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A biofuels industry in Australia
Press release, Macquarie Graduate School of Management
As the NSW government introduces Australia’s first legislated mandate for biofuels, requiring fuels in NSW to have 2 percent ethanol blended on a volumetric basis by October, Professor John Mathews, of Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) has released a working paper on what kind of biofuels industry could be built in Australia. He makes the case for a national development strategy in Australia to build a biofuels industry that would make the country a biofuels superpower within 10 years, in emulation of Brazil.
According to Professor Mathews, the project would call for investment of $7.5 billion over 10 years to build 60 advanced biorefineries that would produce 6 billion litres of ethanol and 4.5 billion litres of biodiesel by 2017. The income generated from these investments would be of the order of $10 billion per year. These biofuels could reach one-fifth of petrofuel consumption (resulting in E20 and B20 blends) and create an export industry worth $4.5 billion each year. As such, a biofuels industry based initially on wheat and sugar would double the size of these industries.
He said such a biofuels industry would finally wean Australia off its obsession with fossil fuels; it would create over 100,000 jobs in the rural sector, thus underpinning Australia’s social structures; it would revitalise the sugarcane and what industries without imposing price pressures on existing feed-using industries such as pork and beef; it would solve the looming catastrophe of balance of payments crisis imposed by fossil fuel imports, it would move toward cleaning the air in our cities; and it would create a nation-building project comparable to the Snowy Mountains scheme of the immediate post-war years, by extending Australia’s fuel-crop growing and processing towards the arid interior (for biodiesel) and into the tropical far north (for cane-fed ethanol and oil palm biodiesel) and building the infrastructure needed.
The project would mesh with wordwide trends towards biofuels and would tap into fast-growing markets for biofuels in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly from Japan, China and Korea. It would mesh with the shift worldwide towards a bioeconomy as successor to the fossil fuel economy that has created a planetary crisis in the form of global warming. The project would turn Australia from the world’s worst emitter of per capita greenhouse gas emissions to one of the pioneers of the new bioeconomy. The missing ingredient that’s needed is the imagination to make the project a reality, Professor Mathews said.
The paper can be found at Prospects for a Biofuels Industry in Australia (PDF).
The details of the NSW legislation can be found here.
(2 July 2007)
Prof. John A. Mathews homepage.
Humans use or abuse quarter of all energy from plants
Study casts new doubt on search for biofuels
James Randerson, The Guardian
Nearly a quarter of the energy processed by land plants is either harvested by humans or lost due to our activities, according to a global analysis of agricultural production. In parts of the world where human activity is most intense, such as Europe and southern Asia, more than half the energy processed by plants is appropriated by people.
The figures show the remarkable extent of humankind’s stranglehold over nature, but the researchers say they also indicate how difficult it will be to increase agricultural production to feed an ever-growing global population or find sources of biofuel to replace oil and gas – seen by some as a way to reduce fossil fuel use and hence slow global warming…
He said he was surprised at where the most exploited regions of the planet are. In south Asia 63% of plant production is used or destroyed by humans, suggesting that countries such as India have little hope of increasing agricultural productivity. ..
(3 July 2007)
Related: Humanity gobbles a quarter of nature’s resources (New Scientist)
Fuelling a Carbon Crisis
Ed Matthews, New Statesman (UK)
If we are to radically reduce transport emissions then the truth is that we have no choice but to do tackle our unquenchable thirst for fuel
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This year the Indonesian Government will officially hold a new Guinness World Record – the fastest pace of deforestation. They must be so proud. Between 2000 and 2005 Indonesia lost two percent of its forest each year, representing an area of wildlife rich tropical forest the size of Wales. That’s three hundred football pitches of forest per hour.
Illegal logging is certainly a big driver but there is another more sinister cause – the meticulously planned clearance of rainforest to make way for the expansion of oil palm plantations. There are now over 6 million hectares of oil palm in Indonesia and the Government is handing out concessions to triple this area by 2020.
In turn, one of the principle drivers of this expansion is the development of the European biofuels industry. Although the vast majority of global palm oil is used by the food industry you only need to attend a palm oil industry conference to get a feel for where the action is. Biofuel is the word on everyone’s lips.
…No, it is biofuel that our politicians seem so obsessed with. And you can understand why. Their policies to address the consumption of fuel and fuel efficiency have spectacularly failed. But if we are to radically reduce transport emissions then the truth is that we have no choice but to do tackle our unquenchable thirst for fuel. If we fail to do so we simply export our disastrous environmental impact elsewhere.
No one wants a solution to climate change more than Friends of the Earth. But without strong legal standards in place and policies to use biomass in the most efficient way, biofuels could do more harm than good. In our quest to tackle the greatest environmental crisis this world is facing we could in fact make it worse.
Ed Matthews is Head of the New Economics Team at Friends of the Earth which is developing campaigns to help the UK make the transition to a low carbon economy. Ed is also coordinating the work of Friends of the Earth on biodiversity and has lead responsibility on bio-energy.
(2 July 2007)
