Disused coal plant could burn wood and call it renewable energy
The owner of a disused coal power station in the Hunter Valley claims repurposing it to burn up to 700,000 dry tonnes a year of woody vegetation would make “zero contribution to climate change”.
Opponents say it would be a disaster for global warming and local air pollution while destroying habitat by turbocharging land-clearing on farms in western NSW.
“This is a crazy proposal at all levels,” said Australian National University Distinguished Professor David Lindenmayer, a member of the Biodiversity Council.
“I can’t see why any sensible or rational government, federally or at state level, would even contemplate supporting it.”
Redbank Power Station near Singleton in the Hunter Valley is seeking approval to restart as a biomass reactor.Credit: Janie Barrett
The Independent Planning Commission is considering the $70 million proposal from Verdant Earth Technologies to restart the power station, which burned coal tailings from 2001 until 2014 when it closed amid financial problems and supply shortages. Last month the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure recommended the project be approved.
Contested climate contribution
Mark Jackson, director at JEP Environmental & Planning, presenting on behalf of Verdant Earth at the IPC public meeting last week, said the project would “effectively be a near net zero project” under rules set by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Under IPCC convention, the CO2 emitted from sustainable biomass sources for this type of application is considered to have a zero contribution to climate change,” Jackson said.
The Redbank power station has been shut since 2014.Credit: Janie Barrett
The NSW Environment Protection Authority has endorsed this claim in planning documents, citing a “simplifying assumption” that the carbon dioxide released from burning the biomass was completely balanced by the gas absorbed during regrowth.
Professor Brendan Mackey, director of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon at Griffith University, told this masthead this was a “convenient untruth”.
“It’s amazing that they can ignore circa 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by making a ‘simplifying assumption’,” Mackey said.
“It’s not a source of clean energy because it produces CO2 emissions in exactly the same way as burning coal or oil produces CO2 emissions, and if you burn it in a power station up the stack, it’s actually more emissive than coal ... because it takes a lot of energy to burn the water away.”
Mackey said net zero accounting allowed a nation to use a carbon sink such as a forest to offset emissions – and Australia already used this heavily to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement – but the timeframe had to be meaningful.
“The fundamental point when you say, ‘is it renewable?’ is that the emissions are instantaneous, but the regrowth is not,” Mackey said.
Peter Morrissey, an industry adviser with HunterNet Cooperative who spoke in favour of the project, told the IPC meeting that 13 per cent of gross energy in Europe came from biomass and bioenergy, citing a 2022 report, and it accounted for 55 per cent of the renewable grid.
“According to the World Bioeconomy Forum, the current value is $US4 trillion ($6.2 trillion), and with projections to rise to over $US30 trillion in the 2030s,” Morrissey said. “We in NSW need to be
part of this bioeconomy.”
However, Mackey said biomass burning had led to more intensive harvesting of European forests, diminishing their capacity to act as carbon sinks, and also created demand for wood pellets from North American forests.
The Guardian reports that Britain’s Drax Power Station, a coal plant converted to burn wood pellets, is the nation’s biggest greenhouse emitter, while soaking up millions in taxpayer subsidies.
Planning documents for the Redbank proposal say the fuel would come initially from so-called “invasive native species” cleared from farmland, shifting to purpose-grown crops such as coppice on degraded mine sites after four years of operation. The Australian Financial Review reports that Verdant Earth intends to apply for renewable energy certificates under the federal Renewable Energy Target.
However, the Clean Energy Regulator said burning invasive native species would not be eligible, and purpose-grown crops would need to fulfil strict criteria to qualify. The current rules allow wood waste from non-native environmental weeds but exclude native vegetation.
Fears for land-clearing
Invasive native species are native woody plants that either regenerate thickly following disturbance or encroach on vegetation communities where they previously did not occur, based on the NSW government definition. In a 2019 report, the NSW Auditor-General was scathing that there was no requirement to demonstrate that a plant was actually invading a landscape before approving its clearing as an invasive native species.
In 2023, NSW farmers cleared 6219 hectares of invasive native species under the Local Land Services Act, which the Minns government has promised to reform, typically burning the wood on site.
Lis Ashby, the policy innovation lead at the Biodiversity Council, said the Redbank proposal stated it needed 500,000 dry tonnes of biomass from invasive native species in the first stage, and it could source 25 tonnes a hectare. This would mean clearing of at least 20,000 hectares, Ashby said.
“It’s highly likely, given the amount of biomass they need is three times the amount that the invasive native species right now could provide … that we’re going to incentivise additional land-clearing by farmers,” Ashby said.
University of Queensland Professor Hugh Possingham, Queensland’s former chief scientist, told the IPC meeting it was wrong to assume that invasive native species – or dense thickets of native shrub – had no biodiversity value.
“That’s categorically false,” Possingham said. “There are many, many species that favour dense shrublands. For example, spotted bowerbirds, a whole heap of small bushland birds.”
Dan Repacholi, the federal Labor MP for Hunter, spoke in support of the project, describing Redbank as “a $700 million facility sitting there doing absolutely nothing right now” when it could be removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and creating jobs.
Lynn Benn, a Hunter Valley resident and activist with Knitting Nannas, said wood burning would add to poor air quality historically caused by mines and power stations.
“We were hoping that with the transition to cleaner technologies, we could finally hope for an improvement,” Benn said.
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