Genesis’s interim CEO, Tracey Hickman, said that the companies signed a deal to work together and look into whether biomass could replace coal.
Hickman said that a domestic supply chain for biomass would also be looked into.
She said that the companies had signed an agreement to work together on biomass because they were looking for a different fuel source to help them reduce their carbon footprint.
Hickman said that the agreement came before a test of burning biomass at Genesis’s Huntly Power Station next week.
Genesis burned coal to make electricity, and Fonterra burned coal to make heat for processing milk.
She said that the Huntly plant would continue to back up the electricity grid while Genesis switched to more renewable ways of making electricity.
She said that the biomass used in the trial was brought in from elsewhere and not made locally.
The black charred biomass was made of sawdust from trees.
During torrefaction, she said, the biomass was slowly heated to between 200C and 300C without oxygen.
Hickman said that the process made solid, uniform pallets that had about 30% more energy than raw biomass.
She said that burning rotten biomass made less than 10% of the pollution that coal did.
Hickman said that if the trial went well, the companies wanted to use New Zealand wood waste, like forestry slash, to make biomass.
She said that the companies needed to work with the forestry sector to figure out how a steady supply of raw materials could be made and whether or not a biomass plant could be built.
Genesis’ use of coal changed depending on the weather and how much was needed.
She said that if the market was normal and there wasn’t a dry year or a lack of gas, the company had enough coal to keep the electricity system running until at least 2024.
Hickman said she hoped that by next year, it would be clear if a domestic biomass supply chain was possible.
According to data from the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment for the year 2020, New Zealand could use up to 1.7 million tonnes of wood pellets each year instead of coal.
Fraser Whineray, the chief operating officer of Fonterra, said that reducing carbon emissions was a key part of the co-strategy op’s for sustainability because it had to meet changing consumer expectations.
Genesis had agreed, based on science, to cut its carbon emissions by 1.2 million tonnes a year by 2025, with 2020 as the base year, in order to keep global warming to 1.5C. Hickman said that one of these goals was to cut emissions from power plants by 36%.
Whineray said that Fonterra wanted to reach net zero emissions by 2050, with a short-term goal of reducing manufacturing emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to a base year of 2018. It has also said that it will stop using coal by 2037.
