Australia airlines have backed a CSIRO biofuel roadmap that predicts an Australasian sustainable fuel industry could create more than 12,000 jobs by 2030 and slash the nation’s reliance on fuel imports.
The world-first study, which has the support of US aerospace giant Boeing, concludes that establishing an Australian sustainable bio-derived fuel industry is viable but will need government and industry support.
“We have enough biomass and assuming reasonable development of the technology, and the expected oil price movement, that will actually be an economically viable option,” the director of CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship, Alex Wonhas, said at the study’s launch in Sydney yesterday.
“If it gets implemented, by 2030 it will have very significant benefits to Australia. It will create 12,000 jobs, it will reduce reliance on fuel imports by $2bn a year and it could decrease the greenhouse gas emissions of the aviation industry by 17 per cent.”
The study found actions required in the next four years to support a fledgling biofuel industry include the creation of a support market structure and supply chain as well as the development of refineries and a way to certify that the fuels were sustainable.
It said feedstocks would include non-food biomass sources such as crop stubble, forestry residues, municipal waste and algae.
Airlines have proved that biofuels can be used safely in existing aircraft and have some benefits over conventional jet fuel.
Qantas already has feasibility studies running with two US biofuel companies.
