Forestry researchers say robust scientific investigation has backed up a proposal for sustainably managed pine plantations to provide enough biofuel to run the nation's trucks and cars by 2040.
State science company Scion said today that forestry "slash" and other waste streams, as well as purpose-grown "energy forests" can be environmentally sustainable and can make New Zealand self-sufficient in transport biofuels.
Cellulose from trees grown on less than 2.8 million hectares of medium to low quality grazing land, about a third of the land of that type, would supply enough fuel for the land transport. Expanding the plantings to 3.7 million ha would also provide jet fuel and fuel oil for planes and ships.
But the research announced today also shows that the economic viability of the biofuels will depend on national sustainability policies, improving conversion technologies and the price of competing transport fuels.
Forestry and biomass can in help New Zealand meet the Government's aspirations for carbon-neutral energy, said Scion chief executive Tom Richardson.
"Purpose-grown energy forests, if planted today, could meet all of New Zealand's future road transport fuel and industrial heat energy needs, without threatening the country's important agricultural industries," he said.
This year a third of the United States' corn crop will be turned into subsidised ethanol, and policymakers around the world are increasingly looking to the sustainability of biofuels, such as whether they displace food crops.
Dr Richardson said the latest report canvassed a range of bioenergy opportunities and compared them in terms of the scale needed to meet demand, the environmental impacts and benefits of each, and their economic viability.
The "pathways analysis" compared a range of biomass resources, including straw, canola, kiwifruit, forest residues and purpose-grown forest, and the technologies needed to convert them to bioenergy. Not enough information was yet available on other technologies, such as turning algae on sewage ponds into biofuel, a process being eyed by Air New Zealand for jet fuel.
The environmental assessment, or life cycle analysis, looked at the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental sustainability of converting straw, or forestry cellulose, or even waste kiwifruit, to biofuel.
This life cycle analysis probed the hard questions being asked globally about biofuels, such as whether they created more problems than they solved, or whether they could generate sufficient energy return to be sustainable?
"Low-input forestry provides a much more sustainable base from which to produce transport biofuels, than intensive agriculture," said Dr Richardson.
"Energy forests, purpose-grown on marginal lands, do not challenge our agricultural sector or food supply and can also provide valuable environmental benefits such as erosion control, carbon sequestration and biodiversity enhancement."
The project manager and a co-author of the report, Peter Hall, said it showed energy forests might be purpose-grown in Hawke's Bay, Manawatu/Wanganui, Canterbury and Otago regions.
"It is the eastern North Island and southern South Island that show the greatest potential for the new energy and liquid transport fuels New Zealand needs to be self-sufficient and carbon neutral," he said.
Scion staff are working on a third report to propose a research and development strategy to support the Government's drive toward carbon-neutrality.
And a further report will be completed early next year on the impacts changes in land use will have on the environment and the macro-economics of large-scale bioenergy from forestry.
NZPA