Restart of Redbank Power Station

DearSir/Mam Burning our state forests is wrong and a criminal act against Nature. We have lost over 75% of the worlds wilderness. We need wild areas for clean water and air. Plus wildlife has a right to live. We do not owen this planet and have been on Earth for a short time, in its hystory. We need to surg ahead with Greeen Energy and stop burning fosil fuels.

This is a ridiculous proposal seeking to
exploit NSW land management rules that are currently under review.
Biomass has negative health impacts which wil include releasing dangerous air pollution which are carcinogenic and create respiratory problems
More truck movement and cars on the road will increase carbon footprint further.

Destroying forests and burning the material thus creating heat and carbon with habitat loss is against every principle of reducing our carbon footprint and attempting to manage our environment for the future.

The use of biofuels (trees) as a Renewable energy source is plainly ridiculous
1 It destroys habitat.
2 Removes our existing main carbon removal system.
3 Would be an industry that destroys the very source it needs to continue. Therefore a waste of time and money needed to set up the infrastructure.

I strongly object to the project for the following reasons:
- The new proposed fuel source for Redbank power station will create a market to destroy nature. NSW already has an abysmal track record of unrestrained habitat clearing. Habitat clearing on freehold land is now the biggest cause of environmental loss in NSW. This proposal will make the problem exponentially worse as the proponent wishes to burn 850,000 tonnes of habitat and woodchips per year – more than the entire native forest logging industry in NSW produces.
- This project is an unnecessary distraction from real renewable energy solutions. It will not help, but hinder decarbonisation of the energy system. This is because burning cleared vegetation is not carbon neutral and the project would create a new source of greenhouse pollution.
- The proposal is to use cleared habitat and forest biomass from land that has been stripped for farming, not regrowth, meaning there will not be any future carbon sequestration to theoretically reduce the power plant's emissions.
- A massive increase in truck movements to deliver fuel to Redbank is another source of emissions and a far-reaching disturbance.
- The proposal seeks to exploit NSW land management rules that are unequivocally failing nature and that are currently under review.
- Biomass has negative and unjust health impacts including releasing dangerous air pollution.

As a NSW resident I am opposed to developments which compromise our State's transition to renewable energy sources and awy from burning.
This proposal, if approved also place pressure on biological resources and undermine efforts to improve the State's biodiversity. Specifically,
The new proposed fuel source for Redbank power station will create a market to destroy habitat. We should end clearing for forestry and farming and instead be implementing sustainable farming and forestry practices involving replanting and regeneration.
It will not help, but hinder decarbonisation of the energy system.
Burning cleared vegetation is not carbon neutral and the project would create a new source of greenhouse pollution.
The proposal is to use cleared habitat and forest biomass from land that has been stripped for farming, not regrowth, meaning there will not be any future carbon sequestration to theoretically reduce the power plant's emissions.
A massive increase in truck movements to deliver fuel to Redbank is another source of emissions and a far-reaching disturbance.
Biomass has negative and unjust health impacts including releasing dangerous air pollution.

For the following reasons I strongly object to this project being given approval

The new proposed fuel source for Redbank power station will create a market to destroy even more habitat.

This project is an unnecessary distraction from real renewable energy solutions. It will not help, but hinder decarbonisation of the energy system.
Burning cleared vegetation is not carbon neutral and the project would create a new source of greenhouse pollution.

The proposal is to use cleared habitat and forest biomass from land that has been stripped for farming, not regrowth, meaning there will not be any future carbon sequestration to theoretically reduce the power plant's emissions.

A massive increase in truck movements to deliver fuel to Redbank is another source of emissions and a far-reaching disturbance.

The proposal seeks to exploit NSW land management rules that are unequivocally failing nature and that are currently under review.

Biomass has negative and unjust health impacts including releasing dangerous air pollution.

This destructive project has already been rejected and there is no evidence of substantial change which would vaidate its reconsideration. The burning of forest products, even though it mat be defined by some as "waste" is not an acceptable way to produce electricity. Gebuiine renewables , such as wind, solar and hydro, are cheaper and more reliable with minimal damage to the environment.
Burning so called waste will only encourage the harvesting of younger and smaller trees which eliminates their ability to store carbon and reduces habitat for wildlife.
Please consider future generations and do not approve this project.

Why is the State Government even considering this proposal?
In a time when we urgently need to de-carbonise our economy, Verdant Earth Technologies is proposing a dirty, polluting way of producing energy that will result in massive land clearing and release 50% more carbon into the atmosphere than burning coal. It is not the “environmentally sustainable” way of producing energy that they are claiming.

The project has reached the stage of public exhibition – the environmental impact statement that accompanies it makes claims that are demonstrably false, such as that it would “help decarbonise the electricity system” and “be ecologically sustainable”.

Please don’t just rubber stamp this terrible proposal – pass it on to the Independent Planning Commission, where its impact on our precious environment can be properly assessed.

Submission addressing the ‘Restart of Redbank Power Station’
Application number: SSD-56284960

I strongly object to the application:
We are in a climate emergency with less than a decade to act. According to climate scientists we must stop burning carbon and clearing native forests and land for agriculture. Verdant plans to do the opposite; burn carbon in the form of biomass, predominately supplied by so called woody weeds from western NSW, at Redbank in the Hunter. This proposal will increase greenhouse gas emissions in NSW. It will not supply clean green renewable electricity as claimed by Verdant.

Window dressing as carbon neutral:
This EIS is a window dressing for burning another polluting source of carbon fuel under the guise of it being close to carbon neutral. The carbon neutral claim is based on the eventual reabsorption of the emissions from the smokestack that have conveniently been counted as zero. To make up any shortfall in reabsorption. Verdant is confidently relying on carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon offsets to help reach their claims of near carbon neutrality. CCS is yet to be shown as practical or economical. Carbon offsets and safeguard mechanisms continue to be exposed as ineffectual.

Worse than coal:
While biomass is not a fossil fuel, burning it is still burning carbon and releasing carbon dioxide. In fact burning 850,000 tonnes of biomass will release over one million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually at Redbank. Other potent greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, will also be released. There will be additional emissions from the fossil fuels used in harvesting, processing and transporting of the biomass. Emissions from the 1200 km return Bdouble trips from Cobar to Redbank will be major – hardly a near-zero project. In general, burning biomass emits up to 50% more carbon dioxide than burning coal per unit of electricity produced, due to the lower energy density and higher moisture content.

Woody weeds will not regrow:
A major proportion of Verdant’s fuel will be sourced from the clearing of invasive native species in the Cobar district. As the stated purpose is to open up ‘invaded’ agricultural land the vegetation will not be replaced. The woody weeds will no longer exist to reabsorb the carbon released when they were burned as claimed by Verdant.

Time lag ignored:
To combat climate change the world must rapidly transition away from burning carbon in less than ten years. There is no acknowledgement of the time lag for regrowth to absorb the carbon dioxide emitted at the smoke stack, nor the loss of carbon from the soils of harvest sites. These also should be included.

No assessment of impact on biodiversity:
One of Verdant’s main sources will be ‘biomass from invasive native species on agricultural land as approved by Local Land Services NSW’. So-called invasive native species are often high conservation value remnant vegetation, critical habitat for threatened species such as the koala. Verdant has conveniently ignored the impact on biodiversity in the Cobar district. Instead they have only assessed the impact on the largely cleared Redbank site which is not their source of biomass.
In the Cobar Biogeographic Region there are currently 114 entities listed under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act including 62 vulnerable species, 31 endangered species, 4 critically endangered species, 1 endangered population and 4 endangered ecological communities.

NSW a hotspot for land clearing:
NSW is a hotspot for vegetation clearing internationally. The dramatic increase in recent years is due to the relaxing of regulations for private land clearing in NSW. The Auditor General in 2019 concluded that the Invasive Native Species criteria are so vague, and regulation so poor, that large areas have been inappropriately approved for land clearing. This weakness has yet to be rectified.

Unsustainable according to parliamentary inquiry:
The 2020 NSW parliamentary inquiry into ‘Sustainability of energy supply and resources in NSW’ found that the burning of forest biomass for power generation is ‘not economically or environmentally sustainable, and it generates significant carbon emissions’.

Hunter air pollution:
Overseas experience has found biomass burning to be worse for air pollution than burning coal. A wide range of hazardous air pollutants are emitted from burning wood for energy, including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter and dioxins, that are harmful to human health.

‘Dispatchable’ sources of generation in critical need?:
Verdant claims that biomass is the only renewable source of dispatchable energy, due to wind and solar’s inadequacies. It ignores the existing use of batteries of various sizes, including the very successful large one in South Australia. Pumped hydro is also not mentioned as are the microgrids with batteries and innovations such as molten salt storage.

Discredited overseas:
Burning biomass for electricity is increasingly discredited overseas. In 2021, more than 500 top scientists and economists sent a letter to leaders in the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, and the UK, urging them to stop burning forests to make electricity in converted coal burning power plants. They emphasised the false carbon accounting used in calling biomass burning ‘carbon neutral’. In the same letter they said forest preservation and restoration should be key tools for achieving (carbon neutrality), while simultaneously helping to address our global biodiversity crisis. Verdant’s proposal if approved would see Australia beginning to go down this highly discredited path.

Yours sincerely
Tom Ferrier

It will provide jobs and power to many homes. A great project running on biomass and working to achieve net zero carbon emissions.

We need the energy ! It’s green & not fossil fueled. And also has the benefit of creating local jobs in a fossil fuel town … it’s a great start to change. Only self interested businesses / councils could oppose this plan. Also, given that australia is prone to bush fire , surplus biomass could be harvested instead of burnt off… harvest the small shrubs etc that create a fire hazard … it’s a win win

Burning timber, especially native forest, and burning it achieves nothing to reduce carbon and other pollution. Add to this the negative aspect of more land clearing and the overall project is a disaster.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission to strongly urge you to refuse the proposal to burn native vegetation for electricity. Australia is a world leader in deforestation and species extinctions mainly due to habitat loss and increasingly because of climate change.
We need our vegetation to sequester carbon, not to burn it and release the carbon under the pretence that trees grow back. Approving the burning of vegetation will exacerbate climate change and is as bad as coal when you factor in that you’re losing the trees ability to store carbon for us.
It would be reckless for the NSW State Government to approve the restart of the Redbank Power Station as a place that burns what is left of our forests and habitats.
Other points to consider:
·       The forests of eastern NSW are part of one of the world’s 35 biodiversity hotspots because of their exceptional species endemism and extensive habitat loss.
·       There is nothing ecologically sustainable about clearing tens of thousands of hectares of native vegetation inhabited by millions of native animals in the midst of a biodiversity crisis, and converting it into carbon dioxide to worsen climate heating.
·       Land-clearing and associated habitat fragmentation are the single greatest threat to biodiversity in NSW, and yet most clearing is unapproved and the approval process requires no surveys to identify habitat of threatened species.
·       Land-clearing and logging are not in the public interest – they do not have a social licence, and do not require public consultation through a Development Application process like other developments on private land.
·       Land clearing has rapidly escalated over the past decade, making NSW part of one of the of the world’s 24 deforestation fronts. 
·       To supply the 850,000 tonnes of biomass required each year, will require a major increase in the rate of land clearing, especially in the Hunter valley and on the tablelands.
·       Creating a market for large volumes of biomass will provide an economic incentive to clear land that would otherwise not have been cleared.
·       Land clearing needs to stop, not expand.
·       Claims that over four years 56,000 ha of biomass crops will be planted to provide 70% of feedstock have not been planned, are not credible and unlikely to eventuate.
·       It is recognised that the current proposal does not include logging residues, though the other sources of biomass are so poorly assessed and unlikely to provide the feedstock required, that there is a high risk that a variation to include logging residues will be made soon after approval. 
·       The pre-tense that burning 850,000 tonnes of biomass for electricity every year will result in no emissions of CO2, and is thus clean energy, is a nonsense.
·       The power station will release over 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 each year, with increased emissions from debris and soils at the clearing sites, and from processing and transporting wood-chips.
·       Burning wood for electricity is far more polluting than coal.
·       We need to reduce our emissions of CO2, not dramatically increase them as intended by this proposal
·       The use of solar and wind as alternative power sources need to be considered, rather than just comparing the proposal to coal.
The majority of Australians support an end to logging of our public native forests and action on climate change through clean renewables. Burning our forests is not a clean renewable so this proposal should be rejected in its entirety.
I appreciate the opportunity to write this submission.
Respectfully yours,

In comparison to International standards, burning forests or forest materials to generate electricity is comparable to third world countries, or places that have no regard for environmental protection or sustainability, such as the burning of the Amazon rainforests. It not only looks, but is quite ludicrous in environmental terms, when we are all aware that we can generate equivalent amounts of power from solar or wind technology that does far less damage to our now endangered natural environment.
I cannot imagine why anyone would want to put Australia on this level, when in many other ways try to promote our country as being 'developed' and 'first world'. Where are you taking our country now? Get a life and convert your proposed power station to something more sustainable. Sun and wind are worth consideration as fuels.

NEFA objects to the proposal to restart the Redbank Power Station using native forest biomass as a fuel, because it will significantly increase the rate of clearing of woody native vegetation in one of the of the world’s 24 deforestation fronts, have major impacts on biodiversity in one of the world’s 35 biodiversity hotspots, result in the release of some 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 each year at the site along with additional emissions at the clearing sites, processing sites and from transporting woodchips, displace genuine renewable energy from wind and solar power, and because it represents an existential threat to the future in the midst of the current biodiversity and climate crises. See attached submission

I am strongly opposed to this project by Verdant Energy who are attempting to revive their Redbank biomass energy project by proposing to burn native forest from habitat clearing on private land. Verdant Energy are doing whatever they can to progress their selfish desire to open this contentious biomass energy project.
The NSW government is strongly urged to see the negative ramifications of burning native forest from habitat cleared on private land. The results will still be the same worsening effects for the climate, increased emissions that contradict Australia’s Climate Bill, increased natural disasters and severity, increased health issues for communities as well as further biodiversity loss because of habitat destruction.
The Redbank biomass energy project must be rejected.
Please read my attached PDF submission.
Thank you,
Janice Haviland

The Project mitigates biomass waste contributing to GHG. By using the waste biomass, we can extract useful renewable energy and reduce impact on the environment. Future plans to capture the CO2 emission will also improve the total impact. Redbank is ideally suited to combustion such waste biomass in its fluidised furnace.

It will provide employment, and re use and existing establishment to provide support in an exciting new innovative opportunity to provide sustainable energy the 1st in Australia that is being used successfully in other countries.
The opportunity can be utilised now, it is inevitable, why give the option to others in years to come, can do it now! N

this project will provide green energy and contribute positively to the region by creating jobs and stability for the grid