A town with grand ambitions

Condobolin Argus
Wednesday 8/8/2007 Page: 3

Condobolin is actively working towards combating global warming, greenhouse emissions and climate change. As part of a leading edge initiative, people in and around the town should in future also be able to assist our city-neighbours with their carbon trading requirements and provide them with an energy source not based on fossil fuels. In a recent presentation to Penrith City Council, Chairman of the Lachlan Renewable Energy Alliance (LREA), David Hall, explained how Lachlan Shire's land resources could be used to benefit our town as well as the global environment.

Based on 20 years of research by Peter Milthorpe, former Senior Research Agronomist with the DPI, the LREA is investigating growing mallee and harvesting it regularly as an energy and oil resource. The initiative presents significant possibilities for Lachlan Shire which covers over 15,000 square kilometers. "Around ninety percent of the land is cleared for cropping and grazing" said David. "If 5% of the cleared landscape were planted to mallee, there would be over 280 million trees. These trees would be harvested every 12 to 18 months to produce 1.8 million tonnes of biomass. As an energy resource, this would be sufficient to power up tens of thousands of homes with electricity each year."

"One of the things we talked to the Penrith Councilors about was that the farmers here have the land which is needed for the solution to providing carbon offsets", outlined David. "Carbon credits could prove to be a small bonus to farmers. In addition to revenues from oil and biomass, there should be extra margins available for farmers from sales into the carbon market - making mallee growing even more attractive as a potential new source of a more sustainable income." "We've a potential product here that produces energy that can be burned to produce electricity," says David. "The plants are harvested providing a regular income, but the beauty is that re-planting is unnecessary".

It is only the young regrowth which is regularly harvested and the root system remains intact storing away small amounts of carbon each year as it continues to grow and develop." The biomass created can be pelletised into a burnable "Biofuel" and the eucalypt oil is sold off. Both of these processes occur with very low emissions. The LREA is now well into stage one of their project, which is the creation of an initial business plan. The draft plan is expected to be completed by early September.