The owner of Australia’s last remaining paper mill says his plan to transition away from coal power is in doubt, after Tasmania’s electricity provider told him it doesn’t have enough electricity for his plant.
David Marriner, who bought the Boyer Mill, which currently produces newsprint, from Norske Skog, has told ABC radio that the future he planned for the mill as a sustainable operation is unknown, thanks to the energy issues, and said the future of the company’s 340 staff was at stake.
Marriner wants to replace the plant’s coal-fired boilers with new electric boilers, which he says will almost eliminate emissions at the site, which is one of the state’s biggest carbon emitters. Marriner says emissions would fall by 95 per cent if he could install the electric boilers. Boyer currently sends 180,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere annually.
He has already bought the boilers from Norway, but says Hydro Tasmania has told him they don’t have the extra electricity to power the plant, and says it told him to buy electricity from Victoria, which he says is too expensive.
The mill, which is one of the four main industrial complexes in Tasmania, is one of the biggest power consumers, and one of the biggest carbon emitters in the whole of the state. It currently uses around 88,000 tonnes of coal a year, and for the past three years, all that coal has been imported from New South Wales.
Marriner has secured $24m in federal government backing for his plan to transition out of coal within 18 months.
He is also considering producing a white paper from the mill. Last year’s court judgement in favour of possums in Victorian state forests spelt the end of white paper manufacturing at Opal Paper’s Maryvale Mill. Australia now imports 100 per cent of all its commercial print and copier papers.