Biomass burning (hopefully smoke free) has some problems that need to be sorted out. It should avoid carbon taxation as it recycles carbon within the biosphere rather than bringing up long buried fossil carbon. However it is illogical to then give a carbon credit to excuse more coal burning. The REC subsidy currently worth about $39 per megawatt hour of renewable electricity may one day be phased out so the only help should come in the form of the carbon price avoided.

In any case there is some doubt if biomass burning is truly renewable. Ideally potash and lime rich ash from the boilers should be returned to the soil but this requires a lot of diesel fuelled transport. One day oil will run out (like subsidies) so a simple way has to be found to complete the nutrient cycle.

So OK to biomass burning if it meets these criteria; no subsidy, no carbon credits and an oil-free way of recycling nutrients.

I agree, native forest biomass should not be excluded from the renewable energy scheme.
However, what we have is the most selfish nonsense being driven by the green fundamentalists, and the sad and silly thing about it is that it is leading to perverse and negative environmental outcomes, both within our own community and in the tropical forests in the countries and regions to our north.
We are finding that saw mill residues are being denied a market in our domestic economy and challenged as a comodity to be exported for paper manufacturing and other processing.
The green movement normally says that all waste streams should be recycled or put to beneficial uses, but it makes an exception to saw mill residues. How selfish! If a log is fairly and properly decided to be a saw log, no matter where it comes from, even if it is native forest, its waste and byproducts should be made full use of, especially if it helps the viability of local industry. It is the case that if the local saw milling industry is battling to stay competitive with cheap imports, the difference made by income from the residue stream becomes very significant. Surely it makes no sense to dump sawdust and other residues in the bush! Also, a significant portion of the tropical hardwoods coming into this country are likely to have been harvested illegally, or to practices that are anything but sustainable or environmentally appropriate. Is that what they mean by Think globally, Act locally? Trash the local industry and trash tropical forests as well? Sounds like ideologically driven nonsense to me! It is time to re-visit the legislation and get it right.

So tell us some more, how do we incorporate.

........579 ? Too easy ! Just walk into a Tassi Forest with an axe then bend over you'll get Incorporated no matter what sex you are !

Even the IPCC supports the burning of native forest biomass.
"In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit."

See AR4 Working Group 3 Chapter 9 Forestry. In Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

What sort of leadership are we setting the world when our government does a grubby back room deal with the greens so they can have a carbon tax, that the promised not to have.

At least the House of Reps inquiry found the courage to state:
"The Committee believes that bioenergy from the forestry industry is a
promising opportunity for the industry. As well as providing help to deal with climate change, and reducing Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels, it provides another way for the forestry industry to diversify and contribute to economic growth in local areas."

This finding sounds like a win - win for the environment, jobs and local communities. It is a pity a sleazy political deal has got in the way!
The ALP used to stand for sustainable development and a fair go for working families, now it seems it is entrenched in doing the bidding of the greens. Its time the government stood up for labour values and support the sustainable harvesting of native forests and the use of renewable timber.

“Despite Australia having the highest area of forest per capita of the developed nations, we lag behind in the use of bioenergy.”

I recall nearly ten years ago talking to a Japanese visitor about wood chip exports from our state of Victoria as we sat outside a chip mill in Geelong. Most of the huge pile before us was destined for the paper mills of his country.

Knowing we were down to about a third, including plantations, of our state left forested I asked about the forest coverage in Japan thinking with its rapacious appetite for wood chip there would be very little left.

His answer shocked me. He said we have around 70% of our country still forested, about half of that native, yet there is very little harvesting. Why? I asked. To quote him directly “Because you dumb f###s sell it to us so cheaply why should we cut ours down?”

Now the bottom has fallen out of the wood chip market there is a desperation to find other ways for us ' dumb f###s' to keep native forest logging viable. Lets burn the stuff and get some carbon tax dollars to help.

By all means burn plantation residue but lets not prop up native forest wood chipping industry with this. I would like to think we were a little smarter than that. Though perhaps not.