Short rotation coppice with willow in New Zealand

Promising resources and systems for producing bioenergy feedstocks
an IEA Bioenergy Task 43 report

New Zealand is dependent on domestic and imported fossil fuels for heat and transport energy. Biomass currently only supplies a limited portion of primary energy, mostly as wood for heat in the wood processing sector. A key energy demand is liquid transport fuels derived from oil, which has been identified as both a risk and opportunity.

Short Rotation Coppice willow provides an opportunity to widen the sources of biomass for heat and transport fuels.

SRC willow is a sustainable land use in catchments where traditional farming land use reduces lake water quality through nitrification of the eco-system. SRC willow could also be used to treat waste water high in nutrient levels.

The focus for willow opportunities in NZ will initially focus on providing land owners a new land use option with a potential for revenue as land is forced to change to uses which have less nutrient leaching and run-off in two distressed lake catchments in the Central North Island.