Biocoal is the answer
A Biocoal industry is made possible by the use of a self powered transportable vertically integrated plant that can process forest waste into biocoal at the forest harvest location.
It is made up of two main arms;
- An energy industry (woody biomass based)
- A heavy machinery manufacturing industry, building the manufacturing plants
These two industries are synergos with each other.
The energy industry can only exist if the production plant exists that has the right EROI.
Some of the tick boxes are:
- supports bio-economy (billion trees, etc)
- Reduce risk of sequestion failure (forests burning or rotting)
- Increases rural employment helping to reverse rural atrophication/depletion
- helps mitigate forth coming electrical energy crisis
- supports the forestry sector
- could help eliminate wilding pines
- supports the transport sector
- provides opportunities for the machinery manufacturing sector
- supports the Food sector (process heat)
- supports the steel sector (metallurgic carbon)
- Climate Change/Paris agreement/Zero Carbon
- reduces environmental harm reduction (Tolaga bay, wilding pines, etc)
- Scalable (upto hundreds of machines, 100s of PetaJoules, 100s of millions of dollars, 10s of millions of tonnes of wood processed, etc)
- based on established science, 100s of pier reviewed articles on torrefaction
- creates another export commodity (limitless global demand)
Using the 10,000,000 tonnes of in forest harvest residue there is a potential to add 100PJ to NZ energy mix
Compare the Auckland Bus energy consumption at 1PJ and "the new wind farm" at Waipipi
NZ total energy consumption is approximately 900PJ so Biocoal from forest harvest residue could provide 10%
If other additional sources of wood were used for biocoal production; eg wilding pines and low grade logs the total energy production could be doubled
