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“This budget is historic as it is the first to benefit from the great Green Carbon windfall, resulting from the carbon price secured by the Australian Greens in the Federal Parliament.”
“The measures already announced to mitigate future power price rises for our domestic and small business consumers have been made possible because of the $37 million from this Carbon windfall being available.”
So said Nick McKim in his Budget Speech in Reply
Will McKim ensure then that any forest set aside by the Government through the IGA process also produce a great Green Carbon windfall.
‘Production’ forest removed from production is eligible to be set aside as a Carbon [C] sink where those wishing to pay to offset C emissions.
Forests so set aside should be the equivalent of conservation reserves to maximize their natural sinking capacity by ensuring a healthy ecosystem.
For each 100,000ha set aside for sinking and storing C would bring an income of $16M at an average of $23 per tonne C and 7 tonnes C sunk per ha.
Were the parties to agree to the full 572,000ha that’s potentially a $92m great Green Carbon windfall.
Even if we returned the $7M the Commonwealth will pay to Tasmania to manage the additional reserves C sinks still return $85M given the baseline values.
The value of C in a mechanism that prices C may fall below the fixed price but as both old parties offer a scheme where C can be sunk by growing trees then such a move cannot be at the whim of a change of Federal government.
Studies of large areas of C sink forests show that even with wildfire and insect attack C is still sunk in a majority of the area maintaining an income stream. And when those areas recover they return to sinking C.
So why pass up this opportunity to improve the State’s income stream. Surely the Greens should be promoting such an outcome reassuring the conservation movement that the values it seeks will be protected; the private forest owners that there will be an alternative income stream underpinning the value of wood and the community that a move toward more e forest conservation comes as a great Green Carbon windfall.
Were the Green part of a Labor Green government to fail to convince the Labor part to not be so stupid to pass up such a windfall, one would have to wonder what the point of remaining in such a coalition is.
“Clearly, if this State Budget was delivered by a Greens’ Treasurer it would look different, with a shift in priorities, such as investing more in Tasmania’s reputation as authentically clean, green, clever and creative.”
Let’s see a real attempt to make the above happen at a time when the opportunity exists.
As soon as these areas are dedicated to 19th century style conservation where the values of the set aside are based on a limited understanding of the whole role of forests the opportunity for an income stream is lost.
Do the Greens want to wear the loss of tens of millions of dollars to the Sate for want of a good argument when they can present an argument for 21st century ideas, such as a well being index.
It may even come to pass that the Parties to the SoP are unable to agree and the State government has to act. Even if they agree the State still must act.
The Legislative Council would would have the dilemma of refusing an income stream from Carbon sinking, a stream that should grow over time as the Carbon price rises. If the price reached $100 per tonne then income from Carbon Sink forest owned by Tasmania could be $70M per 100,000 ha.
Could they stand the heat generated. The TCCI would have to be critical of taking making money, the Liberals would have to argue against income for the budget and the general public would have to ask why did it take so long to find more money for education, health and the police.
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Mara Grunbaum, Science 2.0, Biochar Blanket Turns Plant Waste Into A Kiln
When forests are logged, managed or selectively trimmed so they’ll be less susceptible to raging fires, there are usually huge piles of stumps, branches and other wood debris left laying on the ground. Now a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle is developing a portable technology to turn these waste piles into treasure troves by converting them into biochar; charcoal made from plant material that can be burned for energy or applied to soils, where it helps plants grow.
“This is a way to take a lot of carbonaceous waste and convert it into a [valuable] product,” says Daniel Schwartz, who chairs the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington and leads the team of PhD students who developed the biochar conversion technique. Three of those students and are launching a company, now called Carbon Cultures, to produce and sell the char as a soil additive. In October, the National Science Foundation awarded the group a $50,000 grant to commercialize their technology.
The amount of potential energy in woody waste across the United States is roughly comparable to that in the oil pumped out of Alaska, Schwartz says. But instead of being concentrated in one place, like an oil reserve, the wood scrap is collected in several-ton heaps called “slash piles” all across the nation’s timberlands, where it’s produced. Carting those piles from remote forests to industrialized areas to be converted into fuel would be expensive and potentially use up as much energy as it produced, so they’re usually either left to rot or burned in open air so they won’t feed catastrophic forest fires later on. In the Pacific Northwest alone, the forestry sector annually produces about 6 million dry tons of this refuse.
Instead of dragging the mountains of wood to the processing facility, the University of Washington team wants to bring the processing facility to the mountains in the form of a heat-resistant laminate “blanket” that can be wrapped around a slash pile to form a biochar-baking kiln. Light enough to carry in the back of a pickup truck, the wrap material is impermeable to air, and it’s punctuated with a number of adjustable vents that can control the flow of air into a slash pile like the airholes in a backyard barbecue. A fire needs oxygen to burn; when its flow is restricted by closing off the vents, the plant waste doesn’t combust but instead undergoes a different chemical process called pyrolysis, smoldering slowly and leaving chunks of solid carbon, or biochar, behind.
That biochar can be burned for energy, but since coal is still significantly cheaper, it’s unlikely to be competitive in that market, Schwartz says. For agriculture, however, biochar has unique appeal …
