The NSW government is working on a new plan that could replace hardwood power poles with steel or concrete – a policy pivot that could cost the taxpayer $25 million every year in maintenance and upkeep.
That is according to Penny Sharpe, NSW’s Environmental Minister, who made the admission during a Budget Estimates Committee last month.
Minister Sharpe said the Minns Government is now “looking to replace existing supplies of hardwood utility poles with non-wooden equivalents”, including steel and concrete poles, with “some of the work on the already undertaken.”
Wood Central understands that the statement is the first time the NSW Government has outlined that the like-for-like replacement is now on the table and comes after Koppers—Australia’s largest supplier of utility poles—went public with concerns over future availability last month.
The concern centres on the rapidly expanding Great Koala National Park, where almost half of all NSW power poles—about 35,000 to 40,000—come from coups tied up in the new park, and about 6% of the timber harvested from the NSW State Forests.
Should the NSW Government opt to make the switch, the substitution will come at a substantial cost. Timber NSW’s CEO, Maree McCaskill, said concrete-based poles “cost 2-3 times more than timber,” while steel is even higher at “3 to 5 times more than hardwood.”
“And that does not consider the issue of carbon sequestration as timber poles are carbon affixing sustainable units,” a utility expert told Wood Central last week, with the carbon data found in reports prepared by the NSW Department of Primary Industries and the Commonwealth.
According to Ms McCaskill, who took a delegation of members to the NSW parliament in Sydney last month, the supply chain risks getting squeezed amid uncertainty over the Great Koala National Park process.
“One of the businesses, Coffs Harbour Hardwoods, is one of the country’s largest manufacturers of power poles and piles,” Ms McCaskill said.
“It has been a long-standing supplier of power poles and sawn hardwood cross arms to Ausgrid – which supplies electricity to 4 million people living in Sydney, the Central Coast and Hunter regions.”
“Ausgrid prefers the ‘Royal Species,’ which are the strongest, hardest, and most durable timbers,” Ms McCaskill said, adding that “they cannot take a substitute, like pine, on a like-for-like basis.”
Wood Central understands that 9 million hardwood power poles support more than 86% of Australia’s electricity network – however, according to Ms McCaskill, that will cease if the NSW Government opts for steel and concrete poles instead of native hardwood.
- Wood Central is a neutral platform and will not take an editorial stance over Australia’s native harvesting (or logging) debate. However, in the matter of public interest, it will post opinion articles and invite subject matter experts from all sides to provide contributors, who will be fact-checked before publication.
