The March/April edition of EcoGeneration featured an overview of the plan, which found that if Australia’s bioenergy industry is to improve its productivity and sustainability, it cannot afford a fragmented or duplicative research and development system. A number of key priorities were identified and are outlined here.

Deciphering key priorities

Through consultation, survey and workshops, R&D Priorities have been established as follows:

Sustainability

• Review national and international development in the approaches to sustainability relevant to production of biofuels, bioenergy and biobased products in Australia, including relevant government policies, and pathways to adoption of future sustainability guidelines.
• Develop and test criteria and methods for assessing sustainability across scales, regions and particular configurations of industry.
• Undertake Life Cycle Analyses and develop Life Cycle Inventories using common ISO standard methods. To include sensitivity analysis.

Feedstocks Compare and develop options for increasing sustainable feedstock production through:

• Modifying existing crops to improve yield and quality
• Development of prospective new biomass crops and products for different regions of Australia – eg. new oilseed perennials, seeds, grasses, weeds, algae, trees and indigenous species, including their costs of production
• Assessing and developing suitable sustainable farming and production systems which complement other land uses (such as food production) eg. changing the management of harvest regimes of existing production systems, expanding current production systems to new areas, creating new and novel production systems.
• Ensure a balanced portfolio (and limited number) of short and long term/high risk and low risk potential crops.
• Assess sustainability issues (including effect of removal of crop and forest residues on ecosystem carbon, and biodiversity as well as cost of production) for new and existing production systems.
• Characterise material properties of novel feedstocks, their variation and suitability for next generation processing opportunities, including characterisation of bioproducts.
• Identify regions for the sustainable growing of bioenergy/biofuel crops and integrated biomass production (including the impacts of expanding production of lignocellulosic crops), in particular underutilised and low productivity land.

Supply logistics

• Investigate the scales of economy, logistics and costs of harvesting, storage and processing, risks and suitability of distributed as compared to centralised biomass conversion systems
• Investigate use of existing or development of small modular processing plant for distributed production of products &/or energy
• Investigate partial local processing options for the most promising new feedstock systems (e.g. harvesting and briquetting/pelletising technology)
• Identify infrastructure requirements, supply logistics and transitions for regional processing and distribution.

Conversion technologies

• Develop a research investment framework to identify the most likely technologies to deliver a sustainable competitive advantage to Australian industries over multiple time horizons
• Identify combinations of biomass feedstocks, conversion processes and outputs best suited to Australian conditions and globally supported to benefit Australia
• Undertake pre-feasibility and feasibility studies and demonstrate prospective value chain and conversion technologies (or unit processes) to reduce the technical and financial risks
• Explore the possible use of other stationary power renewable technologies in combination with biomass

Bioproducts and biorefineries

• Integrate market analysis for bioproducts (to identify likely end-users, potential volume and value demand for the product) with preferred available biomass production and conversion systems
• Prepare and test novel bioproducts to determine physical characteristics of relevance and value to industry

Policy analysis

• Undertake research into economic drivers and thresholds at domestic and international scales for markets for bioenergy and its feedstock
• Investigate policy mechanisms which steer the industry towards sustainable development (eg. targeted incentives, carbon prices, government purchasing)
• Analysis of policy options to underpin development of a robust policy framework for biofuels, bioenergy and bioproducts – bio-economy
• Develop a strategy for policy coordination

Outreach, capacity building and networking

• Maximise the research networking, coordinator and information brokering role of Bioenergy Australia
• Identify capacity shortages or barriers to industry development, and develop appropriate strategies to address them