One person's green power is another person's strike against the environment.
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And without dismissing either viewpoint it must be said it is not easy to find a happy medium between the differing sides of the argument.
In the case of the Redbank power station finding green credentials for this facility has been a long and fraught process.
Costing nearly $400 million to build the power station was heralded as offering the ideal solution to a coal production waste product as in coal tailings.
Finding a useful purpose for this waste was considered more than two decades ago as a great technological and financial breakthrough.
Well that proved not to be the case with the power station eventually mothballed in October 2014 due in part to it pollution and poor financial management.
New owners and a new power source, this time timber waste or biomass, is being offering as solution to get this expensive facility back up and operational.
But once again questions are being raised over the use of timber as a source of power when renewables - wind. solar, pumped hydro and battery storage offer a cleaner greener future.
There has been a great deal of talk about technology overcoming many of our issues with climate change and no doubt the owners of Redbank would suggest they are offering a technological solution to provide on-demand power to meet our energy needs especially once Liddell power station closes.
Biomass power plants are used overseas why not in the Hunter Valley.
Given our need to protect forests maybe one reason why not to use them especially given the fact they are home to critically endangered koala populations.
Another might be that technology is changing rapidly and its cheaper to rely on other forms of generation.
The big players in power generation can see what's happening and they are moving quickly to burn less and power more through renewables plus hydrogen.
One of Australia's most successful miners Andrew Forrest has made that leap. He is even going so far to say his iron ore mines in Western Australia will adopt an electric powered mine fleet.
That's a massive change in a short period of time - so perhaps the trees are best left in situ.