Eden-Monaro MP Mike Kelly is being challenged to stand up for the forests in his electorate and vote to keep native forest wood out of the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) scheme this week.
Spokesperson for the Chipstop forest campaign, Ms Harriett Swift says that the Government's Mandatory Renewable Energy Bill will be the death knell for forests around Australia, but especially in our region.
"The proposed wood fired power station at the Eden chipmill will be just the first cab off the rank," she says.
"It is one of a number of projects across Australia poised to take off, once the regulatory regime is settled," she says.
Ms Swift says that while chipmill managers claim that their power station will use "waste", without one million tonnes of native forest woodchipping each year, there would be no waste.
"Industrial burning of native forest wood will help to prop up a dying industry and there are also issues about emissions and unfair competition against genuine renewables such as solar and wind."
"But the bottom line is that when you take account of the whole life cycle of the fuel, industrial burning of native forest wood generates about six times the greenhouse gas emissions as coal fired electricity," she says.
Ms Swift called on Mike Kelly to not to be influenced by the likely redistribution of his electorate.
"While the new boundaries of Eden-Monaro will concentrate the native forest logging industry and remove major plantation regions, it will also give conservation minded voters more clout in a more marginal electorate," she says.
17 August 2009