By Jo Nova
We’ve 1,000 years of coal left underground, but we’re returning to burning trees again to scare off the Climate-Yeti.
Environmentalists are aghast, of course, even though this is exactly what they wanted — a lower carbon form of concrete, and an end to coal.
But the 100 year old coal kiln needs $100m worth of transformation to be able to burn wood and tyres properly. So this is an expensive shift, and it won’t be easy to undo, and now the Greens and ABC (but I repeat myself) are concerned…
Concerns native forests could be part of Cement Australia’s ‘sustainable’ fuel option as it moves away from coal
By Kelsey Reid, ABC
One of the largest cement manufacturing sites in Australia has temporarily shut operations as it upgrades its coal-fired kiln to accept alternative fuel sources such as used tyres and “sustainable” wood waste.
Cement Australia’s Railton plant, in north-west Tasmania, will stop production for an estimated 45 days to allow for the $108 million works as the company moves to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.
The whole point of the ABC story is to gnash teeth over where will the woodchips come from? The concrete company says it will only use’ certified sustainable’ wood which should make the EcoWorriers crack the champers. But the greener types can see the temptation will be there to increase the harvest of native forest, to generate more ‘sustainable’ offcuts.
The Concrete company didn’t want to explain where the wood is coming from, possibly because they didn’t want anyone to chain themselves to any trees.
“To this day, they’ve not told people exactly where that wood was coming from, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to be native forests and Tasmanian timbers,” he said.
“If they need a very large amount of wood, and they will, isn’t that going to then drive logging and potentially increase the rate of logging in order to be able to sustain the flow of wood that they require?”
The, ABC, notably, did not interview any foresters, probably because they might be afraid the foresters would say the native forests could use some thinning so they don’t vaporize in a pyroclastic koala-killing blaze with one bolt of lightening.
Instead we get the bread and circuses statistics:
By switching to alternative fuels, Cement Australia expects to reduce coal use by 111,000 tonnes a year, and reduce carbon dioxide by 105,000 tonnes over the same period.
But not the statistic that matters — How many degrees with that cool the world? The ABC have no idea.
Even Bob Brown, former leader of The Greens, is against this: Burning forests for cement is not climate action.
Turns out, coal has been protecting our trees for a century.
Thanks to BenBeattie for the tip @EnergyWrapAU.