Fibreglass versus timber - will the sustainable power pole stand up?

The move to replace 11,200 poles a year will cost customers less than $2/yr over five years with manufacturing taking pace in NSW and Queensland.

But private producers of carbon-sequestering native forestry will lose out on critical cash flow at a time when plantations require thinning, while limited Crown lands where timber harvesting is still allowed can no longer sustain supply in the face of wide-spread demand.

Pulltruded fibreglass cross-bars have already started to replace Tallowwood timber to keep power lines apart and now the pole itself will be erected in resin, and 'glass.

Essential Energy said in a statement that: "Reducing the impact of natural disasters on customers is a key driver behind the business decision. Impacts to customers during these events can include loss of vital communications links, prolonged power outages and the cost of replacing power poles that are destroyed."

Produced at Wagners pulltrusion facilities the pole making technology involves spun glass rovings saturated in resin and formed through a heated die before the hardening tube is pulled to length and cut with a saw.

It is smart-tech producing a product suited to Australian conditions but the old alternative was pretty good too.

Treated hardwood poles grown in state forests and in hardwood plantations owned by cattle producers along the eastern fall, store atmospheric carbon while living then keep it sequestered for many decades while doing the job of keeping power lines aloft.

The supply of 10,000 pole logs every year to the likes of family-owned Coffs Harbour Hardwoods, half from private farmers and the rest from publicly-owned state forest, through Pentarch, directly employs 50 people who could lose work if the switch to manufactured poles is complete, said spokesman Martin McCarthy.

"The flow-on could have a devastating effect," he said.

Member for Coffs Harbour and now deputy Nationals Leader Gurmesh Singh cut his administrative teeth in primary industry and sides with the natural product, saying the business decision by Essential Energy reeks of political greenwashing.

"The overall environmental impact from producing poles out of glass fibre and resin is far higher than the timber alternative," he said. "If everyone is being honest this decision is political, not based on science and we would hope common sense will prevail."

Retired resource manager with Koppers Australia Michael Coombe, who remains on the board of industry lobby group Timber NSW, agreed with Essential Energy that supply of hardwood trees from state forests was no longer viable, given the number of hectares now protected from harvesting.

The Great Koala National Park proposal for much of the remaining blackbutt supply, with a decision likely before the end of the year, will sound the death knell to an industry that sustainably worked the bush for generations, only recently compromised by a lack of land available for harvest rotation.

Of the forests in NSW 88pc are already protected from logging.

Meanwhile, the latest work from DPI scientist Dr Brad Law shows koala numbers as stable despite fire, drought and selective logging - throughout the eastern fall.

"I find it hard to believe we will see a world with no timber poles," said Andrew Hurford from Hurfords Timbers at Lismore and Kyogle. He acknowledged the role growing trees play in climate mitigation while standing stored carbon in the wood product stores that CO2 out of the atmosphere.

While most of the fourth-generation family business focuses on hardwood flooring, sourced from diverse native forest, it does have investment in their own plantations, pioneering suitable silviculture techniques and selling straight eucalypt trunks for de-barking and preserving through pressure and chromated copper arsenate, brings cash flow to an enterprise that can take many decades to realise profit.

In fact, high-quality timber plantations required to build the future world comes at a cost of about $10,000 a hectare at the five year mark, after establishment and trimming. A cheque from the sale of poles at 27-30 years allows the forest to focus on producing valuable sawlog timber at the 60-80 year mark.

Meanwhile the fibreglass poles that Essential Energy will take from Wagners every year will not be able to meet demand from the Australian states in conjunction with New Zealand and near Pacific neighbours like the Solomon Islands.

Koppers, as an example, supplies 50,000 poles every year from its plants at Grafton, Bunbury, WA and Hervey Bay, Qld - all from regrowth native forests.

"We know that there are timber poles still in service after 100 years," said former resource manager Michael Coombe.

"We don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater."