Renewable liquid fuel white paper released at NSW Bioeconomy Summit

The NSW Bioeconomy Summit held in Sydney this week was the perfect platform for a key announcement from the TFA Project Group.

Speaking to a sold-out audience of over 150 industry, research, and government representatives with a keen interest in the emerging renewable fuels sector, TFA Project Group Engineering Manager Keith Sharp released their new white paper.

“TFA are thrilled to officially launch our white paper on Sustainable Liquid Fuels at the NSW Bioeconomy Summit and present the key findings,” Mr Sharp said.

“The white paper reviews Australia's potential feedstocks, discusses production technologies and explores Australia's ability to ultimately replace liquid fossil fuels with sustainable liquid fuels.”

Mr Sharp said the findings contrast the widespread perception that Australia does not have sufficient renewable feedstocks to support substantial growth in the industry.

The white paper highlights the range of available feedstocks that could be used to generate renewable fuel and sustainable aviation fuel, such as biomass including vegetable oil, fat, agricultural residues, industrial carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide emissions, direct air capture carbon dioxide and municipal solid waste.

Mr Sharp said the key to growing the sector is better allocation and diversion of feedstock for liquid fuels, as Australia remains very export orientated, and a large amount is still going to waste.

“When you add all those together, to produce roughly 30 billion litres per year by 2050, requires about 65% of theoretically available feedstocks – it all comes down to availability and allocation of those resources.”

Mr Sharp said the white paper shows Australia possesses ample renewable feedstocks to meet the projected 2050 future demand for all liquid transport fuels.

In addition, the white paper estimated that if just 1% of Australia’s land area (45% of which is currently classified as grazing native vegetation land) was utilised for feedstocks such as Agave, Pongamia or Algae, Australia could potentially export 30-200 billion litres of sustainable liquid fuels.