Australia imports more than 50 billion litres of refined petroleum products each year, including 60 per cent as diesel, while domestic production covers just one-fifth of demand. That exposure — laid bare by swings in global oil markets — is now driving serious investment in an alternative: turning forestry residues, woody biomass and agricultural waste into low-carbon liquid fuel.
That is according to Dr Daniel Roberts, the lead of theCommonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Energy Technologies Research Program, who will speak at this month’s Renewable Fuels Summit.
Liquid fuels account for more than half of all final energy Australians consume and 30 per cent of national emissions: “There are really two drivers,” Roberts said. “One is emissions reduction. The other is fuel security. These have motivated alternative fuels research and energy independence ambitions for a long time.”
And whilst electric vehicles dominate the public conversation, Dr Roberts said the harder problem lies in aviation, international shipping, and diesel engines powering remote mine sites and farms. These are sectors where electrification, as he put it, “is unlikely to be able to do the heavy lifting.”
Why forest residues are now worth their weight in fuel!
That’s why CSIRO is now focused on biogenic fuels — converting biomass and organic waste into liquid fuel — a pathway Dr Roberts believes will deliver commercial results ahead of synthetic alternatives. Forestry residues, plantation waste, agricultural by-products and urban waste streams are all in scope. “It’s about recognising the value in our waste streams,” Dr Roberts said. “We have the opportunity domestically to build on existing technologies and make something really useful out of waste.”
The scale required is not small. Dr Roberts described facilities processing thousands of tonnes of feedstock daily, power-station-sized plants backed by hundreds of megawatts of electrolysers and industrial-grade carbon capture. “The first time you do something, it’s always harder and more expensive. But that’s how you learn and improve,” he said.
CSIRO is already active in the field, having participated in a world-first Australia-India trial that demonstrated, at scale, the partial replacement of coal with agricultural waste in steelmaking. It is also working with the Heavy Industry Low-Carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre to de-risk biomass gasification pathways and cut natural gas dependence across heavy industry.
And on the commercial side, CSIRO is an active partner in the AFWI Fibre to Fuels project, which will see HAMR partner with a dozen or more partners in the forest value chain to demonstrate that plantation residues in Tasmania, Western Australia and the Green Triangle in Victoria’s timber towns can be turned into low-carbon liquid fuels.
Dr Roberts said the industry’s appetite had shifted markedly over the past five years, with net-zero commitments and geopolitical concerns about fuel supply pushing boardrooms to act. The sticking point remains policy certainty — large-scale infrastructure requires confidence that demand will be there for the life of the asset. “Companies considering 30-year infrastructure investments need certainty that customers will be there,” he said.
It comes as the federal government last year committed $1.1 billion to accelerate Australia’s low-carbon liquid fuels sector — a package the Low Carbon Fuels Alliance of Australia and New Zealand, which represents more than 300 stakeholders from feedstock producers to project developers, described as a turning point for sovereign fuel supply.
- To learn why the global timber trade is now tied up in Iranian conflict, click here for Wood Central’s special feature on the Strait of Hormuz last week.
