The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), in partnership with Enea Consulting and Deloitte Australia, has developed a roadmap to help the country accelerate its deployment of bioenergy capacity to speed up the energy transition.
According to ARENA, by increasing its bioenergy capacity, Australia can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ensure secure energy supply, improve waste recovery and revitalise the economy.
Up to AUS$10 billion (US$7.2 billion) can be added to Australia’s GDP per annum by the bioenergy sector and 26,200 new jobs created, greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 9%, and an extra 6% of waste from landfills diverted, stated the Roadmap.
The Bioenergy Roadmap sets a clear path for deployment over the next ten years and has been developed using input gathered from industry stakeholders in 147 submissions, nine stakeholder workshops, and 40 direct interviews.
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The Australian government has provided AUS$33.5 million (US$24.2 million) in funding to ARENA to support the implementation of the roadmap. The government will use the roadmap to inform the next series of investment and policy decisions by the private and public sectors in the bioenergy industry.
ARENA CEO, Darren Miller, said: “Bioenergy has significant potential to complement Australia’s future energy mix and our economy. Being so diverse, bioenergy can benefit multiple sectors with residential, commercial, and industrial applications.
“As well as reducing our agricultural waste, bioenergy can reduce emissions in hard-to-abate sectors and can complement other low emission technologies.
“The Bioenergy Roadmap builds upon years of work in bioenergy and the lessons learned from those projects and sets out a clear pathway forward for the bioenergy sector. We welcome the additional funding from the Australian Government, which will help ARENA to immediately help the sector in funding new research, development and deployment projects in aviation and maritime biofuels.”
Over the past 8 years, ARENA has provided over AUS$131 million (US$94.7 million) in funding towards bioelectricity and biogas production, biofuels, efficient feedstock harvesting technology, and projects that aim to capture energy from a range of waste materials.
