RESEARCHERS say Queensland had much to gain from the strategic development of biofuel and bioproducts industries based mainly on creating valuable products from wastes.
Leading bio-industries researcher Associate Professor Ian O’Hara said the development of a biofuels industry could help address some of the most pressing problems facing Australia as a nation.
“The long-term future of our fuel supply is not secure, use of fossil fuels is having a detrimental impact on our climate, and agricultural profitability and regional jobs are declining,” Prof O’Hara said.
“A biofuel industry is sustainable in the long term, it is a low-carbon industry offering second-stream incomes and therefore more profitable agriculture, economic diversity, job growth and opportunities to create the ‘green’ products consumers would prefer to use.”
Prof O’Hara, a principal research scientist at QUT’s Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities, said developments in new technologies both in biofuels and bioproducts were creating new industries around the world.
His comments follow an announcement by Queensland Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk that the Queensland government and QUT would collaborate on the creation of a 10-year roadmap for the establishment of a so-called ‘biofutures’ industry in Queensland. The announcement follows a recent Biofutures Cabinet Committee meeting and tour of QUT’s Renewable Biocommodities Pilot Plant in Mackay.
The debate on the development of a biofuels industry in Queensland has been dogged by concerns from particularly the intensive animals industries that grain prices would be unfairly inflated by a subsidised ethanol industry.
However, researchers backed by grain and canegrowers say the development of an ethanol industry is the necessary first step in the development of a more advanced biotechnology industry. Knowledge gained in the development of industries based largely on the use of waste materials, they argue.
Prof O’Hara said QUT already had the established national and international research partnerships to lead bio-industry development, the most recent partnership being with Japanese beer maker Asahi Group Holdings.
“We are working with Asahi to test a new technology to produce greater volumes of both sugar and ethanol from sugarcane and this research should have widespread benefits across the sugar industry,” Prof O’Hara said.
“To be a leader in an industry you can’t just keep on top of change,” he said. “You have to create change, you have to invent new ways of doing things, and that’s what this roadmap will enable us to achieve in Queensland.”
He said ethanol production was the building block for the development of a more comprehensive biomanufacturing industry involving plastics, packaging, advanced fuels and animal feeds. A roadmap would help drive the investment, and research and development needed to ensure Queensland was a leader in this new industry, he said.
