The Redbank Power Station currently lies idle near Singleton in the Hunter Valley. When operating, the 151-megawatt coal fired plant, deemed to be among the dirtiest in Australia, was retired in 2014 after operating for only 14 years.
In 2012, as part of the federal government's Clean Energy Future package, National Power, the former owners of Redbank, received $8,766,418 from the Energy Security Fund to close the plant.
In late 2023, Verdant Earth Technologies Limited (VETL) proposed the reopening of the power station after converting it from coal to wood-fired generation.
The idea had first been muted as far back as mid-2021, the original intent being to obtain what was described as “ultra-low-quality logs, sawmill residues and the sourcing of wood waste from both forests and other wood processing facilities”. Unsurprisingly, the idea of burning native forests to generate electricity was widely condemned.
This latest proposal now suggests the wood fuel will mostly come from private property and plantations. However, the claim that 56,000 ha of biomass crops will be planted over a four-year period to provide 70% of the feedstock is not credible and is unlikely to eventuate, and any move towards such plantation development will only clash with current plans to expand the plantation estate to rescue the ailing timber industry.
The ongoing ‘spin’ that attempts to claim that, because wood is renewable, burning it for electricity generation is clean, has to be rejected. The millions of tonnes of CO² that will be released into the atmosphere by this proposal will only add to the already escalating climate crisis.
That atmospheric pollution will be compounded by emissions from the 40,000 truck movements, often several hundred kilometres, to supply the 850,000 tonnes of timber required annually. Other costs associated with heavy transport include road maintenance and construction, road crashes involving trucks, pollution, and urban road congestion.
The reality is, not only does wood-fired electricity generation produce even greater greenhouse gas levels than coal-fired power plants, but it poses a direct threat to biodiversity and to human health and should never be approved!
- John Edwards
Published in the "Voices for the Earth" column in The Clarence Valley Independent , April 17, 2024.
