The Australian
By: Steve Creedy
The global financial crisis appears not to have slowed down research into biofuels but industry expectations about its growth and impact have become less certain.
Industry participants, at an environmental conference hosted by US manufacturer Boeing in Sydney this week, were split on how much of Australia's aviation fuel would come from biofuel by 2020, with some opting for less than 5 per cent and others predicting 5 to 10 per cent.
Only one person thought it would be more than 10 per cent.
Boeing's local operations are working on a figure of about 1 per cent local production by 2015 but the Boeing Commercial Airplanes managing director of environment strategy, Billy Glover, said it was too hard to predict what would happen.
"We're at the beginning, the start of the slope," he said. "No one knows what that slope will be over the next few years. We're all aiming to push it higher in the right way."
Mr Glover said a study early this year by E4Tech had laid out low, medium and high trajectories for the growth and availability of biofuel for aviation and had come up with a lowside projection of 5 to 10 per cent by 2020.
"They were apparently more bullish than a lot of people here," he told the conference.
Research is ongoing into a number of alternative ways to produce biofuel, with algae remaining the great white hope.
Mr Glover, who is also chairman of the trade-based Algal Biomass Organisation, said algae researchers in the US had begun to scale-up production, facilitated by the US Defence Department's interest in using biofuel in aircraft as well as ground and ocean-going assets. He said this had helped boost production and get people out of the laboratory into small-scale production.
"So obviously we're seeing signs of getting to an answer. It's still not clear, though, when and how much," he said.
"People are protecting their intellectual property, their business opportunity until they're pretty confident they'll go ahead and move out.
"So I think the comments you hear are because no one's quite showing their hand, not to the extent that you can really tell."
Despite the uncertainty about algae, Mr Glover said he was more optimistic than he was a year ago.
He said there was some good work on cellulose waste materials and the use of animal fats.
"In the end, I think we're just going to see a variety of things in a particular region or locality," he said. "It's going to be who's there, what resources are available and what's the local market.
"It will be really broad, and it will be changing over time as science matures and you have another option.".
Fuel standards authorities are expected to approve biofuels for use in aircraft this year, but they will be subject to an extensive list of requirements about what process steps are required and what impurities it can contain.
Mr Glover did not believe the recession had slowed down research because most businesses were looking at a long-term plan and had investors that saw them through.
Qantas chief risk manager Rob Kella called on aircraft manufacturers to accelerate work on the next generation of improvements and predicted that setting up a supply chain for sustainable biofuels would be a long-term project critical for the industry between 2020 and 2050.
Mr Kella said the technical side of producing biofuels capable of being used in aircraft was not an issue but it was now a case of picking the right feedstock, considering different refining options and creating a supply chain that would deliver the fuel where it was needed for aircraft.
He also believed Australian airlines needed to put a more persuasive case for increased government attention on biofuels.
"I don't think we've done that yet and we need to spend some more time with government about the benefits and looking at the Australian context in particular," he said.