Australia to Reverse Ban on Native Forest Incineration

Aus­tralia to Reverse Ban on Native For­est Incineration

- by Jen­ny Weber, Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Centre 

Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) state gov­ern­ment has announced plans to allow native forests to be logged and burnt for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion. Remov­ing a ban on burn­ing native for­est wood for elec­tric­i­ty would give a green light for the con­struc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty plants pow­ered by native forests, pro­pos­als that attempt to prop up the col­laps­ing export wood chip­ping market. 

The NSW Gov­ern­ment has opened a sub­mis­sion peri­od through the Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Author­i­ty for com­ment on this plan to amend the reg­u­la­tion that cur­rent­ly pro­hibits use of native forests for bio-ener­gy. The Pro­tec­tion of the Envi­ron­ment Oper­a­tions (Gen­er­al) Reg­u­la­tion 2009 cur­rent­ly pro­hibits the use of “native for­est bio-mate­ri­als” to gen­er­ate electricity. 

The O’Farrell gov­ern­ment is propos­ing to amend this reg­u­la­tion to enable the fol­low­ing veg­e­ta­tion on pub­lic or pri­vate land to be burnt for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion: areas approved for log­ging for pulp prod­ucts; veg­e­ta­tion that has been approved for clear­ing; off­cuts and ‘waste’ from the tim­ber industry. 

This amend­ment would increase log­ging and dev­as­tate NSW’s remain­ing native forests. Far-reach­ing dam­ag­ing impacts on native wildlife sur­vival, the health of com­mu­ni­ties and the state’s car­bon emis­sions are like­ly con­se­quences of the log­ging indus­try based in burn­ing native forests for bio-energy.

NSW forests are home to trea­sured native plants and ani­mals, feed streams and rivers, and are store­hous­es for car­bon — an impor­tant part of the solu­tion to cli­mate change.

The pro­pos­al will tar­get trees that are cur­rent­ly used for wood chip­ping and species that are too hard or too red to be used in the paper and pulp pro­duc­tion. This includes prime koala habi­tat such as the forests of red gum, iron bark, blood­wood, grey box and wollybutt.

The log­ging indus­try calls it a “com­mon sense move” and claims “that sawmills will be able to use off­cuts and wood­chips that would oth­er­wise have been left to lie on the ground.” How­ev­er, these were the same claims that wood chip­ping was estab­lished on decades ago, and sub­se­quent­ly was the dri­ver of whole­sale destruc­tion of forests across NSW.

Like oth­er pro­pos­als in Aus­tralia for trash­ing native forests for bio-ener­gy that have not reached this lev­el of Gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion, this pro­pos­al is about cre­at­ing a new mar­ket for native for­est wood prod­ucts. It is a des­per­ate attempt the allow ongo­ing log­ging of native forests as the col­laps­ing wood chip indus­try is pro­vid­ing gov­ern­ments with a need to address the failed mod­el they fund with tax­pay­er sub­si­dies across Australia.

In NSW, despite receiv­ing mas­sive gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies, the Eden wood­chip mill in far south NSW is cur­rent­ly run­ning at a $2.6 mil­lion a year loss. In June 2013, Boral Tim­ber sold its plant and equip­ment in the mid north coast of NSW, and closed its wood­chip export business.

Inten­sive log­ging of the eco­log­i­cal­ly diverse forests on the south east and north coast of NSW has accel­er­at­ed the loss of impor­tant intact native for­est ecosys­tems. These forests pro­vide habi­tats for koalas, pos­sums, sug­ar glid­ers and pow­er­ful owls. As the forests are logged, wildlife is killed or dis­placed, destroyed habi­tats do not ful­ly recov­er for hun­dreds of years — a time­line our glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in this age of cli­mate change does not have to rely on.

The mis­guid­ed and decep­tive approach that sur­rounds pro­po­nents of burn­ing native forests for elec­tric­i­ty that it is clean green ener­gy, the NSW Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Author­i­ty claims that this pro­pos­al is con­sis­tent with the government’s plans to increase renew­able ener­gy gen­er­a­tion to 20%.

Green­house gas emis­sions from burn­ing native for­est for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion can be as much as 6.4 times greater than the equiv­a­lent-sized coal-fired pow­er station.