Biofuels —used in everything from fuels to agricultural products—could be key to creating value-added products from forest residues and low-quality roundwood. That was the key takeaway from two key workshops—one in the NSW Hunter Valley and the other on the Far North Coast—looking to create the next generation of net-zero energy sources from NSW’s State Forests and the $2.9 billion supply chain connected to the state’s hardwood industry.
Hosted by PF Olsen, the workshops visited Ethtec, a Hunter-based business now commercialising new technology for environmentally sustainable ethanol production partly from the lignin in wood (dubbed “green coal), and SOFT Agriculture, a Northern Rivers business using forest residues to create biochar products for the agricultural industry.
In recent years, interest in biochar has boomed, with timber waste a key part of an industry that has grown as economies grapple with net-zero commitments. Last year, Wood Central reported that plans for the world’s largest biochar project were advancing on Kangaroo Island in South Australia—using timbers destroyed by the Black Summer Bushfires, whilst the newly formed Australian Forest and Wood Innovation Research Centre (AFWI) is finding markets for low-value wood and wood residues to manufacturers of high-value engineered wood products, biochar, bioenergy, and biofuels.
- To learn more about the NSW native hardwood industry, click here for Wood Central’s coverage on the Ernst and Young report commissioned by the Commonwealth Government’s North East NSW Forestry Hub last year.
