Biofuel in Australia

Biofuel is fuel that is produced from organic matter (biomass), including plant materials and animal waste.

The two main types of biofuel currently being produced in Australia are biodiesel and bioethanol, used as replacements for diesel and petrol (gasoline) respectively.

[2] In 2016–17, biofuels contributed only 0.5% of the total liquid and gaseous transport fuel energy mix in Australia.

[2] Total commercial biofuel production for 2018 is estimated at 290 million liters (ML): 250ML of ethanol and 40ML of biodiesel.

However, exports of tallow to Singapore for the manufacture of renewable diesel have increased significantly in recent years, due to reduced demand from biofuel refineries in Australia.

By blending ethanol and petroleum it oxygenates the fuel mixture, meaning it will burn more completely, thus reducing the amount of harmful emissions.

[16] The first FFV available in Australia was the Saab BioPower 9.3 and 9.5 which coincided with United Petroleum launching and selling E85 at two of its service stations in Sydney and Melbourne in 2007.

Holden announced at the same time that Caltex E85 would be suitable for vehicles within its Commodore VE Series II range.

[3] In mid 2017, the plant announced a US$20million investment to boost production capacity to reach 100 million litres a year.

[3] A number of new ethanol plants have also been proposed for the near future: There has been a significant push in research in the development of first-generation and second-generation biofuels.

[7] Research is currently being undertaken by several Australian Universities and the CSIRO into other potential new feedstocks such as cyanobacteria, lignocellulose, pongamia and mallee.

[3] There are a number of projects in Australia developing technology to produce commercial quantities of syngas and biochar.

[25] Syngas is a fuel gas mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and other hydrocarbons, produced by incomplete combustion of biomass under low oxygen conditions (pyrolysis).

The process produces biochar as a coproduct, which can be substituted in any application that uses coal, or used as a soil amendment to reduce nitrogen loss and improve the microbiota.

[28] The Queensland mandate currently requires service stations to ensure that ethanol makes up 3% of their total regular and ethanol-blended unleaded petrol sales each quarter.

[28] The Queensland government has created a number of programs aimed to make the state the center of manufacturing and producing biofuels for commercial production for military, maritime and aviation uses.

[citation needed] The main deterrents of producing and consuming biofuel for personal vehicles are food security and land availability.

[citation needed] There are widely documented environmental benefits of biofuel use over fossil fuels in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

There is no data for E85 in a passenger car to compare to those statistics, however; emissions would be much lower than E10 due to less petrol in the blend.

[38] Australia currently has no definite policy, rules or regulations relating to biofuel production with regard to biodiversity conservation or environmental sustainability.