Brian Cox: Executive officer of bioenergy association discusses the Government's new energy plan

The Government has released a new energy plan. 

The 'Wood Energy Strategy and Action Plan' aims to fire up the bioenergy sector.

The strategy claims would energy could replace 40% of fossil-fuelled process heat by 2050, displacing 300,000 tonnes of coal at Huntly. 

Executive officer of bioenergy association Brian Cox told Mike Hosking that 'what the government did yesterday is a little step in the way, but we've got to do a lot more.'

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got our new wood Energy Strategy and action plan.
Bet you didn't know that. I mean on a busy
day of weather and of course strikes, I bet you
didn't know we had our wood Energy Strategy and action
plan out. The idea is to fire up no pun intended,
the bio energy sector. Wood energy, they argue, could replace
forty percent of the fossil fuel by twenty fifty. That's
the equivalent apparently of three hundred thousand tons of coal

(00:21):
from Huntley.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
So.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Brian Cox is the executive officer of the Bio Energy
Association and is with us Brian morning, Good morning, twenty
fifty still a long way off. Where's the industry as
a whole at as we sit here in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's been really developing quite fast, but we need to
go faster. And this is what the government did yesterday
is a little step in the way. But we've got
to do a lot more because we've got such an
opportunity which we're missing because we're just too slow about
doing it. But we've got the biggest resource energy resource
in the country is in our forests. Yes is export?

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Is it just wood? I'm reading a lot about Fonterra
and they're flipping some of the furnaces to what we
call biomass. Is would biomass or is that completely different?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
No, same thing. It's just two words saying the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay. So the difficulty with biomass once again, correct me up,
I'm wrong is I saw a documentary and when wouldn't
didn't provide the heat they wanted, they started burning tires,
which of course is not what you want because they
are good with heat. So do we have an issue
here or not? No?

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Absolutely not. Is that we export in our logs energy
to other countries and we could be used at ourselves here.
Now they have to prose it up. You put it
into a boiler, you make the heat, make eletricity, or
you've made heat. It's just a mattery. You just got
to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
If I run a commercial anything on coal, do I
have to convert or do I just have to stop
using coal and put wood in?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, it depends on your boiler. But a lot of
the boilers, and some of these are the Fonterra ones,
which they've already done where they were on coal, and
what they've done is they've flipped them into bio mass
in that case generally in a case of a wood palette,
but there's a range of different wood fuels that you
can put in. There's summer just woodship and rugh palettes.

(02:14):
Is the sort of a type end range.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
And the heat is still the same as coal, better
or worse.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh no, it's not as good and the cover of
your value of coal as much higher, So you do
need more by a mass. But on the other hand,
is it's a renewable domestic fuel and we've got plenty
of it. And as more and more people have converted
from coal or gas too using wood, is that the

(02:42):
market has been responding and we're getting more and more
picked up from the forest. You know, you drive past
and you see all the debris left on the floor
of slash. Sure that could be picked up and put
into a word, But if there's no where to use it,
like what happened to in entirety is you know you can,
you don't pick it up because for what purpose. So

(03:02):
we've got to get that people want to use it,
and then people will pick it up and then it
won't go onto the beaches like Tolliger Bay.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
If we started, if we just use wood tomorrow instead
of coal. Would we need to plant a lot more forests? Oh?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
So we got all the forests, We got all the wood,
all the forest, all the trees we need.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
We could do with more. If we went to our
full potential, then we need to expand more. But we
are so far away from that, and so we're talking
principally about the residues. So when you cut down a tree,
they take the logs out, they take the good timber
of that, and they leave a lot behind. It's that
bit that they're leave behind that we're using at the moment,

(03:41):
and we will be able to do that for a
long time. But then once we've used that, what do
we do then? Well, some of the low grade logs
that are going to China are real low grade, and
we can get better value by preturning them into energy
here and using it ourselves. So as a no brainer
that we should be using what we've already got and
we're currently wasting all.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Right, bro, nice insight price appreciate it. Brian Cox, executive
officer at the Bio Energy Association. Winston's been on about
that forever, not processing or not adding value to our
logs in this particular part of the world.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
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