Thank you. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning.
I am Lise Dubé, agronomist, and this is Valérie Patoine, forest engineer. First, we want to thank you for inviting us to present our ecoenergy development project to you.
Three Témiscouata organizations, the Coopérative forestière Haut Plan Vert, the Club de gestion des sols du Témiscouata and its agent, Ferti-Conseil, and the Club d'encadrement technique en acériculture, have been working together for three years to develop an agricultural biomass energy production project. The cooperative here is the project lead.
Agricultural biomass is defined as combustible pellets manufactured from agricultural perennial plants, switch grass. A local energy system is characterized by production cultivated and consumed locally.
In the regions, we have the support of agricultural producers, maple producers, forest workers, a number of decayed municipalities and a few provincial departments. Through the development of abandoned farm lands, we want to revitalize our rural areas through the production of energy that the community can use to meet its needs.
Agriculture is declining in rural regions such as Témiscouata. There is a significant observed decay in the rural municipalities and a decline in land areas under cultivation. The abandonment of stock production and the lack of profitability of small grain and hay production over small areas have led owners to abandon those fields or to request that they be reforested. On a provincial scale, MAPAQ estimates that there is an approximate total of 100,000 to 150,000 hectares of fallow or marginal land that could become available for energy plant production. In Témiscouata, an estimated 10,000 hectares of cultivated land was lost between 1997 and 2004 in four municipalities within a 20 km radius of each other.
The Lower St. Lawrence is the second largest producer of maple syrup in Quebec, with some eight million taps and 20 million pounds of maple syrup annually. Témiscouata alone has five million taps, nearly 7% of total Canadian production. It takes an average of 0.6 gallons of heating oil to produce one gallon of syrup. In the Lower St. Lawrence, we use nearly four million litres of oil for maple syrup production alone every year. In Témiscouata, that's 2.5 million litres of heating oil.
Together, energy crops on fallow land and maple producers' energy needs can become a force for regional and local development. The first impact is revitalization of the rural community by creating a new economic activity. The cultivation of switch grass on fallow lands would enable us to produce an energy pellet that would be used by maple producers locally to evaporate their maple sap.
In addition, a number of studies confirm that the energy balance and greenhouse gas balances are positive in the production and utilization of perennial plants as energy pettets. An innovative, renewable green energy system is born.
In our region, we have been experimenting over the past three years with the cultivation of switch grass over an area of 10 hectares. The results have encouraged us to continue on a larger scale. Planting 2,000 hectares with switch grass would make it possible to supply all maple producers in Témiscouata.