Tairāwhiti’s unused wood residue could be transformed into commercial biofuel with demand set to grow as the region makes the switch to clean energy.
A new report, published today by EECA (the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority), shows how the forestry sector could play a key role to push more fossil fuels out of the energy system with up to 90% of the region’s energy needed for heat used in manufacturing has the potential to be met by low-carbon fuel source, biomass.
The Tairawhiti Regional Energy Transition Accelerator (RETA) report provides insight and recommendations which aim to improve efficiency and future proof energy investments and make the move more straightforward for local businesses.
As the Economic Development Agency, Trust Tairāwhiti supported the regional programme development, which takes a coordinated approach to decarbonisation, focusing on energy efficiency and fuel switching opportunities.
The report provides large process heat users with Tairāwhiti-specific information to help them make informed fuel and timing choices.
The RETA Tairāwhiti report outlines 23 individual project recommendations across 10 different sites, which collectively consume 240 TJ of process heat energy. This is primarily from piped fossil gas, producing about 13kt of CO2e emissions annually.
Energy efficiency and demand reduction are key parts of the process – which can lead to significant costs and energy savings and make fuel switching cheaper and easier in the long term.
The report highlights the dominance of biomass as the most economic fuel for industrial projects that require high-temperature boilers for their process heat.
A top-down analysis suggested that an average of around 3.8 million tonnes per annum of wood could be harvested in the region from existing exotic forestry estates over the next 15 years. From these harvesting operations, significant volumes of biomass could be made available from roadside and cutover residues, as well as processing residues.
“Creating commercial opportunities for harvesting residues will reduce the size and volumes of post-harvest slash remaining in forests. This could include processing of forestry biomass for local cogeneration,” says EECA Group Manager Delivery and Partnerships Richard Briggs.
“Given the signifcicant surplus of residues that could be exported to other regions of the country, the value of the total available supply for these residues could be around $36m per year on average from now through to 2050.”
The report states demand reduction and heat pump use would meet 20 percent of the regional RETA site energy demands, and avoid investment of $320-$480k in electricity network and biomass infrastructure.
The RETA Tairāwhiti report will be used to support energy users and suppliers with committing to and fast-tracking decarbonisation projects.
Trust Tairāwhiti General Manager Economic Development Richard Searle acknowledged the various stakeholders who contributed to the report.
“Organisations such as Firstlight Network, Transpower, Electronet, large process heat users in the region, as well as forest owners and gentailers all provided valuable information and co-operation. We encourage them to continue the mahi based on recommendations from the report.”
The full report is available here.