A $300 million bioenergy plant to supply renewable fuel to the aviation and trucking industries has been earmarked for Esperance.
A $300 million bioenergy plant to supply renewable fuel to the aviation and trucking industries has been earmarked for Esperance.
The Australis Biofuel Facility project is being led by Renewable.bio which is already exporting up to 150,000 tonnes of agricultural and forestry biomass to Europe from the south coast town.
The $300 to $500 million expansion slated for operation by 2027 would boost production of biofuel able to be used in existing tanks without modification for Australian and overseas markets.
Those fuels would be marketed to the long-haul trucking, aviation, mining and agriculture sectors for use where other forms of emissions reductions such as electrification are not feasible in the medium term.
Renewable.bio chief executive Angelo Dabala said the Esperance facility would be the first of four built in Australia.
“We have to use what we have and add value here in Australia, that is our intention with biofuels,” he said.
“Our focus is on marginal lands or degraded land… where we can grow energy crops.
“The objective is 80 to 90 per cent less carbon emissions than the hydrocarbon equivalent and it Is not only CO2, there are metals, aromatics, lots of nasty stuff when you burn hydrocarbon fuel.”
Renewable.bio has nine staff on the ground talking to farmers about supplying feedstock to the plant which will need about 30,000 hectares cropped on a rotational basis to run for 20 years.
Mr Dabala said high-density energy crops could reduce that outlay.
Some 300 construction and 100 permanent jobs are expected to flow from the facility in Esperance.
Renewable.bio director Brian Scott said a 20-hectare site in Esperance’s industrial zone had been identified for the plant.
“There is a healthy export market for ethanol itself… then ethanol itself can be used to produce renewable diesel or sustainable aviation fuel which in some ways will be the big prize,” he said.
“The market dynamics and commercial aspects of that are currently still challenging… but we believe it will continue to emerge.”
“We need to reduce fuels in a way that enables people to travel the way they still want to, but be able to do that in a sustainable way.”
Renewable.bio’s project follows bp’s announcement in February of a $1 billion transformation of its mothballed Kwinana refinery into a biorefinery producing aviation fuel and biodiesel.
Bp Australia’s biorefinery is due to pump out its first biofuel in 2026.
Renewable.bio is due to make a final investment decision on its Esperance plant by the end of 2024.
