Consultant Dan
10 July 2011
Carbon price protects native forests and renewable energy target
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Greens have announced today that the carbon price package prevents native forest woodchips being counted as a renewable energy fuel.
This is a relatively minor detail but will have a great impact politically in Tasmania and for the environmental movement.
This Greens initiative has saved Australia’s native forests from being burned as a renewable energy source, which is good news for conservation and also for the solar and wind industries.
Parliament has only just debated the Carbon Farming Initiative legislation. The CFI allowed the woodchip industry to burn chips from native forests for the production of electricity and count this as renewable energy.
Native biomass generators would have been able to gain a financial subsidy in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates, which are supposed to be used by solar, wind and other genuine renewable energy technologies.
The win is a big boost for the Greens in Tasmania, where they are part of Government, which has been controversial.
The environmental movement will be very glad, especially the Wilderness Society and local groups such as South East Region Conservation Alliance, which has been fighting the proposal to burn woodchips at the Eden mill.
Here is SERCA’s submission against the Eden biomass power station proposal.
The problem with native forest biomass is the same problem with woodchipping in the first place. It was always supposed to be based on waste but it became driver of logging. Woodchipping has been the trojan horse for the timber industry over the past 20 years, which drove its expansion into native forests.
Without today’s announcement by the Government and the Greens native forest biomass would have entrenched logging for decades to come, at the very time we need to be protecting them for their carbon, water and biodiversity values.
The renewables industry will benefit from this announcement, because native forest biomass companies will not be able to sell large-scale generation certificates (LGCs) under the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act. Without this change, Eden and other woodchip operators would compete with legitimate solar and wind generators, lowering the price and thus the profitability of those industries.
Ending the wood chipping industry has been on the agenda of Senator Bob Brown, Christine Milne and other Greens for 20 years. This makes it one of the sweetest green victories in today’s announcement.
Yes!
My first forest blockade was on Errinundra Plateau, in 1990, so I would be very happy to see those East Gippsland forests protected from any future biomass electricity projects.
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Also, potentially great news for East Gippsland’s forests!