Will you take 2 minutes to Stand up for Forests and raise your voice against native forest trees being used as fuel in power stations to burn instead of coal?

The EPA is asking for feedback on a regulation that currently allows native forest wood to be burnt in power stations. It classes it as an 'eligible fuel'.

We need them to hear loud and clear that the community don't support this because it is environmentally damaging in so many ways.

Comment is open on the Protection of the Environment Operations (General) Amendment (Thermal Energy from Waste) Regulation 2021 (Draft Regulation) until Sunday 20 March 2022

https://yoursay.epa.nsw.gov.au/energy-waste-regulation

or you can email [email protected]

The regulation covers many things... but we need you to tell them to remove native forest wood as an eligible fuel for electricity generation.

If you've got time to add a couple of reasons, here are some you might want to include or elaborate on:

These trees were koala homes, but to the logging industry they are 'waste' entering a wood-fired power station.

• This regulation means that native forest trees can be cut down, woodchipped and burned for electricity, as so-called ‘waste’. The logging industry claims that any tree that is not a sawlog is 'waste'. This includes young re-growth, old trees or damaged or twisted trees.
  

• Trees are habitat - they provide nectar, shelter, homes and food for native animals. They hold the soil together, and as they grow, they take more and more carbon out of the atmosphere and store it.

• Extensive areas of koala feed and sheltering trees will be removed and burnt for electricity under this regulation.

• Much of the forest estate suffered from years of drought and then extreme bushfires. Recommendations from the Natural Resource Commission that many areas be left completely alone, that logging intensity be reduced and that many more trees be left as habitat, have been completely ignored.

• The EPA also received expert advice after the bushfires in 2019/20 that habitat for many animal species are already threatened with extinction, and would take decades to recover.

• Forests are not being managed sustainably. Logging and land-clearing are degrading and destroying the homes of native species, with climate heating compounding the impacts. 

• Burning wood in power stations emits more CO2 than coal. Creating a ready market for huge volumes of trees encourages more intensive logging and extensive land-clearing, pushing our precious wildlife closer to extinction.

For more background and information on this click here.