Australia is Pushing Biofuels from Low Cost, Non-Food Materials
by Simon Grose (TCE Today) Algae, wood and sugarcane shared the honours in the bidding for funding through the Australian government’s Second generation Biofuels research and development program. Announcing matching grants totaling A$14.4m ($12.1m) across seven projects, resource minister Martin Ferguson said the government aimed to ensure that biofuel development does not compete with traditional agricultural industry for land and resources.
“Second generation biofuel technologies provide unique opportunities to supplement existing fuel supplies in a truly sustainable manner by deriving biofuels from low cost, non-food materials,” Ferguson said. A consortium of the South Australian Research and Development Institute, Flinders University and CSIRO won the largest grant of A$2.7m to develop a pilot-scale biorefinery for micro algal biofuels and other products. Researchers at the University of Melbourne received A$1.2m for a project at Victoria’s coal-fired Hazelwood Power Plant to increase the efficiency of systems to derive biofuels from microalgae. READ MORE
