THE North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) has described a plan to provide up to one million tonnes of trees each year to generate electricity as sheer madness. The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) released new research indicating forestry “residue” could be used to provide bioenergy to power up to 200,000 homes. The alliance however expressed concerns the plan would mean an increase logging intensity in north-east NSW forests to “provide up to one million tonnes of trees each year to generate electricity as sheer madness”. Spokesman for the alliance Dailan Pugh said: “Forests are the lungs of the earth, they take in our carbon dioxide, storing the carbon and giving us back oxygen, left standing they are part of the solution to climate change, cut down they become part of the problem”.