While western Canada is an international leader in the growing pellet market, eastern Canada remains a
minor player despite its abundance of wood residues from natural disturbances. This study investigates
the potential amount of biomass from salvage logging of fire-killed stands along with harvesting residues
from clearcut to supply pellet plants in eastern Canada between. We built and optimized supply scenarios
in two forest management units to fulfill different pellet plant capacities under various operational, ecological,
and economics constraints. Despite the high spatial and temporal variability of burned area, this
study confirms the large quantities of biomass from fire-killed stands available as ecologically sustainable
feedstock for bioenergy, which, combined with the comparatively smaller and more stable quantities
from clearcut harvesting residues could supply theoretical pellet plants. Our results show that under current
market conditions, biomass both from harvest residues and fire-killed stands could fulfill on average
between 5% and 66% of a 50 000 ODT y1 plant needs at a price of $90 ODT1 of wood chips for the decade
considered. With a wood chip price at $120 ODT1, 100% of the production capacity of a 50 000 ODT y1
plant or even of a 100 000 ODT y1 plant could be met. Ecological constraints related to the need to protect
sensitive sites and prevent recovery operations on them, and operational constraints related to the
capacity of the machinery to recover biomass from a given site, have little impact on the supply of biomass
from fire-killed stands. However, important regional variations exist in terms of potentials and constraints,
which would need to be taken into account when designing bioenergy industrial networks.