The Biofuels Initiative takes off

June 29, 2007

A team of 30 science and policy researchers from the University of New England and the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) has won a $480,000 grant from the NSW Government to develop technologies for the production of biofuels.

The Climate Action Grant will fund research for two years. It is the first part of a larger "Biofuels Initiative" program developed through the Primary Industries Innovation Centre and led by UNE's Professor Paul Martin, Director of the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law.

"The purpose of the Biofuels Initiative is to tackle both the physical science and the policy, environmental and economic aspects of biofuels," Professor Martin said. "This Climate Action Grant, which is concerned with the technical aspects of fuel from wood, represents the first step in that much larger initiative."

The grant is for a project titled "Developing lignocellulosic technologies for next generation biofuels in Australia". The technical team is led by Emeritus Professor Peter Rogers from the University of NSW (who is an Adjunct Professor with the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law), with Dr Bob Martin leading the DPI team.

Lignocelluosic alcohol production involves the conversion of plant biomass rather than sugars. It allows the production of fuel from timber and timber waste, woody weeds, stalks, waste material, and possibly even from garden waste. "This will be the next big story for biofuels," Professor Martin said. "At the moment attention is focused on using feed-grade grains, and that’s why we're seeing concerns emerging about the impact upon livestock production and, potentially, on the cost of human food. Lignocelluosics is the only ethanol production strategy that has a fair chance of not causing high cost to grain-dependent industries; so, strategically, it is the main game in biofuels."

Professor Martin, who is also on the Premier’s ethanol taskforce, said the researchers would be drawn from the DPI and a wide range of disciplines within UNE, and would eventually involve collaborators from Pennsylvania State University in the United States.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at June 29, 2007 05:11 PM