{"id":60451,"date":"2021-11-16T08:20:10","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T13:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60451"},"modified":"2021-11-16T08:20:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T13:20:10","slug":"wood-for-the-trees-rush-to-green-hydrogen-masks-mammoth-plans-to-wood-chip-the-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60451","title":{"rendered":"Wood for the Trees: rush to green hydrogen masks mammoth plans to wood-chip the forests"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article-page-top\">\n<h3 class=\"h2\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michaelwest.com.au\/green-hydrogen-masks-mammoth-plans-to-wood-chip-forests\/?fbclid=IwAR2Z-ufQHHEFjx0oVBKwfJPU4XhVyq0FtYe5yTbJinhaYzu_mhEBNcPvBGM\">Wood for the Trees: rush to green hydrogen masks mammoth plans to wood-chip the forests<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"typical-post\">\n<figure class=\"figure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"w-100 wp-post-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.michaelwest.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/woodchips.jpeg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.michaelwest.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/woodchips.jpeg 800w, https:\/\/www.michaelwest.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/woodchips-768x510.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.michaelwest.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/woodchips-610x405.jpeg 610w\" alt=\"biomass, green hydrogen, logging, wood chips\" width=\"800\" height=\"531\" \/><figcaption>Biomass projects entail wood chips. Image: @john_kinnander, Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Is green hydrogen yet another spin with catastrophic consequences for the environment?\u00a0Sue Arnold\u00a0looks behind the greenwash to find wide-scale plans for logging for wood-chips.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dominic Perrottet and his new Treasurer, Matt Kean, enthusiastically\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.skynews.com.au\/australia-news\/watch-live-dominic-perrottet-will-front-the-media-to-release-the-hydrogen-strategy-for-nsw\/news-story\/3963d3d19d1fabc7bd2176488c3ec92d\">unveiled<\/a>\u00a0their $3billion \u201cworld leading\u201d green hydrogen strategy for NSW last month, with promises of $80 billion in private investment and more than 10,000 jobs created.<\/p>\n<p>What the two politicians didn\u2019t say was that NSW forests would be the source feedstock for the so-called \u201crenewable energy\u201d. Nor did they detail that this latest effort to convince the public their government is \u201cserious\u201d about net zero commitment, is in fact yet another massive money pit labelled \u201crenewable energy\u201d. A green light to the corporate cowboys waiting to cash in on the net zero train.<\/p>\n<p>One of the first cabs off the green hydrogen rank is the old coal-fired\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.singletonargus.com.au\/story\/7235389\/redbank-pushes-biomass-credentials\/\">Redbank Power Station<\/a>\u00a0near Singleton. It is now owned by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/verdantearthtechnologieslimited.com\/biomass-power-for-the-hunter-seen-as-positive-step-to-tackle-climate-change\/\">Verdant Earth Technology<\/a>, previously known as Hunter Energy. The project plans to convert the station into a 150-megawatt biomass plant to generate 1,00,000 MWh of green baseload power, equivalent to supplying 200,000 homes with net zero CO2 emissions.<\/p>\n<p>Pending approvals, Verdant plans to be operational with 16 tonnes of hydrogen production per day by the end of 2023.<\/p>\n<p>What exactly is biomass?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/topics\/engineering\/forest-residue\">ScienceDirect<\/a>\u2019s definition is useful:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>Forest residues are a by-product from forest harvesting, which is a major source of biomass for energy. This includes thinning, cutting stands for timber or pulp, clearing lands for construction or other use that also yields tops and branches usable for bioenergy. On top, stands damaged by insects, diseases or fire can be an additional sources of biomass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Killing trees is not curbing emissions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wood for the Trees: rush to green hydrogen masks mammoth plans to wood-chip the forests Biomass projects entail wood chips. Image: @john_kinnander, Unsplash Is green hydrogen yet another spin with catastrophic consequences for the environment?\u00a0Sue Arnold\u00a0looks behind the greenwash to find wide-scale plans for logging for wood-chips. Dominic Perrottet and his new Treasurer, Matt Kean, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[41,2634,1406,32151,32150,30673,32152],"class_list":["post-60451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-australia","tag-biomass","tag-green-energy","tag-green-hydrogen","tag-michael-west-media","tag-net-zero","tag-suzanne-arnold"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60452,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60451\/revisions\/60452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}