AUSTRALIA may become a source of feedstocks for second-generation biofuel capable of producing a sustainable replacement for jet fuel.
The Australian reports Air New Zealand boss Rob Fyfe has become the latest to suggest that northern Australia would be a good place to cultivate jatropha curcas, a hardy plant that can grow in arid lands not suitable for forests or food crops and is a good source of bio-oil.
His comments last week came after European group Airbus recently expressed similar sentiments and even produced rough calculations on how much land would be needed to supply Australia's jet fuel requirements.
Both companies are aware that the fast-growing jatropha plant is considered a noxious weed by the Australian states most suitable for growing it.
But Fyfe is hopeful that Australian authorities might reconsider jatropha's status now that it has shown fuel potential and hundreds of companies, including some in Australia, are preparing to grow the tree.
Fyfe says jatropha is currently harvested manually and this, to some degree, influences where it is grown but he believes this will change as mechanical harvesting is developed.
"And one of the most obvious areas when we look around the world is northern Australia," he told The Australian. "The conditions are right: it doesn't need a particularly arable soil environment and it's clearly a lot easier to harvest on flat land in terms of any mechanical harvesting techniques."
As a New Zealander, Fyfe acknowledges the importance of stringent biological controls. But he remains hopeful the necessary regimes can be developed to give countries such as Australia confidence that an industry can be introduced commercially without threatening the biological and agricultural environment.
"Having now established that (jatropha) has a value and use which was probably never previously understood at the time it was classified as a noxious weed, then my sense is there's an opportunity to revisit it," he says. "I would certainly hope so."
An airline chief talking about biofuel would have been dismissed as a blue-sky pipedream not so long ago.
Read more on The Australian online.
