15 November 2012
New Zealand's plantation forestry estate represents a major opportunity for New Zealand to become more self-sufficient in transport fuels. That's the conclusion of the latest report from the Pure Advantage business lobby group seeking support for a "green growth" push in New Zealand. However, a "crisis of faith" in the industry could stymie the newly emerging potential of forestry – a sector that has long confounded attempts to add value beyond the export of raw logs, mainly to Asian markets.Pure Advantage trust chairman Rob Morrison told BusinessDesk the fragile state of the forestry industry is a major issue for realising the largest economic opportunity identified by a study conducted by London economic consultancy Vivid Economics and the Business School at the University of Auckland.
"One of the concerns is faith in the forestry industry," he says. "There are question marks about the forestry industry's capacity to deliver" as a result of stop-start government policies towards forest planting in the last decade.
Mr Morrison says "green growth ... is the only growth that allows humanity to develop and flourish, reduce poverty and achieve development goals, while at the same time protecting natural capital, such as climate stability, without which growth and development will be retarded or reversed".
Among those tipped for involvement in the bio-fuels initiative are understood to be science and bio-tech darlings, Auckland-based Lanzatech, the New Zealand-owned transport fuels company Z Energy and Scion, the government-owned forestry science research body.
Labour and National-led governments have sponsored efforts for more than a decade to secure a special place for New Zealand's plantation forestry as a legitimate way of storing carbon under global carbon market rules.
One of the few wins noted in last December's talks in Durban, South Africa, was New Zealand's successful campaign creating more value for owners of plantation forestry, if and when global carbon prices rise from current low points.
Source: story by Pattrick Smellie, NBR. To read the full story, click here.