Conference Report: Biomass for a clean-energy future
Bioenergy Australia [101], an alliance of 86 government and private sector organizations with an interest in the development of sustainable energy and products from biomass, held its 11th annual conference in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, in December 2010. Several speakers reminded delegates that bioenergy is complex, not well understood and therefore tends to be considered as the ‘poor renewable energy cousin’ to hydro, wind, solar and geothermal energy. This perception remains a problem for the industry, even though bioenergy provides nearly 4% of Australia’s total primary energy supply [1] (approximately 71% of renewable energy in Australia [2]). Bioenergy is a difficult concept and story to grasp for policy makers and the general public since it encompasses a mystifyingly wide range of feedstocks (from municipal wastes to purpose-grown energy crops) that can each be converted via numerous routes into either heat, electricity, liquid or gaseous fuels for the purpose of transport, biochemicals or biomaterials. Therefore, what the ‘best use’ is for the available biomass can be difficult to determine. Those attending the wide variety of presentations would have come away with a good understanding of what biomass has to offer as a clean-energy source, both now and in the future. Unfortunately, only a few delegates represented the farming, local-municipal authority and financial sectors. These are three key sectors that need to fully understand the complexities of bioenergy if the industry is to progress at the rate of deployment needed to significantly contribute to energy demand and meet its full potential. This annual event, successfully coordinated since 1999 by Steve Schuck, Manager of Bioenergy Australia, highlights the role of biomass from a national and international perspective. Good progress has been made over the past decade, although at times, as some of the papers from 2010 showed, it seems like three steps forward and two steps back (or at least sideways). The issue now is, how to move forward in giant strides. There were 330 delegates at the conference, mainly from industry, research and government organizations. Over 110 presentations covered policies and programs, biomass feedstocks and supply-chain aspects, bioenergy projects and case studies. Topics included: biomass heat and power; pyrolysis; gasification; algae for biofuels; carbon sequestration via biochar; anaerobic digestion of livestock wastes; energy from municipal solid waste and overarching aspects including sustainability and GHG emissions and their mitigation. A total of 100 conference delegates participated in a technical tour, which was an informative adjunct to the c onference. Facilities visited included:
Sustainable biomass supply chain for the Mallee woody crop industry
This Rural Industries R&D Corporation report provides a pre-feasibility assessment of the mallee woody crop supply chain based on a comparative assessment with the sugar supply chain. The report will assist in developing a sustainable supply chain for the mallee industry. 
The report is targeted at the stakeholders of the mallee woody crop industry. Stakeholders include seedling nurseries and contract tree planters, farmers, harvesting contractors, road transport operators, biomass processors and conversion industries, consumers of the products from conversion industries, CRC, university and public sector industry development workers and private sector industry development individuals and corporations other than farmers.
Oakenden Harvesting Company Pty Ltd: delivering harvesting best practice
OAKENDEN HARVESTING COMPANY PTY LTD, a cooperative harvesting group supplying an average of 53 500 tonnes annually to Mackay Sugar, has always searched for innovation in harvesting. This business was one of 15 harvesting groups, which participated in the successful SRDC-supported 'Improved Harvesting Efficiency Project' which ran between 1999 and 2002. Oakenden Harvesting's manager, Joe Muscat, has, from the beginning, sought to make the business as efficient and effective as possible. This has been achieved through accurate record keeping, trial work evaluating different operating techniques and modifications and adoption of appropriate new technology and methods. Manual record keeping started in 1983 and evolved to make use of Queensland Mechanical Cane Harvesters Association (QMCHA) Log Book which Joe later helped redesign. Automatic record keeping using the Harvesting Best Practice data logger initially and then later the Big Mate system have shown wide applications for harvest and transport performance evaluation. The business has also found the BSES Harvest Transport Model useful for matching haulout capacity to haul distance and harvester capacity. Record keeping and data analysis has enabled the calculation of harvest cost for each block on every farm in the group. Cost of harvesting varied enormously from year to year between 1996 and 2002, ranging from $4.57/t to $7.74/t. Variation between blocks within and across farms is even larger. These data could be used to enable differential charging, although several barriers to this application have been identified. Accurate information on financial position is something many harvesting businesses lack, and this situation has weakened the harvesting sector and caused poor performance on farms. Harvester innovations employed provided a range of benefits, some of which include: reduced stool damage in lodged cane, stone rejection, increased basecutter blade life and performance, better chopper performance and blade life extended from 1800 to 3300 tonnes under the same conditions, reduced extractor losses and increased elevator delivery rate. This paper also proposes some potential changes to the farming, harvesting and delivery system, which could improve industry profitability.