Tag Archives: australia
Bioenergy A Burning Question For Tasmania’s Forests
24 July 2013 Bioenergy a burning question for Tasmania’s forests AUTHORS Stewart Williams Russell Warman DISCLOSURE STATEMENT Stewart Williams teaches and researches at the University of Tasmania. He receives funding from AHURI and NCCARF. Russell Warman has previously worked as a policy analyst with ENGOs involved in Tasmania’s forest negotiations. Provides funding as a Member of The Conversation. utas.edu.au Harnessing the energy in wood may help wean Australia off fossil fuels. Flickr/chriscardinal With Australia trying to meet renewable energy targets and reduce emissions wherever possible, we should be considering bioenergy. Bioenergy can be made by burning biomass in a variety of forms, including agricultural by-products such as rice husks, poppy seeds, sugarcane waste and manure. It can also be made from forestry by-products such as sawmill and wood wastes. Tasmania is a prime candidate for such developments. Visiting international researcher Professor Andreas Rothe of the University of Applied Sciences, Weihenstephan , has recently released findings of a six-month study he conducted for Forestry Tasmania. He suggests that energy produced from wood “could lift Tasmania’s bioenergy contribution beyond 30%”. There seem to good reasons for Australia to transition towards greater use of bioenergy. It is a renewable and relatively secure energy source that can reduce CO 2 emissions by replacing fossil fuels. It seems a relatively straightforward proposal, especially given Prof Rothe’s experience in Europe. People of forested parts of Europe – such as Prof Rothe’s home state of Bavaria in Germany, and Scandinavia – have longstanding cultural practises and economies based on forest resources, with considerable uptake of bioenergy produced from wood. But people in Australia have a different relationship with forests. Unlike much of Europe, Australia has forests with little or no history of industrial resource extraction. Australian people have different values and perceptions about how those resources should be used. These differences are reflected in bitter conflicts over native forests in most of the states, not least in Tasmania. Recent efforts to forge peace in the Tasmanian forests signal progress. Professor Rothe takes some of these issues into consideration, and excludes the use of old-growth forest from his research. Tasmania’s bioenergy aspirations aren’t new. In 2002 Forestry Tasmania planned for a 30 megawatt bioenergy plant at a site south of Hobart, meant to burn wood residue and provide electricity to run the site and a surplus to the grid. It now includes a modern regrowth sawmill, log yard and rotary peel veneer mill. But the power plant has never been built. The proposal was submitted to the State’s planning authority but it failed to attract investment. This financial hesitation reflects uncertainties around the benefits of bioenergy. Can bioenergy substitute fossil fuels? Should we put new pressure on resources such as forests, clean air and water, which are already critically scarce (and key to other services including biodiversity conservation and food production)? Early on environmentalists and some industry sectors supported bioenergy in North America and Europe – backed by significant subsidies. But recently this support has started to unravel as mainstream economists question the logic of the subsidies, investors move away , courts intervene , and environmental organisations question the cost of the growth in biomass demand. Even before these doubts were raised in the Northern Hemisphere, there was a wariness in Australia about claims to make use of “waste” or “residue” wood in biomass. The experience of the rise of the wood-chip industry, initially slated as an industry sideline for waste logs, into a driver of native forest logging, is still fresh in the memories of many Australians. Tasmania is a prime candidate for any developments in bioenergy. Local and rural communities across the state are undergoing major changes. Bioenergy could be part of innovations as the forestry industry is restructured. But a lot more work will be required if the use of bioenergy from wood is to have any chance of going ahead with widespread community support, especially if native forests are involved. This issue, towards which the Tasmanian Forest Agreement is perhaps making some fragile first steps, concerns the need to forge a broader social consensus on how native forests are used and valued. It might be some time before Australia is ready for bioenergy. By then, ironically enough, Europe and North America might be winding back from their initial enthusiasm. Continue reading
The Cornerstones of Advanced Biofuels
Novel pretreatment technologies are paving the way for the advanced biofuel industry. By Chris Hanson | July 22, 2013 Currently, one of the most common pretreatment methods is accomplished using steam explosion, but further advances and innovations in other pretreatment methods could diversify pretreatment options. In recent months, several breakthroughs and new approaches have been announced, one of which is ionic liquid pretreatments with butadiene sulfone. Some of the newest pretreatment innovations involve the use of ionic liquids to break apart biomass into cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Ionic liquids, or liquid salts, are being researched at both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U.S. DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute. “Initially, we wanted to find a solvent to actively separate lignin, hemicellulose and cellulose,” adds Hao Feng, associate professor at the University of Illinois. “However, we also found it is probably better to use this as a pretreatment because we can recover it, we can recycle it, and that way we can have that green, sustainable production.” Once pretreatment is complete, the temperature is increased, and the heat breaks down the solvent, forming butadiene and sulfur dioxide. The two gases are then recombined to form the original butadiene sulfone. Halfway across America, the JBEI in California is also developing an ionic liquid pretreatment. Unlike the University of Illinois’ butadiene sulfone method, the institute is utilizing imidazolium chloride with mixed feedstocks. With its pretreatment technology, the institute is able to liberate 95 percent sugar yields from biomass in less than 24 hours, recovering roughly 95 percent of the ionic liquid. Working with Idaho National Laboratory’s feedstock development unit, JBEI tested what Simmons refers to as a “witch’s brew” of feedstocks, comprised of corn stover, switchgrass, eucalyptus and pine biomass. What the researchers unexpectedly discovered was the mixtures performed better in pretreatment than single feedstocks. “Imagine if you had a biorefinery operating with ionic liquid technology that could handle any mixture that’s available regionally, be it yard trimmings, ag residues, tree residues, municipal solid waste,” says Simmons. “That’s pretty remarkable.” Currently, JBEI is working with the industry to commercialize the technology. Simmons hopes sugars produced from ionic liquids will be marketable within three to five years. The biggest steps that need to be taken, he says, are more process engineering and scaling to minimize risks. “We are working with user facilities within the national lab complex, post start-ups and big industry to do that,” he adds. “We are very excited about the future of the process.” Emerging Glycerol Pretreatment Explaining how the pretreatment process works, Simmons says crushed bagasse from a sugar processor is churned with the glycerol in a chamber. Dissolved lignin and glycerol are then pressed out, leaving the cellulose and hemicellulose. “It’s a really simple, easy process using a very cheap substance in glycerol,” he says. Other recent developments, Richards notes, include processes to purify the used glycerol for reuse and to maintain lower costs. Leaf Energy, JBEI and University of Illinois are all using different approaches to create digestible sugars, but all take aim at the same goal. “I think pretreatment is still the most expensive unit operation in biomass-to-biofuel production,” says Feng. “If you could lower the cost, including capital investment and operational costs, I think you could lower the overall cost of production. That’s why it is very important.” Simmons believes the real challenge in biofuel production lies with inexpensive, sugar production from renewable, lignocellulosic feedstocks. He says if people are able to produce those sugars with a production cost lower or equal to corn and sugarcane-derived sugars, that “all things become possible with those sugars in terms of fuels, chemicals and others.” Advanced biofuel, such as cellulosic ethanol, could play a big role in the pressing carbon debates, says Richards. He adds that with lower production costs, decreased enzyme costs and better technologies, cellulosic ethanol “has a very, very big task going forward to help reduce carbon.” Author: Chris Hanson Staff Writer, Biomass Magazine chanson@bbinternational.com 701-738-4970 Continue reading
Trees The Answer To Carbon Capture
By Ross Hampton – posted Wednesday, 24 July 2013 When the Government recently announced the switch from carbon tax to carbon trading, it also quietly deferred $200 million which was supposed to help industry develop ‘carbon capture and storage’ technology. There has been little outcry because, by all accounts, innovations in this area are coming at a slow pace. Coincidentally $200 million is exactly the figure which the forest industry has put before government for an alternate ‘carbon capture and storage’ scheme which is not only a sure bet but, ‘shovel ready’. I am talking about trees. Consider this. Trees ‘capture’ carbon as they grow. When they are harvested for products, like furniture and house frames, they continue to ‘store’ the carbon for many decades. Following harvest, the forest regenerates (or plantations are replanted), with the new trees ‘capturing’ even more carbon from the atmosphere for storage in yet more products. It is the most perfectly virtuous of carbon cycles. The scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who set the international carbon accounting rules, have long been unequivocally in favour of the ‘harvest and regrow’ scenario. In 2007 they pronounced, “In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustainable yield of timber, fibre, or energy from the forest will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefits.” At home, our scientists have replicated international studies. They have proven that a well-managed, production forest is up to 240 per cent better at storing carbon over the long term than if the same area is locked away. So why haven’t state and federal government programs turbo-charged best practice forestry as a given for a carbon constrained economy?The answer is as simple as it is challenging – trees take time. Trees are a long term investment with long term benefits. However, in Australia, much about climate change programs has been geared to the short term as we have focused on quick wins. The big winners have been the ‘off the shelf’ solutions, which, courtesy taxpayer subsidies, deliver a compelling and fast ‘return on investment’ for company accountants. The most striking example is the exponential growth of wind turbines. Thousands now dot our landscapes and, according to energy forecasts, they will soon be joined by tens of thousands more as we relentlessly track towards our bipartisan ‘20 per cent renewable energy by 2020’ target. Expect to hear and see many more protests as that happens. Industrial scale wind farms have some strident critics who point to their impact on the landscape, health and communities. But there is a very large irony here if you stop to think about it.By attempting to address an uncoated ‘externality’ in carbon emissions we are, with wind installations, arguably creating a raft of other negative externalities. If we turned to trees to help solve our carbon conundrum, the externalities would all be positive. They include erosion and salinity prevention, biodiversity, picnic areas, walking tracks, not to mention jobs and growth for our regions. In Europe these ‘value adds’ are often captured under the umbrella of ‘eco-system services’. Governments are now turning attention to developing the methodologies to appropriately ‘price’ them. It is a belated recognition that trees really do deliver the ‘resource par excellence’ for a more enlightened twenty first century of development. Back home, trees also give Australian policy makers the opportunity to turn the policy dial to these longer term, and net positive, settings. All it takes is an agreement to bring forward payment to the time of planting for the carbon stocks which will accumulate in the trees. In effect the Government would be hedging a future, and growing, market. This is a vital change to counteract the main disincentive to investment in new tree planting – the long wait for a return on high establishment costs. It would be a win-win for government and forest communities. The government would ‘bank’ the carbon credits to sell in carbon markets. The trees, harvested and re-planted in rotation, would sustain the forest industry into the future. Based on modest carbon price estimates, an initial investment of $200 million per year, over the first three years, would eventually become cost neutral, even paying back the ‘seeding’ funds. And that result doesn’t even start to calculate the additional carbon which we would be putting in the bank in terms of the timber products made from trees. Or the massive energy benefits available if we were to use the forest process residues (smaller branches and mill off-cuts) to fire up generators replacing other less environmentally friendly power. At present Australia’s plantations provide a carbon emissions offset of 4 per cent against our national carbon emissions target. This policy would allow this to surge to 10 per cent by 2050. Great for our carbon constrained future economy and great for our forestry communities. Continue reading
