About a million cubic metres of tree tops, twigs, branches will be available every year as fuel for power generation under New Brunswick's first biomass policy, which was announced on Tuesday.

The policy, which aims to set guidelines for harvesting biomass from the forest and to assess the impact of that harvest is a delicate balance, said Natural Resources Minister Donald Arseneault. It has to offer industry access to a valuable resource that can be turned into fuel while maintaining a healthy forest system.

"You can only take so much off the forest floor without hurting the reforestation process," Arseneault told CBCNews.ca. "It is important we have a sustainable resource."

The department spent two years developing the policy with researchers at the University of New Brunswick.

The policy defines biomass roughly as all above-ground parts of a tree that are not identified for used under department standards, including tree tops, branches, foliage, non-merchantable woody stems of trees and shrubs, pre-existing dead woody material and flail chipping residue.

How much of that material can be removed without harming the forest is a key question for the policy.

The biomass policy covers only the 3.3 million hectares of Crown forests, more than half of the total forest in New Brunswick.

Because it can be used as fuel in specially designed power generation stations, biomass has become a hot commodity.

Arseneault said the department has received five to 10 requests for access to biomass in the last year from companies looking for a way to defray their escalating power costs.

"There is quite the demand out there," the natural resources minister said. "You are limited in the amount you have, but the demand is unlimited."

The Department of Natural Resources will be soon putting out a request for proposals asking companies or groups to indicate their interest in tapping into the available biomass. Arseneault said he should be in a position to start handing out those biomass allocations by the end of January.

He said if there are competing proposals in the same region, the provincial government will examine what project would have the most economic and employment impact.

Depends where it is, association suggests

Terry Noble, the general manager for wood procurement at Fraser Papers and chairman of the New Brunswick Forest Products Association, said the biomass policy is a step in the right direction for the industry, but more details need to be outlined.

"The important details to know are, what are the available volumes by region, by licence area, so the industry can understand what [amount of biomass] is potentially available," Noble said. "And then out of those volumes, how much of it is realistically accessible."

Noble said if the biomass is only available in remote areas, which would involve large investments to retrieve the leftover pieces of trees, then it might make any projects uneconomical.

With about one million cubic metres available annually, Noble said that is a significant amount of material. But he pointed out that the 38-megawatt cogeneration plant at his mill in Edmundston, burns 800,000 cubic metres a year.

David Coon, policy director for the Conservation Council, said the government is pushing ahead with this biomass policy before it releases a bio-energy strategy, a significant omission because people deserve to know how this material will be used.

Coon said British Columbia has a bio-energy strategy worth examining, which outlines a plan that could fuel 15 projects, mainly small mills, with biomass.

"We need a bio-energy policy that addresses these issues before you talk about how the fuel is going to be supplied," Coon said.

Coon's frustrations with New Brunswick's policy do not end there. He said the province is omitting wood chips from the definition of what constitutes biomass, a product that could fuel these small mills.

The biomass policy stipulates how the harvesting of biomass cannot disturb the soil or remove stumps and root systems. However, Coon said that isn't going far enough to protect the forest habitat.

"Why have they focused the policy so narrowly on maintaining the nutrients in the soil, which is important, and not incorporated into the policy considerations to conserve biological diversity, habitat and maintaining areas ability to regulate the flow of water to our rivers and streams?" Coon said.

Arsenault said he believes the right balance was struck and that the policy is sustainable.