The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) announced two deals for funding bioenergy projects. Sources: Climate Spectator, The Border Watch, 4-Traders
The CEFC announced it has executed a collaboration agreement with forestry company New Forests to finance new bioenergy and biofuel developments.
No specific financing amounts have been disclosed and project details are vague.
A press statement from the CEFC said that New Forests has identified a bioenergy plant in the Green Triangle plantation area alongside the Tarpeena Sawmill in South Australia as an immediate priority.
The other aggreement involves $600,000 in finance to support meat rendering company AJ Bush and Sons undertake a 1MW upgrade of its biogas power plant fueled by waste from the Beaudesert rendering plant in Queensland.
Mount Gambier Mayor Steve Perryman has claimed the region’s fortunes are beginning to turn around with a number of “bright spots” emerging, such as the possibility of a $105m bioenergy plant near Tarpeena.
While arguing there would continue to be significant challenges ahead, he said there were some “positive aspects emerging”, including major upgrades at regional timber mills.
Perryman also praised the State Government’s economic diversification project for the South East, including the VTT Research study that was mapping a future for the timber sector. He supports the government’s $27m structural adjustment package being delivered to regional timber companies.
New Forests has invested in extensive forestry plantations in Australia, and this new agreement may support establishment of new domestic markets for hardwood and softwood timber as well as traditional forestry and sawmill waste products.
Under the collaboration agreement, New Forests will seek to develop commercially oriented investment opportunities in renewable energy that complement regional forest sectors.
“This is an opportunity to diversify Australian markets for timber, turn waste material into energy, and create new jobs and investment in rural Australia.
“We see biomass based energy and liquid fuels as an area of substantial potential for growth, and an opportunity that could rival the size of traditional timber markets in the next 10 or 20 years,” said New Forests’ managing director, David Brand.
Bioenergy presently provides 0.9% of Australia’s electricity generation, but the Clean Energy Council estimates that this has the potential to increase six-fold by 2020 with the right support in place.
New Forests’ investments already include 375,000 hectares of land and timber plantation assets in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia and Timberlink Australia, with two softwood sawmills located in Tasmania and South Australia.
Many of these plantations were established under managed investment schemes and now need concerted effort to develop markets and infrastructure.
“Market development is a key part of the work that needs to be done to reposition Australia’s plantation forestry sector for the future,” said Brand.
