Page 3495 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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The most important thing, as far as that goes, is that custom of turning off the oxygen on a fuelwood device so that the wood smoulders, basically, all night. That may be a great convenience because you do not have to relight it in the morning, but the disadvantage of doing that is that it adds significantly to the pollution. Our own media have already been very successful, I believe, in drawing people's attention to the paper recycling program, and I believe that this could be done in the same way through winter months.
The next issue that we dealt with is the use of wood as a fuel. We know that softwoods are widely available in Canberra because of the pine plantations. Some 20,000 tonnes of wood, almost a quarter of the needs of Canberra, are going to be left on the floor of the softwood plantations. There are many who argue that you will get the same heat from pinewood per weight as you do from hardwoods.
The question, of course, is why people prefer hardwoods. The answer is actually quite simple. When you talk per weight, not per volume, you might get the same heating; but the person constantly feeding the heater requires sometimes three, four or five times the volume of softwood, and hence five times the handling, they would require with hardwood. That leads us to the recommendation that we need to develop more and more hardwood plantations in and around the ACT.
The goal should be for the 80,000 tonnes of wood that we currently require for some 20,000 homes to be provided from hardwood plantations. When we actually have hardwood plantations that can provide the amount of wood that Canberra needs, then we will be in balance; we will have a sustainable form of heating. Not only will we have a sustainable form of heating, but also the pollution caused by those wood heaters will be countered, to some extent, by the fact that we will have the trees growing. Balance and sustainability is what this report is really about and that, of course, is what most of us believe is the way we should be concerned about our environment.
The committee is very concerned about the supply of firewood and has recommended registration of suppliers of wood so that some control can be gained over the suppliers in order to ensure that delivery of green firewood does not continue in the ACT. The supply must include an amount of appropriately seasoned wood. There is an important role for the Consumer Affairs Bureau in order to keep that supply in an appropriate condition.
The other important factor as far as this report goes is an attempt to reduce the amount of fuel that is being used in the ACT. That is, of course, the most important factor of all. The easiest, most sensible and cheapest way to do that is to ensure that we improve the energy efficiency of our housing. The energy efficiency of our housing can be
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