New Zealand has up to 3 million hectares of unproductive land, including 1 million hectares of growing scrub, that could be converted to short-rotation forestry to feed a domestic bioenergy supply, replacing imported coal, gas and marine fuel across the country.
That is according to Paul Bennett, integrated bioenergy portfolio lead at the Bioeconomy Science Institute, Maiangi Taio, who has outlined a present-day feedstock pool reaching roughly seven million green tonnes of low-grade wood, once accessible biomass from forest harvesting operations and low-grade industrial logs currently exported are counted, with the short-rotation conversion sitting alongside that pool as additional future supply.
The accessible feedstock pool spans sustainable residues from forest harvesting alongside low-grade industrial logs currently exported, with Bennett arguing the scale of supply is enough to displace existing coal use and seed an aviation and marine biofuels pipeline anchored in domestic wood. “This is plenty of biomass to replace the coal burnt in New Zealand,” Bennett said.
Bennett’s offtake-led argument rests on the proposition that a working bioenergy market pulls further biomass investment in behind it, with short-rotation forestry on the scrub footprint expanding once a domestic buyer base for woody fuel takes shape. “Early bioenergy deployment would generate a market for further biomass production,” he said.
The three million hectares already sit outside productive food, timber or pulp use, meaning the short-rotation conversion can deploy “without displacing food or timber or pulp production,” Bennett said, with the new acreage running alongside the country’s existing plantation and natural forest estate rather than competing against it.
The Bioeconomy Science Institute is investigating bioenergy across four drivers — climate change, energy security and resilience, market access, and local economic development — and is already working with stakeholders across aviation, marine, processing and power generation as it tests practical steps to cut the country’s energy insecurity. “We are scaling up locally produced bioenergy and biofuels using existing woody biomass resources,” Bennett said.
Producing fuel locally would reduce New Zealand’s reliance on global suppliers, with the three million hectares of unproductive land — one million of it currently in growing scrub — the resource base Bennett has identified to anchor the shift away from imported coal, gas and marine fuel. “This can be part of the solution for NZ’s energy security,” Bennett said.
