Bioenergy

Bioenergy – how it works

The technology to produce bioenergy is ready today and has a proven track record delivering reliable energy to industry and households. Bioenergy involves a range of power generation technology to efficiently extract considerable quantities of clean, low-emission electricity from sources such as agricultural crop wastes, plantation wood waste, urban garden and food waste, sugar cane residues (known as bagasse), sewage and animal wastes.

Bioenergy generates power using a renewable fuel source that can be stored and controlled. Plants can be used to generate electricity in many cases all year round, 24 hours a day as base load power. Landfill gas plants, already in operation across all Australian capital cities, often operate for over 90 per cent of the year, comparable to traditional energy power stations.

Greenhouse gas savings

Bioenergy is a clean energy source that creates little or no net greenhouse emissions depending on the type of biomass and conversion technology used. It is also capable of being carbon negative if carbon capture and sequestration is employed.

In Australia

Australia has an abundance of sustainable biomass resources that are currently underutised. Bioenergy supplies less than one per cent of Australia's total electrcity supply. Australia’s sugar industry has used bioenergy to meet its electricity and heat requirements for over 100 years. The installed capacity for the bioenergy sector in Australia amounts to around 767 megawatts.

Bioenergy resources are located across all the states of Australia, with most regions engaged in agriculture, forestry and food production producing substantial waste biomass that could be used to support power production.

Potential

Detailed analyses, both international (the International Energy Agency, the UK Government, and the European Commission) and within Australia indicate that bioenergy can play a significant role in future electricity supply.

For example, the amount of electricity generated from bagasse could be significantly increased if sugar mills and associated power plants were modernised into more efficient operations, and if more effort was made to gather all of the cane trash which could be used in electricity generation – currently only 50 per cent of the cane biomass available for use is collected.

Global view

In the US bioenergy generates 60 million megawatt hours of electricity - more than the entire grid connected electricity demands of WA, SA and Tasmania combined. European countries have also embraced bioenergy: in Finland it supplies 14 per cent of their electricity needs, while in Denmark it makes up 6 per cent of total energy supply (electricity, as well as energy for transport, heat and steam).

Australian Bioenergy Roadmap

The Australian Bioenergy Roadmap was created by the bioenergy industry as a first step to ensuring that bioenergy becomes a significant contributor to Australia's future stationary energy supply while reducing our carbon pollution.

The Roadmap sets a clear strategy to achieve: