Wood fired power plant.

The Greens are protesting about plans to build a wood fired electricity generating plant at Eden on the far south coast.

At first glance this protest seems justified. The proposed plant would burn 51,000 tonnes of fuel annually and this would come from logging operations.

But deeper thinking presents a different picture.

We already have a logging and wood chip industry in Eden and what the people behind this plan are suggesting is that the plant use sawdust and offcuts which are produced as waste to create a useful product.

An interesting question ! What happens to this waste material if the electricity plant is denied ?

If it is burnt as waste or simply piled up and left to rot then we are losing a golden opportunity to recycle. This would be similar to a proposal to use the run off gases from the Wollongong steelworks to fire up a generator producing electricity - instead of what
is happening now when this gas is simply burned off in a flare.

Those objecting seem to have a vision problem.

Perhaps they can't see the wood for the trees !