FORBES could become the centre of a new $60 million a year industry growing mallee trees to provide biomass to make fuel pellets that replace some of the coal used in Delta Electricity’s Wallerawang power station.
Delta this week launched a pilot scheme involving 10 selected farmers within a 160 kilometre radius of the town who will each grow 20,000 trees.
If the pilot is successful, Delta and the NSW Government will put in more money for the enlarged Wallerawang biomass co-firing project, at the power station near Lithgow.
The long term prospect is for 70 million mallee trees to be planted across 300 farms to produce enough biomass to replace 20 per cent of the coal at the 1000 megawatt plant at Wallerawang.
The plantings would cover about 41,000 hectares or an average of 140ha a farm.
Farmers, apart from growing the trees under contract, could benefit from payments for carbon sequestration, depending on whether the Federal Government can get legislation through Parliament for its troubled emissions trading scheme or something similar.
Launching the project at the Forbes district property of Matthew Duff, “Glen Yarra,” Delta officials said the project would be a “win” for farmers who would grow a drought resistant cash crop.
It was also a “win” for the environment through substituting biomass for coal.
Delta says supply contracts with farmers, transport and the local processing facility would bring an estimated $60m a year to the local economy across the remaining life of the power station.
Biomass project director for Delta, Chris Horner, said the $1.3 million pilot project would test the suitability of the mallee trees, and look at such things as seedling survival and growth rates.
He said the trees would be grown for five years to let the roots establish, then would be harvested for biomass every three years.
“We will cut them off from a few inches above the ground. They will grow back from that – they will jump out of the ground because the root system will be there,” he said.
When the scheme was scaled up to the 70 million ha target, a pelleting plant would be built at a site yet to be selected in the Forbes district.
Mr Horner said trials would be run soon at Wallerawang using 100 tonne batches of pellets made from various sources, including mallee, to see how well they burned in the boilers.
He said the project would be in full scale production by 2020, the date for the Federal Government’s target of having 20 per cent of power produced by renewable sources.
Chief executive of Delta Electricity, Jim Henness, said the company believed biomass had “huge” potential to diversify Australia’s reliance on coal based power.
“The uptake of this technology will grow as other coal generators recognise the benefit of this innovation as a means to reduce carbon emissions by using renewable energy fuels.
For Mr Duff, the scheme offers the advantage of providing a passive income stream which won’t be as erratic as the drought affected production from his 3600-hectare mixed farming operation in recent years.
He said last year his wheat and barley crops had yielded on average just half a tonne a hectare.
He said the scheme was a “terrific concept”.
“The beauty about it is that it is not costing us anything,” he said.
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