Opinion,
carbon trading
New
Redwood report
T?ne's
Tree Trust conference
Bio-oil
from wood trials excite backers
Letter
to PM on Sustainable Timber Bill
Environmental
certification and the small forest grower
NZIF
submission to Green Building Council on recognition of
certified wood products
President
Patrick
Milne patrick@cypress.co.nz
-Nelson
-Marlborough
-North Canterbury
-Central canterbury
-West Coast
Vice President
John Dermer dermer@inspire.net.nz
-Middle districts
-Tararua
-Waikato
-Wairarapa
-Wellington
Newsletter
editor
Dean Satchell
dsatch@gmail.com
National Executive
Denis Hocking jdhocking@xtra.co.nz
-Waitomo
-Taupo & Districts
-Hawkes Bay
-Taranaki
Ian Jackson ijacko@xtra.co.nz
-Ashburton
-South Canterbury
-North Otago
-Sthn High Country (north)
Neil Cullen cullen@farmside.co.nz
-Mid Otago
-South Otago
-Southland
-Men of Trees
-Sthn High Country (south)
Dean Satchell dsatch@gmail.com
-Far North
-Mid North
-Lower North
-South Auckland |
Notices
Farm Forestry Awards
Nominations for the Farm Forestry Awards are due by 1 November :
- Husqvarna Farm Forester of the Year (North and South
Island)
- NZ Landcare Trust Innovation Award
- Michael Hay Memorial Award.
Further information available on the NZFFA website
or from National Office.
Opinion, carbon trading
I
always thought carbon trading was a bad idea, but now the National
Government are making sure of it by protecting energy intensive
industries from the cost of carbon, thus providing clear signals to
continue
developing a fossil fuel powered economy. Its now a good idea to build
a massive gas-fired power station near Auckland. Business as usual: the
latest proposal is a coal to urea plant for Southland. This plant will
use 2 million tonnes of coal per year, with plans to also produce
diesel from lignite. Coal, the future of energy! Of course Solid Energy
could instead consider wood fuel, but nobody thinks of trees and wood
as fuel. After all forestry has only become a
cheap source of carbon credits.
So industry have no signal to curb
their emissions, the taxpayer wears this cost.
Simon Terry explains it well,
how the government is using forests as a credit card that will need to
be paid back in the 2020's. "The Government's proposals fail at the
most basic level: making today's polluters pay today's emissions bill."
A very weak
political decision which puts an enormous cost burden on our children.
Under this policy the market pays rock
bottom prices for forestry credits, and land prices remain artificially
high. Oh
well, foresters can always hang on to their credits until a future
government is brave enough to allow the market to work as it should.
Not that I reckon forest owners deserve a cent for "their" carbon. Its
not really "property", but simply a counter for working out the bill
taxpayers wear. Overall a fascinating experiment in human nature.
Lesson: Its not just politicians who put self interest ahead of the
collective interest. Forests not planted now can always be
planted later, despite what FOA and Roger Dickie would have you
beleive. The climate doesn't care, land not planted now is like a
savings account. However the ignorant masses should perhaps be aware
afforestation is no substitute for curbing fossil emissions. To do this
requires renewable energy.
For other more informed opinions, you can go to Radio New Zealand, read the views of
Associate Professor Euan Mason of the School of Forestry, the views
of the Green party, journalist Pattrick
Smellie, read about it in Friday Offcuts
or even the opinion
of Nick Smith, our Climate Change minister.
For more information, go to the MAF website to read about sustainable forestry and the ETS.
As always your opinions are welcome!
Dean Satchell
Denis Hocking comments:
I do not believe that the final form of the ETS
is an indictment of carbon trading, rather it is a tribute to the
squeaky wheel getting special treatment and largely negating the
purpose of the ETS. As designed I would regard it as invitation
to pollute.
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New Redwood report
A new report on Redwoods, ‘Predicting the Spatial Distribution of Sequoia Sempervirens
Productivity in New Zealand’ by David J Palmer, Michael S Watt, Mark O
Kimberley, Heidi S Dungey of Scion (NZ Forest Research Institute Ltd)
is available on the MAF website at: www.maf.govt.nz/climatechange/reports/.
Sequoia sempervirens
or coast Redwood naturally occurs within a narrow coastal belt from
southern-most Oregon to the South Monterey County, California. Recently
there has been renewed interest in this species because almost all
old-growth coast Redwood has been set aside in public holdings in
California. This leaves an opportunity for NZ-grown timber to compete
with second-growth coast Redwood. The emergence of an emissions trading
scheme and the likelihood of attaining carbon credits for forests has
spurred interest in establishing Sequoia sempervirens over the
longer-term. The objectives of this study were to (i) develop a
multiple regression model of site index and 400 index using independent
variables obtained from maps and interpolated surfaces; and (ii) using
this model to develop 400 index and site index surfaces for NZ. Site
index is defined for this species as the height of the 100 largest
diameter trees per hectare at breast height age 40 years. The 400 index
is defined as the stem volume mean annual increment at breast height
age 40 years for a reference regime of 400 stems/ha.
From NZIF
newsletter 2009-37
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T?ne's Tree Trust conference
Managing Native
Trees: towards a National Strategy
is T?ne’s Tree Trust’s ten year conference being held at the University
of Waikato, Hamilton from 18 to 20 November 2009. There will be a
number of keynote speakers but the main focus of the conference will be
on four workshops on the utilization of totara and beech regeneration,
the economical establishment of planted indigenous forest, ecosourcing
and the indigenous research programme. Email ibtrees@wc.net.nz
for a brochure and enrolment form or go to the website
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Bio-oil from wood trials excite backers
A
consortium testing a demonstration plant at Pukekohe in New Zealand
says that it has made 800kg of bio-oil and 500kg of biochar - and has
international customers lining up. The demonstration plant uses
third-generation pyrolysis technology, developed by Advanced
BioRefinery Incorporated of Canada.
New Zealand company Alternative Energy Solutions has the South-East
Asia and Pacific rights for the technology. The demonstration plant is
owned by a consortium of AES, Malaysian-owned forestry company Ernslaw
One, and the government's energy efficiency conservation authority,
EECA.
Project head and AES co-founder Gavin Hedley told Carbon News that
everyone involved is pleased with progress. The process produces a
bio-oil which Hedley expects will be used in slow-turning diesel
engines, such as those found in ships, and in oil-fired power stations.
"You can't use it in ordinary cars, but you can use it to generate the
electricity to run electric cars," he said.
The plant can use a variety of feedstocks, including waste wood from
the forestry industry and bamboo, but AES has a policy of not using
food crops. Hedley says that the demonstration plant is creating a
great deal of regional interest, with customers from Japan, Malaysia,
Australia and New Zealand. He hopes that manufacturing of the plant can
be based in New Zealand.
Source: Carbon
News 2009
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Letter to PM on Sustainable Timber Bill
9 September 2009
Rt Hon John Key
Prime Minister
Parliament Buildings
WELLINGTON
Dear Prime Minister
Cross-sectoral support for
legislation to prohibit the importation of unsustainable and illegally
logged timber.
A year ago forest industry and conservation groups signed a joint
statement on the elimination of illegal forest products imports into
New Zealand. The Statement called on the Government to take a leading
role in stopping the importation of illegal forest products into New
Zealand.
Recently a private member’s bill, the “Customs and Excise (Sustainable
Timber) Amendment Bill” sponsored by the Green MP Catherine Delahunty,
was drawn from the ballot. The forest sector, comprising the members of
WoodCo and the Douglas Fir Association, in conjunction with the key
environmental groups are writing to you to urge the National led
Government to support the bill that requires all imports of timber and
wood products into New Zealand to be legal, sustainable and certified
by reputable certification processes to ensure the same level of
confidence in the timber as is provided domestically by New Zealand
legislation.
At the very least we would urge the National Government to support the
bill at the first reading so that the legislation can be carefully
considered by the appropriate select committee.
Yours sincerely
NZ Forest Owners Association
Wood Processors Association of New Zealand
NZ Farm Forestry Association
NZ Pine Manufacturers
Forest Industry Contractors Association
The Douglas Fir Association
Forest & Bird
Greenpeace
ECO
WWF NZ
Ecologic
Cc
David Carter
Tim Grosser
Catherine Delahunty
Find out more here
Denis Hocking comments: I am concerned about the
letter supporting Catherine Delahunty's Bill explicity stating a desire
for certified timber. Remember that under WTO rules, Govt must apply
same rules for imports and domestic production and we still don't have
a certification system for farm foresters. Consumers are at
liberty to boycott certain products, but not Govts. No complaints about
the report of it because that is what has happened, but worth noting
this problem.
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Environmental certification and the small forest
grower
The report prepared for the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association on
FSC is
available on the website here.
.
(top)
NZIF submission to Green Building Council on
recognition of
certified wood products
NZIF recently made a submission to the US Green Building Council on the
recognition of certified wood products. You might wonder about the
relevance of this Council to NZ. However, some NZIF members are
involved with a timber credits working party of the NZ Green Building
Council. One of the problems we are having is that the NZGBC takes its
lead from the Australian Green Building Council, who in turn take
theirs from the USGBC.
While the current activity in all three countries is around how the
GBCs decide what forest management certification schemes they will
accept (by default it is FSC), all three are very reluctant to look at
the more fundamental issues of:
- Whether timber is being made to jump higher hurdles
than the other materials (in NZ, for example, there are three points
available for each of timber, steel and concrete. While timber has to
be certified right back into the forest (FSC) to get all three points,
steel and concrete do not have to be certified back into the quarries
from which the raw material is extracted (and there are other related
issues). This potentially means a higher cost just to get the three
points, which has nothing to do with the environmental credentials of
the material. It is conceivable that building specifiers will just use
steel and/or concrete rather than timber, as that is the easiest way to
get some points that they need for their overall score);
- Basic comparisons of the three materials. In the
submission to the
USGBC, we reference a NZ life-cycle analysis of timber, concrete and
steel buildings. But the NZGBC won’t let us consider that. They say
that lif-cycle analysis is not yet a rigorous technology and they are
not prepared to incorporate it in the Green Star building rating
system. However there is an Australia/NZ Standard for Life-cycle
Analysis (AS/NZS ISO 14041:1999), which is identical to ISO 14041:1998,
so why can’t they accept analysis based on the Standard? I suspect that
the main reason may be that the concrete and steel sectors seem to have
far more sway on the NZGBC than the timber sector – possible a
situation that also exists in Australia and the US.
So the NZIF submission to the US is aimed at getting a toe in the door
at the place where some of the nonsense starts, rather than only
banging away at the bottom of the chain.
(From NZIF newsletter
Number 2009/40 – 16 October 2009)
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