The burning of sugar cane crops is set to continue as the Condong sugar mill and cogeneration plant experiences teething problems.

A revolutionary bid to convert cane trash into electricity with a cogeneration plant at Condong is in serious jeopardy, with flaws in the federal government’s renewable energy program being blamed for the debacle.
Sugar Australia CEO Chris Connors has also revealed that the mill needs to invest in machinery to unclog a bottleneck preventing the efficient separation of trash from sugar cane as it comes into the mill, but is reluctant to borrow.

He confirmed what many living around cane farms suspect but mill managers are reluctant to admit, that the teething problems were the main reason why farmers began burning their crops again.
Mr Connors spelt out wide-ranging problems besetting the government subsidised experiment on Tuesday night’s ABC1 7.30 Report.

He said the Condong project, involving the generation of enough power for 30,000 homes, was made financially viable through a Federal Government support scheme which in effect created a market for renewable energy.
The market involved the buying and selling of what’s called renewable energy certificates, but since the plant was opened the spot price for the certificates had collapsed, falling from $50 in June to $30 in late October.
Environmental scientist Mark Diesendorf told the program the fall came after the government had flooded the market with certificates by allowing a lot of ‘phantom systems’ which didn’t generate electricity to enter the scheme.
Mr Connors said the multi million dollar Condong project would be in trouble if the government didn’t fix the flaws in the system threatening its viability.

‘The government has put $220 million into a project that’s decimated, simply because of the Government’s misunderstanding of what the impact was going to be of their solar credit systems,’ he said.
‘We can be effectively losing something like $10 million a year. Who’d build a project if you were going to lose that sort of money?’
Local cane farmer Graham Martin, who like others has a share in the mill co-operative, says he was  hoping the renewable energy project would give them another income stream.
‘The massive drop in price, it could put the whole project in jeopardy. So there’s a lot of concern at the moment,’ he said.

Mr Connors’ frank assessment of the problem comes after the NSW Sugar Milling Co-operative told The Echo six weeks ago that the extra burning off was the result of ‘crop trials’ unrelated to problems at the mill.
The trials, according to a co-operative press release issued in response to our question on the issue, were based around assessing the whole crop against ‘burnt extracted’ and ‘burnt non-extracted’ sugar cane.
‘The community can be assured the aim of the trials is to ensure all sugar cane fibre is delivered to the mill so there will be no further cane fires but this may not be possible in the short term,’ the press release alleged.