Biomass … an energy solution for HB?

Suppose there was a way to simultaneously…

• Dispose of millions of tonnes of HB forestry slash;

• Cut our region’s carbon emissions by 120 kt per year; 

• Improve the region’s energy resilience; AND

• Help some of the Bay’s biggest energy users save money.

Sounds too good to be true.

But that’s the claim of an investigation carried out with industry input here in Hawke’s Bay by NZ’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA).

The potential will be laid out in a report soon to be released by EECA’s Regional Energy Transition Acceleration project (RETA) and recently previewed to our Joint Climate Action Committee.

The RETA initiative has been looking specifically at how fossil fuel (we’re talking mainly gas in Hawke’s Bay) used by large businesses (and other big consumers like HB Hospital) to produce process heat can be reduced (initially) and then phased out altogether.

Heat generation for manufacturing purposes, produced today by burning gas and coal, accounts for 7.8% of NZ carbon emissions.

Hawke’s Bay uses 2% of NZ’s piped natural gas, which is both diminishing in supply and increasing substantially in price.

The RETA project has looked at 44 sites (each with minimum 500 tonnes/p.a. of emissions) that use 86% of HB’s piped gas, conferring with the businesses involved and inquiring into their energy use and future plans.

The research has found that available demand reduction practices could reduce present energy use by 15% and shifting to more efficient heat pump technology could save another 11%. At the 44 sites, 51 projects have been identified that are economically viable now, even with no increases in carbon offset prices.

[The carbon price is important because it sets a marker that businesses would need to pay for offsets if they could not otherwise reduce their emissions. Businesses are looking for mitigation options that are cheaper than buying emission offsets.] 

That is all great and, aside from direct energy cost savings to businesses, would achieve substantial near-term reductions in HB’s carbon emissions.

But after that, further cost and emissions savings require shifting the energy source from fossil fuel to electricity or biomass.

And it seems Hawke’s Bay is uniquely positioned for biomass to become the economically preferred renewable fuel source.

The RETA analysis has compared electricity and biomass as alternative power sources and has found that biomass would be the most economic solution in each of the 44 businesses reviewed. [We look forward to Unison’s comments!]

To supply the requisite biomass for all to switch, HB foresters would need to harvest 230,000 ‘green’ tonnes per year. RETA has met with the region’s top forestry companies to arrive at an assessment of the harvest potential over the next several decades. The harvest is projected at 2.5-5Mt per year. And further analysis indicates the ‘residues’ (think slash, chips from current processing) generated from this would easily supply HB’s biomass demand at an affordable price taking into account all recovery and processing costs. And if our region’s low grade logs were added in (now shipped mainly to China where they are chipped for biomass), the woody biomass supply would double.

So, what are the obstacles to HB converting its industrial gas use to biomass?

The need for infrastructure collaboration amongst both users and suppliers.

On the demand/user side there is no single business with the energy demand to support its own biomass set-up, so the solution would be a group of users – e.g. at Awatoto or Whakatu – to aggregate their demand and feed off a shared system.

Likewise on the supply side. Rather than numerous forestry companies operating depots to store and process the wood residues, a central supply hub at scale would be the sensible solution.

So, as the RETA analyst challenged our Joint Action Climate Committee in his presentation: collaboration is essential for a regional solution and is this a path the Committee is prepared to facilitate?

Finally, a potential significant action role for the Committee.

Meantime, individual HB companies are making energy use changes:

• Napier Pine gas boiler to biomass boiler
• AFFCO Wairoa coal boiler to biomass boiler
• Bremworth gas boiler to high temperature heat pump
• Woolworks gas boiler to high temperature heat pump
• Ovation to electric boiler

And elsewhere Fonterra, our leading exporter, has been busily converting its boilers around NZ from fossil power to biomass.

Note that this win/win strategy is being advanced by EECA at the same time the Government is foolishly taking NZ back to the dinosaur age of oil and gas production, restoring fossil fuel exploration and proposing huge gas infrastructure investments at a time when our power-generating companies, all with state ownership, are handing over millions of dollars in dividends instead of investing in already identified renewable energy projects.

It would appear EECA/RETA didn’t get the memo!