WOOD-FIRED POWER STATION UPDATE
Is it or isn’t it? Will they or won’t they? All was quiet on the power station front for a few months while the Forest Product Association’s Clean Green Energy Company searched for financial backing. We hoped the project had fallen in a heap with the realisation that the project cannot be ecologically, economically or socially viable.
However, the FPA recently announced it’s still keen. Negotiations are still underway with sawmillers and State Forests as the FPA tries to firm up the 280,000 tonnes of fuel needed annually. The FPA now claims ‘not a tree will be cut down to fuel the power station’. It claims that no residue from logging operations will be used, and that the power station will be resourced from sawmill waste, future plantation thinnings, backyard rubbish and tree loppings.
The Environment Centre remains deeply sceptical about the proposal. It was always obvious that picking up crowns after logging won’t be feasible. If the power station relies mainly on sawmill residues, we need to wonder what is meant by ‘residue’. Anything that doesn’t came out as sawlog? Will sawmills become wood fuel depots, with a few sawlogs being turned out next to a giant pile of ‘incidental’ woodchips destined for Koolkhan?’
Our basic problem with the power station, aside from forest, water, air and traffic impacts, has to do with the Greenhouse Effect. Producing electricity from burning – whether it’s trees, sawdust, coal or bagasse – releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is not good for the future of the planet. There are better ways to generate electricity. We do not accept the FPA’s argument that the fuel would otherwise rot and produce CO2. We believe additional trees will be harvested to fuel the power station. A report by an independent engineer (available at the CEC) concludes that a WFPS will produce 5 times as much CO2 as a coal fired station.
What you can do . . .