Photo: Fonterra
Fonterra employees Jonathon Milne and Kevin Liao during the wood pellet trial at the Te Awamutu milk processing plant.
Home-grown bioenergy
18 SCION CONNECTIONS MAGAZINE • ISSUE 41 • JUNE 2022
There is enough energy left over in forestry residues and other woody waste, such as from orchards, surplus pulp logs, and sawmill chip, to entirely replace the heat and energy demands of all New Zealand’s dairy factories, six times over. New Zealand, with its abundance of hill country, is suitable for growing forests and its expertise in fast-growing plantation forestry could become a world leading example of sustainable bioenergy. A pair of Scion studies titled Strategic Review of Short Rotation Bioenergy Forests (December 2021) and Residual biomass fuel projections for New Zealand (January 2022) tackled the big questions of where our woody bioenergy reserves currently are, how we can grow the supply using short rotation forestry and where that energy is best used.
Having enough feedstock to fuel a bioenergy industry is essentially the green light at the start of a national bioenergy roadmap. Under the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019, the Government has set a 2050 target of net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (other than biogenic methane). Planting trees is a proven and immediately available way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. If managed on a sustained yield basis (i.e harvested timber volumes are replaced by new growth) and using best practice forestry, these trees are both a carbon store and a source of endlessly renewable low carbon bioenergy. Scion bioenergy researcher Peter Hall says replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy alternatives from trees and other biological
