ARENA Bioenergy Roadmap: bioenergy could provide about 26,000 jobs and cut emissions by about 9%

The Australian agency ARENA published in November 2021 the Bioenergy Roadmap – a strategic analysis according to which bioenergy could, at the start of the next decade, create about 26,000 jobs (the ARENA page gives 26,200), contribute up to 10 billion Australian dollars a year to GDP, cut emissions by about 9% and relieve landfills of about 6% of waste. The figures come from the ARENA summary, and the document was prepared with the involvement of Enea Consulting and Deloitte Australia.

The ARENA announcement notes that many of the projected new jobs would be created in the regions. The document states that ARENA engaged Enea Consulting and Deloitte Australia to help prepare it.

Four directions

The roadmap organises the opportunities into four groups:

1. markets for hard-to-decarbonise sectors: industrial heat, sustainable aviation fuel and injection of renewable gas into the grid,
2. markets where bioenergy complements other low-carbon solutions – road transport and electricity,
3. resource development, because the availability and sustainability of feedstock require better assessment,
4. building an ecosystem linking the different parts of the industry.

Funding

The ARENA announcement of 24 November 2021 stated that the government had allocated an additional 33.5 million AUD to the agency for research, development and deployment of advanced sustainable aviation and marine biofuels. As examples of projects, the announcement mentions genetically modified yeast from the company Microbiogen and a project to inject biomethane from the Sydney wastewater treatment plant (Malabar) into the gas network.

Limits of the document

The analysis concerns potential, not commitments – the actual pace of deployment depends on state policies, gas prices and access to feedstock. ARENA describes the forecast horizon in general terms as the 2030s (in the announcement: “by the 2030s”), so it is not a forecast for a specific year of 2030.

What this means for Poland

The Australian document shows the value of a “roadmap” prepared by a funding agency: it combines an assessment of resources with a list of barriers. In Poland a similar role was played by national analyses of biomethane potential; Polish designers find particularly useful the distinction between applications in which bioenergy is one of the few options available (high-temperature heat, fuels) and those where it competes with electrification.