACTING THE DEADWOOD

CANADA’S boreal forest belt is home to our planet’s last large intact ecosystem, numerous Indigenous communities and the world's second biggest carbon sink. [1] [2]

The country’s expansive evergreen belt – dominated by towering spruce, fir and pine trees interspersed with coniferous birch, aspen and poplars – stretches from the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland and Labrador to the western reaches of Yukon, before continuing through Alaska to Russia.

It is part of the planet’s Great Northern Forest biome – a commanding emerald-green crown of ancient trees that circle the Arctic and keep the earth breathing. The boreal colossus acts as an essential component in regulating global climates by offsetting our greenhouse gas emissions.

However, wildfires - which break out in increasing numbers annually and claim ever-greater swathes of Canada’s dense forest - are becoming a creating a bigger threat to the region’s native attributes.

Each one perforates Canada's carbon reservoir and reduces its ability to draw down atmospheric gases. Each tree lost to wildfires that can rage for weeks, and occasionally months, reduces the forest's capacity to temper global warming.

In 2025, Canada saw the second worst wildfire season in its history, just two years after its worst. [3]

More than 6,000 wildfires burned across Canadian provinces and territories, this year most commonly in northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. In total, more than 8.3 million hectares of woodland were lost to forest fires across Canada during this year alone. [4]

Each and every one of those wildfires, exacerbated by human-made global warming, left charred and fallen deadwood in its wake – creating a crisis of fuel continuity for similar future events. 

Clearing this deadwood from Canada’s forest to create fuel breaks to stem the spread of future blazes now appears to be a ligical and somewhat urgent practice. 

In doing so, one of the world’s most critical terrestrial carbon vaults can be protected from further destruction.

Why is Canada’s Boreal Forest Critical to Global Climate Stability?

The significance of Canada's boreal forest to global climate stability should not be overstated. Its enormous expanse is estimated to hold about two-thirds of all the carbon stored in forests globally, and half of the plant's global soil carbon.

Combined, the Canadian boreal region stores approximately 67 billion tons of carbon in its trees, soil and peatlands. [5]

When undisturbed, this capacity makes the boreal forest a powerful net carbon sink. However, it is becoming increasingly fragile in the face of climatic changes of increased temperatures and fiercer lightning storms that produce the severity of wildfires seen in recent years.

Warmer weather has also proliferated insect outbreaks that have cut through and diseased huge sections of forest. Mountain Pine Beetles have decimated millions of hectares of boreal forest in Canada’s western Alberta and Saskatchewan regions, after establishing themselves and causing similar damage to British Columbia's natural habitat. [6]

It seems imperative that measures which can protect carbon stores in Canada’s boreal forest are taken, so carbon gases can be drawn down into soils and future wildfires can release less emmissions into earth’s atmosphere.

Why is Canada Experiencing So Many Wildfires?

The need for action to stem the extent of forest fires in Canada is amplified by basic facts about the local impact of global climate change. 

Canada is warming at twice the pace of the global average and this is driving the spread of extreme wildfire weather conditions across the country. 

Lightning is cited as the cause of approximately half of Canada’s forest fires. According to records, the country averages almost 4 million lightning strikes annually – the majority occurring through June, July and August each year. [7]

However, specific intense storm events during 2021, 2023 and 2025 generated tens of thousands of lightning strikes in highly concentrated periods, leading to a surge in wildfire ignitions. 

This year in August, almost 70,000 lightning strikes were recorded in British Columbia in just one week. [8]

The extent of boreal forest set ablaze by these tree and ground strikes is though perhaps a better indicator of the power of this new class of electrical storm.

The average annual forest area burned in Canada over the last 25 years is approximately 2.2 million hectares. [9]

During the most destructive wildfire season on record, 2023, blazes consumed 16.5 million hectares – more than seven times the historical average. [9]

The science is suggests that climate change has more than doubled the likelihood of extreme wildfire weather conditions in Canada. Conservative projections suggest the overall burn probability of forested land will increase by at least a further 17 percent before the century is up. [10]

To cope with this rising tide of wildfire in Canada’s boreal forest, and to protect its carbon sink, better fuel management can provide a critical line of defence.

What Can Be Done to Stop Canada's Wildfires Spreading?

A wildfire requires three components to burn: heat, oxygen, and fuel. And, in a post-wildfire landscape, hectares of charred and dried deadwood can act as a sizeable fuel reserve. 

Once a forest fire is extinguished, dead wildfire debris creates a volatile fuel scenario. 

Many of 2025’s wildfires began as holdover ‘zombie’ fires which had smouldered from as far back as 2023 [11]. Toppled timber, branches, brush and dry needles create horizontal ground fuel that help holdover fires, which can smoulder beneath forest floors in layers of peat and decomposing organic matter, to reignite above ground. This kindling allows fires to then reach previously untouched sections of northern Canada’s forest.

Vertically, closely spaced scorched tree trunks create ladder fuels capable of igniting forest canopies that create crown fires which can become difficult to control even by aerial fire-fighting crews.

Clearing this deadwood and removing this debris can create important fuel breaks which protect ancient woodlands from fire. It is a practice which can break fuel continuity and separate burning material from unburned material.

Fires encountering patchy or separated fuel sources spread more slowly, become easier to tackle for firefighters and leave more of Canada’s boreal carbon sink intact to draw in CO₂ from the atmosphere.

What are the Additional and Long-Term Impacts of Canada's Wildfires on the Climate?

The risk of leaving swathes of stranded deadwood strewn in forest areas extends beyond igniting the future fires. The disintegration of woody matter also creates an additoinal long-term threat to the atmosphere through its decomposition gasses. [12]

Left to decay, rotting wildfire deadwood releases its stored carbon back into the atmosphere as CO₂, but also through the production of Methane (CH₄) – a more impactful contributor to global temperature rises with 84 times the climate-warming potential of carbon dioxide over a two decade period.

Removing this slow-rotting carbon reserve from northern Canada’s boreal belt eliminates a significant source of CO₂ and high-impact CH₄ from the planet's accumulation of greenhouse gasses.

How do Canadian Wildfires Impact Indigenous Communities?

The removal of deadwood safeguards Canada’s boreal forest ecosystem, which remains the largest intact forest ecosystem in the world. However, the importance of removing deadwood extends further into the social and environmental fabric of Canada’s forest regions. 

A natural amount of deadwood supports biodiversity, but the volumes left after a large wildfire creates an unnatural imbalance which also threatens the long-term health of the forest. 

By mitigating existing fire risks, harvesting deadwood ensures that a unique range of species, specially adapted to Canada’s harsh northern climate, remains protected.

This forest management practice is also a direct means of protecting and supporting Indigenous communities, who perform their own cultural burns of woodland for similar reasons. 

Canada's boreal zone is home to numerous Native populations, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. All have deep historical and cultural ties to Canada’s northern territories – which bear the brunt of the country’s wildfire crisis. 

Most of northern Canada’s majority-Indigenous communities are located in fire-prone regions. Clearing fuel from around their traditional territories protects their homesteads while also providing their communities with employment and income.

A Corporate Commitment to Canada’s Carbon Sink

The deadwood, which acts as a fuel source for future wildfires in Canada’s boreal forest, is an environmental problem that presents its own green economic solution.

It can remain in place as springtime kindling, to turn underground ‘Zombie’ fires into new forest blazes. It can provide surface and ladder fuels for wildfires ignited by coming lightning strikes. And it can release deadly greenhouse CO₂ and CH₄ gasses into the atmosphere. 

However, instead of presenting these environmental threats, it can be used as a natural asset in the production of a new biofuels.

Turning this fire-damaged timber into black pellets – a climate-friendly ‘drop in’ replacement for coal – prevents the fossil fuel's injection of CO₂ into the atmosphere when burning it at utility scale.

Doing so helps to reduce the climatic effects that cause wildfire weather conditions. It creates fuel breaks that make future wildfires easier to manage and extinguish. And it protects Canada’s carbon sink for syphoning gasses from our atmosphere.

Power Wood Energy’s business model is based on using only fire-damaged timber, diseased trees, forestry residuals and forest floor slash to create clean biofuel pellets as a replacement for coal.

The company has secured 20-year, renewable-license rights to harvest wildfire deadwood and beetle-infested trees from five million hectares of forest in northern Alberta - and area which alreadt contains a 15-year backlog of such timber.

Using a steam explosion process to convert wildfire remains into black pellets removes harmful particles and elements from the biomass. 

What is left is a highly-compact, water-resistant biofuel pellet with a 94 percent lower carbon footprint than coal – but with up to 87 percent of the fossil fuel's energy release.

[1] Government of Canada. Natural Resources Canada. Boreal Forest. https://natural-resources.canada.ca/forests-forestry/sustainable-forest-management/boreal-forest

[2] Boreal Conservation. A Giant Carbon Shield. https://www.borealconservation.org/giant-carbon-shield

[3] Government of Canada, Public Safety Canada. (2025, October 30). Government of Canada provides update on 2025 wildfires as support continues. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2025/10/government-of-canada-provides-update-on-2025-wildfires-as-support-continues.html

[4] CBC News. (2025, September 10). Canada’s 2025 wildfire season ranks among worst on record, burning over 8 million hectares. CBC News Environment. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/wildfires-2025-season-total-hectares-burned-1.7319402

[5] WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature / WWF-Canada). Canada's Boreal Forest - Forest Area Key Facts & Carbon Emissions from Deforestation. https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/canada_forest_cc_final_13nov07_lr_1.pdf 

[6] Government of Canada. Slowing the march of the mountain pine beetle. https://natural-resources.canada.ca/stories/simply-science/slowing-march-mountain-pine-beetle

[7] Government of Canada, Wildland Fires. https://natural-resources.canada.ca/forests-forestry/wildland-fires

[8] Global News. Summer storms a mixed blessing as 70K lightning strikes spark surge in B.C. wildfires. https://globalnews.ca/news/11320546/wildfire-vancouver-island-bc-fires-latest/

[9] Quartz. Clarisa Diaz. Canada has more than doubled its annual record for land burned by wildfire. https://qz.com/canada-has-more-than-doubled-its-annual-record-for-land-1850804009

[10] The Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing. (2025, September 22). Christopher Mulverhill, Nicholas C. Coops, Michael A. Wulder, Txomin Hermosilla, Joanne C. White, Christopher W. Bater. Projected Future Changes in Burn Probability in Canada’s Forests and Communities Under Different Climate Change Scenarios. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07038992.2025.2560347

[11] BBC News. (2024, February 19). 'Zombie fires' in Canada: How smouldering winter blazes threaten the next wildfire season. BBC News Climate. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68285230

[12] New Phytologist, 222(1), 35–51. Covey, K. R., & Megonigal, J. P. (2019). Methane production and emissions in trees and forests. https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.15624

ADDITIONAL READING

Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 1015–1023. (2019, May 30). Coogan, S. C. P., Robinne, F. N., Jain, P., & Flannigan, M. D. (2019). Scientists' warning on wildfire — a Canadian perspective. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjfr-2019-0094

Kurz, W. A., Shaw, C. H., Boisvenue, C., Stinson, G., Metsaranta, J., Leckie, D., Dyk, A., Smyth, C., & Neilson, E. T. (2013). Carbon in Canada's boreal forest — A synthesis. Environmental Reviews, 21(4), 260–292. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/er-2013-0041

Cho, K.; Lee, Y. Life Cycle Assessment of Torrefied Residual Biomass Co-Firing in Coal-Fired Power Plants: Aspects of Carbon Dioxide Emission. Energies 2024,17, 6165. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386506260

Sonnenerd, M., Løkke, S., & Bech, N. (2021). Life cycle assessment of torrefied and steam-exploded biomass pellets as coal substitutes in power generation. Journal of Cleaner Production, 312, 127715. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127715